AMD’s next-generation graphics cards are launching at E3

Gamers, buckle up—AMD will launch its highly-anticipated graphics processing unit, code-named Fiji, on June 16 at the E3 conference. Many were expecting Fiji to launch at a press event at Computex on Wednesday, but that didn’t happen. Instead, AMD did show off key technology, which will first appear in Fiji and could give significant speed and power saving gains to future graphics chips. On stage, AMD CEO Lisa Su showed a chip for technology called HBM (high-bandwidth memory), which could make graphics chips faster and more power-efficient. HBM offers 3.5 times the bandwidth per watt of GDDR5, which is currently used in memory chips. Instead of being placed next to each other, HBM stacks memory chips, which are connected through a high-speed thread. HBM is also faster due a wider bus and its closer location to graphics processors. The new memory technology could also help shrink the size of GPUs, or add more memory in the same area. About 1GB of HBM memory takes up 95 percent less than the same amount of GDDR5 memory, so you free up a lot of room on a circuit board, said Robert Hallock, technical marketing manager at AMD.