MacOS Big Sur Driver Code Suggests Mysterious AMD Navi 31 GPU

MacOS Big Sur Driver Code Suggests Mysterious AMD Navi 31 GPU

We're still waiting for the AMD Navi 21 to appear, but its successor may already have been pulled with Apple's permission. As reported by Hardware Leaks, Apple's macOS 1 Big Sur developer beta 11 gave the AMD Navi 31 graphics card its first major leak. The GPU is referenced in AMD's Apple drivers, giving us our first clue that Team Red has RDNA 3-based GPUs in the works. The Big Sur slide also seems to confirm that while Apple is looking to move away from Intel processors in favor of its own ARM-based Apple Silicon, it plans to stick with ARM's dGPUs, at least for now. Apple's macOS code leak also lists six incoming Big Navi GPUs: five Navi 22s and one Navi 23 graphics card. This is in addition to previously spotted support for Navi 21, which should appear in Apple's new generation iMac. This adds weight to previous rumors that the AMNA RDNA 22-based Navi 2 will be exclusive to Apple. As if that weren't enough, the macOS 11 driver also lists the AMD Radeon Instinct MI100 and MI200 graphics accelerator, and also shows references to upcoming AMD Cezanne and Van Gough APUs; the first will be a Zen 3 with a Vega processor, while the second will be an ultra-low power APU that includes a Zen 2 processor and RDNA 2 GPU. Since Apple has said that the transition to ARM-based silicon would take two years , this could be a sign that new MacBooks with AMD APUs are in the works for the first time. This isn't the first time we've been bothered by the prospect of Apple releasing a MacBook powered by AMD. Earlier this year, references spotted in the MacOS Catalina code also suggested that AMD APUs were making their way to Apple's line of laptops.