[theLonely1]

Would 32GB be enough if we are talking about games that will ship on 25GB discs?

[Rangers]

Not even close. The only thing that makes sense is a large add on hard drive sold separately.

[anexanhume]

Good piece on chip stacking, new nodes, interposers, bigger wafers etc. All affect potential next gen processors for consoles if MS and Sony want to be enterprising:

http://cdn.eetimes.com/electronics-n...d?pageNumber=0

Basically, we are on the cusp of so many technologies: FinFET adoption, TSV and use of interposers, 450mm wafers, UVL etc.

[MrFox]

Besides the power advantage, consoles also have a rock solid copy protection. Phones and tables are rooted within 48 hours of every new hardware release. Consoles have a single hardware build, no fragmentation, allows to tweak the heck out if the game. Tablet demographics are currently $1 to $10 impulse buys, consoles are mostly $60 preorders. But will this shift in the future? Both ways?

[AlStrong]

Originally Posted by Rangers

Not even close. The only thing that makes sense is a large add on hard drive sold separately.

Well, how many games are going to take up that space immediately? Even BF3 PC is 16GB. Will Nintendo games even get that close? (It's clearly not economical for the consumer, but that's not the point *cough*).

It's just another revenue stream/option.

[steviep]

Originally Posted by Rangers

Not even close. The only thing that makes sense is a large add on hard drive sold separately.

Nintendo stated last E3 that the storage will be openly expandable to the end user (i.e. any ol USB hard drive is fine, large SD/SDxc/SDHC/etc is fine).

I'm guessing the internals will only include a small flash chip (8-16gb) and there may be an SD card of a similar size included in the box as with the 3DS.

[anexanhume]

Originally Posted by MrFox

Besides the power advantage, consoles also have a rock solid copy protection. Phones and tables are rooted within 48 hours of every new hardware release. Consoles have a single hardware build, no fragmentation, allows to tweak the heck out if the game. Tablet demographics are currently $1 to $10 impulse buys, consoles are mostly $60 preorders. But will this shift in the future? Both ways?

I don't think the volume will ever be there to justify the production value that goes into an AAA title going for $10.

[BRiT]

Originally Posted by theLonely1

Does this means that:

- Wii U will ship with way more than 8GB of internal storage?
- The device isn't going to be cheap?

A1) No.
A2) Yes.

[McHuj]

Originally Posted by Rangers

Thought laptop parts are non starters in consoles? Since by nature they are binned and not ultra high volume...

I think you could get a GPU with similar if not much better power numbers than a laptop part by doing a custom production. Right now I believe the laptop parts are down clocked and screen for best power numbers from the same production runs (as the full 7870 for example). All those parts are on the same process variation (likely 28nm HP as Nvidia is using) and targeting ~1 GHz performance.

If for instance, they chose to build a part with the same number of shaders and targeting only 750 MHz with a custom layout, they should be able to achieve higher density (thus smaller die size) as the transistors don't need to be as large. Larger transistors give you stronger drive and faster swiching times. Reducing their size will also lower leakage.

Going to a slower clock may allow them to use a LP variation of the 28nm process. That should further help power consumption and leakage.

With customization and a lower clock (750 MHz), I think you could reach a GPU a size of around 175mm and about 2 Tflop performance (1280 shaders & 750 Mhz) in about 75W. At least I hope. Another 35-45 for the CPU, 20 for fast RAM, and 20 for the rest of the system and you have a system around a 150W power requirement. Not unreasonable.

[steviep]

From GAF. Grain of salt and all that (because he mistakenly said 32nm steamroller, where he likely meant Llano or Trinity). Now the post didn't come out of nowhere. It was pestered out after multiple posts detailing the origin of his information (he's in Markham, ONT, Canada and apparently lives with one of the engineers).

Alright guys, got some information for you guys.

The PS4 AMD project called as Thebe. Previously it used to be based on Themesto and Callisto based chips but now that has been revised. They moved on to a chip called Jaguar replacing the Streamroller. They moved on to TSMC 28nm solution from the 32, which the streamroller is.

