Graphics Core Next (GCN) is the codename for both a series of microarchitectures as well as for an instruction set architecture that was developed by AMD for their GPUs as the successor to their TeraScale microarchitecture/instruction set. The first product featuring GCN was launched on January 9, 2012. GCN is a RISC SIMD (or rather SIMT) microarchitecture contrasting the VLIW SIMD architecture of TeraScale. GCN requires considerably more transistors than TeraScale, but offers advantages for GPGPU computation. It makes the compiler simpler and should also lead to better use.