As part of its ongoing efforts to produce next-generation solutions, AMD’s Linux team has submitted a few intriguing tweaks today, which Phoronix reports made a modest appearance through recent GitHub updates for GFX12 targets. Two additional discrete GPUs have been added to the LLVM compiler for Linux thanks to these tweaks, which has stoked suspicion that they are the RDNA4 graphics architecture’s initial iterations and could be included in the Radeon RX 8000 series of desktop graphics cards. The nomenclature employed for these new targets, GFX1200 and GFX1201, alludes to AMD’s historical practice of linking RDNA1 with GFX10 and subsequently associating RDNA2 with GFX10.2 and RDNA3 with GFX11. This suggests a continuation of AMD’s logical progression through graphics architectures.

The fact that the patches don’t provide comprehensive information on the forthcoming graphics ISA or its characteristics suggests that the development of these new GPUs is still in its early phases. Since the patch states that “For now they behave identically to GFX11,” it is currently assumed that the new GFX12 targets will be handled similarly to GFX11. This suggests that AMD is withholding information about the specifics until closer to release. Enabling timely support for AMD ROCm computing stack, AMDVLK Vulkan driver, and RadeonSI Gallium3D driver requires the patch that sets target names and ELF numbers for new GFX12 targets GFX1200 and GFX1201.