I'm guessing we will see a refresh with the W5700X or something similar from the Navi GPU family.
Decent chance won't. The major differentiator this product had was two points.
1. can drive a 'downstream' 5K (or better) Thunderbolt input only monitor.
2. Relatively quiet.
This came to market in the large gap between Mac Pro updates. (and even still the Mac Pro 2013 couldn't drive the 5K monitor full resolution with its TBv2 ports. ). There is a Mac Pro now that is a pretty natural fit to the 5K (and up) TB input only displays. Part of this eGPU for Blackmagic synergy was to get to more than one 'medium-large' GPU systems. The more natural path for that now is the new Mac Pro 2019. ( e.g., pressing an iMac Pro into 2-3 GPU set up could go with this Blackmagic eGPU set up before Mac Pro arrived. )
There is a Navi GPU in the MBP 16" . Not quite the same as the Vega56, but decent and comes with the system.
For 5K (and up) displays that are not TB input only ... the discrete cards are viable. That makes all of the other PCI-e card external enclosures viable. Once in the space where mainstream inputs on the monitors this product looses some traction.
There is still market subset left for this product, but it is smaller now. As eGPUs get more "normal' on the Windows side that gets larger ( so even smaller piece of overall eGPU market ).
TB4 (and/or USB 4 ) are going to change this market segment even more. Apple may not need to nudge a player to do something in this space. and Blackmagic doesn't need to do lots of extra work to get multiple GPU Mac set ups to grow in number. Or perhaps an external enclosure for MPX modules could be a collaborate project between the two.
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Maybe even an RDNA 2 option once AMD formally releases them.
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Not particularly likely ( at least in 2020 ). The initial RDNA 2 GPU chips likely will run substantively hotter than the Vega 56 + HBM2 memory. The case is targeted for a particular thermal level that AMD probably wouldn't ship in the RDNA2 class until well into 2021.
RDNA2 implementation where can push RX 5700XT performance into plain 5700 or 5600XT thermal space than maybe. However, AMD is likely to wait for a substantively more mature process status until get to that point to make those lower price points.
If the RDNA2 is in the iMac Pro GPU update then there is a decent chance. Blackmagic probably isn't going to use something that Apple hasn't already used and deployed in a Mac as an embedded dGPU. Something like a Navi 23 ( smaller side of 'big navi' ) may not make the iMac Pro GPU cut. Prehaps an iMac BTO GPU.
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RDNA's rollout has been very maddening. Even on Windows, drivers have been a mess. I think yields must be low since AMD is still relying so much on Vega for APUs and for Mac Pro.
The Vega in the new Ryzen 4000 mobiles is a substantive rework of the Vega implementation. Power optimized and density.
Similar for the Mac Pro those are Vega 20 architecture, not Vega 10. Although Vega 20 is getting 'older' at this point; the end of 2018 isn't all that far back. RNDA isn't a replacement for Vega 20. There is another updated architecture coming for that high end compute space. "CDNA".
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Not going to be too surprising if CDNA is pretty close to being Vega 30 ( or 3.0 ) with the power/density APU optimizations weaved into some extended compute instruction updates for larger core scale.
That CDNA module probably isn't going into a Blackmagic eGPU unless they do some major updates to the design parameters (and target price points. )