The whole thing basically is APU solutuion, they made the changes considering the 10 year product life cycle and to keep the initial product costs at minimum.

As of now it is called as the Thebe Jaguar project or TH-J.

The implication here is that the CPU has been downgraded from its original target of an APU based on Steamroller to... yech... an APU based on Jaguar. He's also suggesting the same thing I've heard in that Microsoft has revised their console for the beefier and will essentially be the "OG Xbox" of the generation - with more of AMD's resources dedicated toward that particular console.

[anexanhume]

Originally Posted by McHuj

I think you could get a GPU with similar if not much better power numbers than a laptop part by doing a custom production. Right now I believe the laptop parts are down clocked and screen for best power numbers from the same production runs (as the full 7870 for example). All those parts are on the same process variation (likely 28nm HP as Nvidia is using) and targeting ~1 GHz performance.

If for instance, they chose to build a part with the same number of shaders and targeting only 750 MHz with a custom layout, they should be able to achieve higher density (thus smaller die size) as the transistors don't need to be as large. Larger transistors give you stronger drive and faster swiching times. Reducing their size will also lower leakage.

Going to a slower clock may allow them to use a LP variation of the 28nm process. That should further help power consumption and leakage.

With customization and a lower clock (750 MHz), I think you could reach a GPU a size of around 175mm and about 2 Tflop performance (1280 shaders & 750 Mhz) in about 75W. At least I hope. Another 35-45 for the CPU, 20 for fast RAM, and 20 for the rest of the system and you have a system around a 150W power requirement. Not unreasonable.

I'm going to guess migration of an existing design to an LP process won't be peas and carrots. Designs tend to be optimized for the process they are on.

[Acert93]

Originally Posted by steviep

From GAF. Grain of salt and all that (because he mistakenly said 32nm steamroller, where he likely meant Llano or Trinity). Now the post didn't come out of nowhere. It was pestered out after multiple posts detailing the origin of his information (he's in Markham, ONT, Canada and apparently lives with one of the engineers).

The implication here is that the CPU has been downgraded from its original target of an APU based on Steamroller to... yech... an APU based on Jaguar. He's also suggesting the same thing I've heard in that Microsoft has revised their console for the beefier and will essentially be the "OG Xbox" of the generation - with more of AMD's resources dedicated toward that particular console.

Links to original sources are considered good etiquette

[AlphaWolf]

Originally Posted by Acert93

Links to original sources are considered good etiquette

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...postcount=1265

I assume that's his source, for what it's worth.

[Rangers]

That GAF guy also fairly much claimed AMD will be doing the next Xbox CPU as well IIRC, so...yeah that seems dubious to me. If MS want BC (and it seems to be a priority for them unlike Sony), pretty sure they would need an IBM CPU again?

He also said something about his roommate/source moved from the Sony project to the MS one. If I recall, back when AMD was doing Wii/360 hardware, they had incredible strictness about keeping the two projects separate and no communication between them, and that for two projects that basically were not competing on performance, so I'd imagine it'd be times ten for Sony vs MS. So that sounded a possible red flag too for what it's worth.

[Rangers]

Ok guys, GTX 690. 3072 shaders

Put this in a console. 400 watts. Make it as big as you need. 5.6 teraflops. You'll need 8GB of RAM to go with.

599 subsidized

A generation gap on top of a generation gap...

[Ninjaprime]

Originally Posted by Rangers

Ok guys, GTX 690. 3072 shaders

Put this in a console. 400 watts. Make it as big as you need. 5.6 teraflops. You'll need 8GB of RAM to go with.

599 subsidized

A generation gap on top of a generation gap...

Its $999 just for the card, I'm not sure anyone wants to sell 10 million of something that loses $600+ a unit... thats 6 billion in loss.

[bgassassin]

Originally Posted by Rangers

That GAF guy also fairly much claimed AMD will be doing the next Xbox CPU as well IIRC, so...yeah that seems dubious to me. If MS want BC (and it seems to be a priority for them unlike Sony), pretty sure they would need an IBM CPU again?

