Graphics Core Next

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Graphics Core Next (GCN)^[1] is the codename for a series of microarchitectures and an instruction set architecture that were developed by AMD for its GPUs as the successor to its TeraScale microarchitecture. The first product featuring GCN was launched on January 9, 2012.^[2]

GCN is a reduced instruction set SIMD microarchitecture contrasting the very long instruction word SIMD architecture of TeraScale.^[3] GCN requires considerably more transistors than TeraScale, but offers advantages for general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) computation due to a simpler compiler.

GCN graphics chips were fabricated with CMOS at 28 nm, and with FinFET at 14 nm (by Samsung Electronics and GlobalFoundries) and 7 nm (by TSMC), available on selected models in AMD's Radeon HD 7000, HD 8000, 200, 300, 400, 500 and Vega series of graphics cards, including the separately released Radeon VII. GCN was also used in the graphics portion of Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), including those in the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.