GPU Wiki Architecture

GCN 3.0

GCN 3.0 is most notably associated with Fiji, the die behind the Radeon R9 Fury and Fury X, which introduced High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) to a consumer GPU for the first time in 2015. Fiji was manufactured on 28nm and connected to 4 GB of HBM1 via a silicon interposer at 512 GB/s of memory bandwidth — far ahead of GDDR5 configurations of the era.

Read the architecture history below the GPU list

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Launch era
2015 to 2016
Process nodes
28nm (TSMC)
Predecessor
GCN 2.0
Successor
GCN 4.0 (Polaris)
Source review
Partial

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Architecture History

The generation also encompasses Tonga and Antigua (R9 380/380X), though the HBM integration was the defining feature.

More architecture facts

Architecture name
GCN 3.0
Important chips
Fiji (R9 Fury X / Fury / Fury Nano), Tonga (R9 380X / 380), Antigua (R9 390X / 390 — Hawaii refresh)
Memory technologies
HBM1 (Fiji, via silicon interposer, 4 GB at 512 GB/s); GDDR5 (Tonga / Antigua)
Architecture feature generation
GCN 3.0 Stream Processors; DirectX 12 (FL 12_0); Vulkan 1.0; OpenCL 2.0
Consumer series
Radeon R9 Fury X, R9 Fury, R9 Nano, R9 390X, R9 390, R9 380X, R9 380
Workstation / professional series
Radeon Pro Duo (dual Fiji), FirePro W9100 (second revision)
Data center series
Radeon Instinct MI8 (Fiji-based)

What this architecture changed

First consumer GPU with HBM (High Bandwidth Memory): Fiji pairs four HBM1 stacks on a silicon interposer for 512 GB/s bandwidth at 4 GB capacity.
Compact die footprint: the small Fiji die + HBM package enabled the Radeon R9 Nano, a full-performance GPU in a Mini-ITX form factor.
DirectX 12 feature level 12_0 and Vulkan 1.0 compliance.
Liquid cooling on the Fury X reference design — AMD's first all-in-one liquid-cooled reference GPU.

Why it mattered

GCN 3.0's Fiji demonstrated HBM's viability for consumer discrete GPUs over a year before NVIDIA's HBM2 adoption in Pascal. The silicon interposer approach was a significant packaging engineering milestone for AMD and established the groundwork for future HBM designs in the Vega generation. The Fury X remains collectible as the first HBM consumer GPU.