Google to leverage custom AMD GPU and Intel CPU for Stadia

When Google launched Stadia at GDC 2019, the company made some tall claims. Promising their cloud game streaming service would be able to run games on 4K resolution at 60 fps using a 30 Mbps connection. Google will require some pretty serious hardware to ensure CPU and GPU performance is capable of matching those high-speed Internet connections.

AMD CPU

The search giant confirmed that a custom AMD graphics card would aid Stadia in achieving these results. According to Google, the AMD GPU will feature 56 compute units that provide 10.7 TFLOPs of performance. While performance numbers match that of a desktop-grade Vega 56, 500 GB/s of memory bandwidth is equal to the AMD’s Vega 64.

However, support for ECC HBM2 memory and SR-IOV which allows the virtualisation of PCI resources are clear indications that these are data centre-grade GPUs. It would seem that the custom AMD GPUs utilised for Google’s Stadia might be some variant of AMD’s Pro V series. AMD CEO, Dr Lisa Su presented a Radeon Pro GPU next to Google Project Stadia – then titled Project Stream – at CES 2019 during the Radeon VII reveal. Stadia marks the first time AMD GPUs will be used for a major streaming service.

Not AMD CPU

While Google provided several details about the Stadia’s GPU, very little information was provided as to the CPU used to power Stadia. AMD would be the obvious choice considering the graphics used on Stadia. However, PCGamesn contacted the offices of AMD who confirmed that an AMD CPU wasn’t powering Stadia.

Although there is no current information about the chip manufacturer, Google has confirmed the processor that powers Stadia will feature hyperthreading technology and the x86 architecture. Apart from AMD, Intel is the only other vendor that can fulfil the requirements of a streaming service the size of Stadia.

The other alternative to Intel would be VIA. Considering VIA is heavily invested in bringing x86 chips to the Chinese market, the current climate in the US would undoubtedly persuade Google from going down that route.