We finally managed to learn a few details about AMD’s upcoming Sea Islands graphics cores. AMD told some of its partners that Radeon HD 8000 is a good candidate for an official name and now we got some news that the new cores will support yet to be announced DirectX 11.1 API.

Richland A series Trinity successor in 28nm will end up with current generation Northern Islands Radeon HD 7000 cores, while the Kabini gets Sea Island Radeon HD 8000 cores. Many expect to see Sea Islands in discrete and mobile graphics form this year, but this is not something we can confirm at this time.

Despite the fact that some APUs might end up with the same number or graphics cores (shaders) AMD is quick to point out that next generation cores will be different and that e.g. 384 Sea Islands cores won’t be the same as 384 cores of Northern Islands. In a perfect world the new generation should end up significantly faster.

Nvidia has Maxwell scheduled for 2013 and according to the roadmap from GTC 2010 it is expected in 2013 with double precision of some 15 Gflops per Watt, some three times more than with Kepler. We hope both players in the graphics duopoly will put up a good fight as every industry needs competition to drive prices down and keep innovation up.