Market sources indicate that AMD is currently increasing its research and development investment in the next-generation UDNA 5 GPU architecture. The most crucial focus is to improve ray tracing performance and narrow the gap with NVIDIA. Recent disclosures of numerous patent applications reveal AMD’s unprecedented investment in ray tracing technology, with plans to seize a larger share of the consumer-grade GPU market through a comprehensive hardware and software solution. Whether it can achieve this will not only affect the PC gaming market but also influence the graphics performance of next-generation console platforms such as the Sony PlayStation 6.
AMD’s UDNA 5 architecture is a crucial component of its GPU roadmap. Following RDNA 4, it is expected to enter mass production in the second quarter of 2026. UDNA 5 will replace the originally planned RDNA 5 and adopt a unified architecture design, integrating the previously separate RDNA (consumer-grade) and CDNA (data center) architectures. This unified strategy aims to simplify the development process, enhance hardware and software compatibility, and provide more efficient performance for both gaming and AI workloads. According to industry sources, UDNA 5 will utilize TSMC’s 3nm (N3E) process, which is expected to deliver a slight improvement in power efficiency and performance compared to RDNA 4’s 5nm process.
Ray tracing, as one of the core technologies of modern GPUs, directly impacts the realism and frame rate performance of game visuals. AMD gradually introduced ray tracing support in its RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 architectures, but its performance still lags behind NVIDIA’s RTX series. The patent applications for UDNA 5 suggest that AMD has made some breakthrough progress in this area. Among them, the most notable is the optimized management of the Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH). AMD proposes compressing BVH data by identifying similarities in graphical objects within a scene, thereby reducing CPU overhead and memory usage. This method can decrease the complexity of ray traversal and intersection calculations, improving rendering efficiency.
Furthermore, AMD’s patents mention a “turbocharged ray traversal” technology that can accelerate the intersection detection between rays and scene objects. This technology may be optimized through hardware acceleration units to ensure faster triangle and bounding box test rates. Compared to RDNA 3’s Ray Accelerator, the hardware design of UDNA 5 will further enhance its per-cycle processing capability, potentially approaching or surpassing the RT core performance of NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture. Industry observers are calling this progress AMD’s “Maxwell moment,” implying its potential to replicate the leap in ray tracing performance that NVIDIA achieved with its Maxwell architecture in 2014.
UDNA 5’s ambitions extend beyond the PC market. AMD’s deep collaboration with Sony indicates that this architecture will be used in the PlayStation 6, which is expected to be released in 2026. Ray tracing’s importance in the console platform is increasingly evident, as it can enhance visual effects under limited hardware resources while maintaining stable frame rates. AMD’s patents also hint at the possibility of developing advanced path tracing solutions through neural rendering technology to compete with NVIDIA’s ReSTIR technology. Path tracing, as an advanced form of ray tracing, can simulate more complex light and shadow interactions, bringing near-cinematic visual quality. AMD’s neural rendering technology may utilize AI to accelerate frame generation and noise reduction, similar to NVIDIA’s DLSS 4, but with a greater emphasis on cross-platform compatibility.
In the RDNA 4 stage, AMD has already demonstrated a precise focus on the mid-range market. The Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT are positioned to compete with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti. According to test data, the RX 9070 XT shows an approximately 42% improvement in rasterization performance (compared to the RX 7900 GRE) and nearly a 2.5-fold increase in ray tracing performance. However, its absence in the high-end market allows NVIDIA’s RTX 5080 and 5090 to temporarily dominate. The launch of UDNA 5 will mark AMD’s return to the high-end GPU market.
The unified architecture of UDNA 5 also brings convenience to developers. In the past, the separate designs of RDNA and CDNA forced developers to optimize code for different platforms, while UDNA’s unified ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) design, drawing inspiration from AMD’s earlier GCN architecture, will simplify this process. This will not only reduce development costs but also accelerate the cross-platform deployment of AI and high-performance computing tasks. AMD’s ROCm software platform will also expand its support scope, covering everything from consumer-grade Radeon to enterprise-level Instinct MI400 accelerators, fully capable of challenging NVIDIA’s CUDA ecosystem.
Despite the promising outlook for UDNA 5, NVIDIA has accumulated significant technical advantages in ray tracing and AI acceleration, and its Blackwell architecture’s RTX 50 series has already demonstrated powerful performance. If AMD wants to break through in the high-end market, it needs to balance performance and cost in UDNA 5 while ensuring a stable supply chain. The launch of RDNA 4 faced controversy due to pricing adjustments and inventory issues, so the mass production and retail strategy for UDNA 5 needs to be more precise.
AMD’s UDNA 5 architecture represents a strategic transformation in its GPU endeavors. By optimizing ray tracing performance, unifying the architecture design, and deepening AI technology integration, AMD is striving to break NVIDIA’s market dominance. Whether for PC gamers or console users, this technological advancement foreshadows higher-quality visual experiences. The GPU market competition in 2026 will undoubtedly be more intense, and whether AMD’s UDNA 5 can deliver on its potential warrants continued attention.