AMD's CDNA 4 Architecture: Balancing Matrix and Vector Operations

AMD unveils its latest compute-oriented GPU architecture, CDNA 4, a modest upgrade over CDNA 3. The focus is on boosting matrix multiplication performance with lower-precision data types crucial for machine learning. Simultaneously, CDNA 4 aims to maintain AMD's lead in vector operations. Utilizing a similar multi-chiplet design as CDNA 3, and increasing clock speeds, CDNA 4 improves Local Data Share (LDS) capacity and bandwidth, introducing read-with-transpose LDS instructions to optimize matrix multiplication. While lagging behind Nvidia's Blackwell architecture in low-precision matrix operations, CDNA 4 retains a significant advantage in vector operations and higher-precision data types due to its higher core count and clock speeds.