AMD CEO confirms CrossFire 'isn't a significant focus'

Speaking at the Hot Chips 2019 conference, AMD chief executive Dr. Lisa Su had bad news for anyone who likes to pack more than one high-end graphics processor into their system: CrossFire 'isn't a significant focus' for the company's development efforts.

Announced back in 2005 by then-ATI as an answer to Nvidia's SLI, CrossFire allows a system to spread the workload of 3D rendering across two or more physical graphics cards. Both CrossFire and SLI were fantastic solutions to the problem of game technology outstripping graphics hardware development, but today - cutting-edge features like ray tracing aside - we're largely at the other end of the spectrum: A single high-end graphics card will handle every game with ease, and without the complexity of a multi-GPU approach. Nvidia has been downplaying its own SLI technology of late, dropping the technology from an officially-supported option for up to four GPUs to a you're-on-your-own enthusiast feature supporting only two boards maximum.

AMD's CrossFire, meanwhile, looks to be going the same way. Fielding questions from the press at the Hot Chips conference earlier this week, AMD chief executive Dr. Lisa Su confirmed that the company is no longer developing CrossFire in any meaningful manner. '"To be honest, the software is going faster than the hardware,' Dr. Su told attendees. 'I would say that CrossFire isn't a significant focus.'

At the same event, Dr. Su confirmed that more information on the company's plans for the Zen 2 architecture in its many-core Threadripper product range would be due before the end of the year, though that doesn't commit the company to a product launch in the same timeframe, while confirming that 'Threadripper will have to move up' to the new architecture to keep pace with the company's mainstream Ryzen parts.