With the New Year quickly approaching, AMD’s HD 7000-series and its GCN architecture is about to celebrate its first birthday. After a year on the market, it’s time for the architecture to undergo a refresh and the notebook segment is going to be the first to benefit with AMD’s upcoming HD 8000M series of mobile graphics processors.

At this point, not much is actually known about these new chips but after an all to quick presentation by AMD today, a clearer picture is beginning to emerge. First and foremost, the initial HD 8000M entrants will use a slightly revised GCN architecture that boasts increased overall efficiency, higher memory clocks and optimized on-die resource distribution. Boost capability will also be incorporated onto some dies instead of only being reserved for higher end desktop parts. The will also implement a “Solar” naming scheme so expect product designations (ie: code makes) based on planetary bodies like Venus and Mars. Additional concrete information isn’t available at this point since AMD’s cards are being played close to their chests but we do know the HD 8000M series will be officially announced on January 7th, right before CES. Notebooks supporting these new discrete graphics will be launched around that time as well (even though some have already been leaked) so expect reviews on Hardware Canucks soon.