14 DAY TRIAL // There was a time when we thought the Volcanic Islands generation of AMD graphics processing units would sell under the Radeon HD 8000 series, but reports said that they would ship as HD 9000 instead.
We were even less sure of the range of chips that would succeed the Volcanic Islands generation, but the folks at 3DCenter.org believe they have unraveled that mystery.
According to them, the range will be called Pirate Islands and will be marketed as Radeon R# xxxx, where R# is probably the code of the generation, and xxxx the model number.
So, we suppose the first wave after the disappearance of the Radeon HD moniker will be called something along the lines of Radeon R0 1900.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. We should take a look at the Volcanic Islands first, since those are the chips that will come out this year.
Since TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) will start making 20nm chips in the fourth quarter (Q4 2013), one or more of the chips (Hawaii, Maui and Tonga) will appear around the same time.
Either that or they will come out in early 2014. It's still a tossup at this stage.
Oddly enough, the dual-GPU graphics card will be called New Zealand, despite some Radeon HD 7990 adapters already bearing that name.
The Volcanic Islands will include GPUs like the Bermuda, Fiji and Treasure Island. Presumably, they will, respectively, power the same sort of video cards as their yet unreleased predecessors.
We should note that the R# in the name may turn out to be something other than a replacement for the HD in the current scheme.
It could just be an indicator of the targeted market segment. Thus, the names of video cards would be Radeon R9-170 for Hawaii XT, R9-270 for Bermuda XT, R8-170 for Maui XT, R7-170 for Tonga XT, etc.