Earlier this week Apple introduced its new Big Sur macOS during the WWDC conference. It is named after the coastal region of Big Sur in the Central Coast of California. In a symbolic gesture accompanying Apple’s transition of the Macintosh to a new CPU architecture, the primary version number of the operating system has been incremented for the first time since the release of the Mac OS X Public Beta in 2000.
macOS Big Sur features a major user interface redesign, support for iOS and iPadOS apps, and is designed to take advantage of Apple-designed ARM processors in future Macs. This is the first OS to have support for Apple’s own ARM-based Silicon.
Now, according to Hardware Leaks, the website owned by the Twitter user _@rogame, some references to the AMD’s upcoming BIG NAVI 31 GPU have been spotted in the latest ‘macOS 11’ GPU drivers which sort of confirms the existence of an even bigger/powerful NAVI GPU in the works, which would be a direct successor to NAVI 21. These entries basically confirm that both Apple and AMD will collaborate to deliver high-end graphics solutions to macOS users as well. NAVI 31 will be based on the next-gen RDNA3 architecture, and these are the first references being spotted today in macOS 11 drivers.
We are still waiting for Big Navi aka NAVI 21 codenamed as “Sienna Cichlid” to arrive later this year if everything goes well according to AMD’s roadmap. But it appears that AMD also has a bigger NAVI GPU in the works. Both Navi 21 and Navi 31 will be launched under the Radeon RX and Radeon Pro series.
Last year Komachi also found references to the NAVI 31 chip, along with many more codenames related to gaming consoles. So this is not the first time we are hearing about Navi 31, just to be clear.
Apart from the Navi 31 leak, we also have references to the Navi 22 GPU SKU (a successor to Navi 12) and also Navi 23 (likely a successor to Navi 14 GPU):
- 0x73A0 (Navi22)
- 0x73A2 (Navi22)
- 0x73A3 (Navi22)
- 0x73AB (Navi22)
- 0x73AE (Navi22)
- 0x73BF (Navi23).
Some entries related to AMD’s next-gen upcoming Zen 3 APU codenamed as “Cezanne”, and Radeon Instinct MI100 and MI200 HPC/deep learning series have also been spotted.
References to Navi 31 as spotted in the macOS 11 Big Sur OS
Hello, my name is NICK Richardson. I’m an avid PC and tech fan since the good old days of RIVA TNT2, and 3DFX interactive “Voodoo” gaming cards. I love playing mostly First-person shooters, and I’m a die-hard fan of this FPS genre, since the good ‘old Doom and Wolfenstein days.
MUSIC has always been my passion/roots, but I started gaming “casually” when I was young on Nvidia’s GeForce3 series of cards. I’m by no means an avid or a hardcore gamer though, but I just love stuff related to the PC, Games, and technology in general. I’ve been involved with many indie Metal bands worldwide, and have helped them promote their albums in record labels. I’m a very broad-minded down to earth guy. MUSIC is my inner expression, and soul.
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