He also said something about his roommate/source moved from the Sony project to the MS one. If I recall, back when AMD was doing Wii/360 hardware, they had incredible strictness about keeping the two projects separate and no communication between them, and that for two projects that basically were not competing on performance, so I'd imagine it'd be times ten for Sony vs MS. So that sounded a possible red flag too for what it's worth.

For what it's worth like I mentioned in that thread I had heard MS made an all-AMD switch as well though I'm still working on getting more confirmation of that. I give MS credit for how well they've been keeping things close to their chest, though the early rumors may have dealt with how the console was shaping up before the switch to make it supposedly more powerful than before.

[Rangers]

I distinctly remember back in Wii/360 development days AMD had separate campuses in separate cities for the projects, and no communication at all was allowed between them.

And that was for Wii and 360, where since they were non competing in performance terms, you'd think it wouldn't even be that huge a deal. As I say MS vs Sony would be times 100.

So this guy saying his roommate worked on the Sony hardware, then moved to the MS hardware, seems odd, though not entirely impossible.

[Rangers]

Originally Posted by Ninjaprime

Its $999 just for the card, I'm not sure anyone wants to sell 10 million of something that loses $600+ a unit... thats 6 billion in loss.

Video card pricing bears little relation to cost. Rather market segmentation and profit volume. GTX 680 doesn't cost anywhere near 1k, though yes it would be expensive.

Very roughly most big GPU dies cost ~$100 I think. GK104 is even quite small for a big chip. Although I dont doubt yields currently suck, once that gets sorted it should be a pretty economical chip.

Of course my initial suggestion was tongue in cheek, but then again once you realize it's a 294mm^2 part, it probably isn't so wild!

[DoctorFouad]

Originally Posted by Rangers

Ok guys, GTX 690. 3072 shaders

Put this in a console. 400 watts. Make it as big as you need. 5.6 teraflops. You'll need 8GB of RAM to go with.

599 subsidized

A generation gap on top of a generation gap...

technically anything is possible, it is just a question of subjective future cost/benefit analysis of sony and microsoft, or in other words how sony or microsoft are predicting the reaction of consumers at different price/performance levels of the hardware. The best entrepreneurs are those (like steve jobs for example) who predicts best what future consumers would like to buy. But if they got it wrong they loose a lot of money...

sony evaluated subjectively and believed that the 600$ ps3 hardware would be financially a huge success, they were proven wrong by consumers, they have been forced to cut the price in 1 year from 600$ to 400$ loosing a lot of money.

would this influence the decision of sony for its ps4 ? I think absolutely yes, but how this would influence the decision of sony ? only sony decides, and if they make the wrong prediction of future consumers behavior they would be in real trouble...

[Rangers]

Originally Posted by anexanhume

Good piece on chip stacking, new nodes, interposers, bigger wafers etc. All affect potential next gen processors for consoles if MS and Sony want to be enterprising:

http://cdn.eetimes.com/electronics-n...d?pageNumber=0

Basically, we are on the cusp of so many technologies: FinFET adoption, TSV and use of interposers, 450mm wafers, UVL etc.

Even that article touches on the high costs and challenges of many of those technologies. I'm doubting any will be ready for console use in 2013-14.

More interesting to me is the article says there aren't fundamental physical atom size challenges to node shrinkage down to 7nm (it will just be more difficult, slower, and costlier to get there).

[playaplayer]

Is there any technical reason why xbox 720/ps4 won't be sporting amd hd 8850 or higher gpu's with 3-4gb gddr5? And still be ready to launch in holiday 2013.

[AlStrong]

What's an 8850?

[AlphaWolf]

Originally Posted by playaplayer

Is there any technical reason why xbox 720/ps4 won't be sporting amd hd 8850 or higher gpu's with 3-4gb gddr5? And still be ready to launch in holiday 2013.

It may well be sporting a newer technology graphics than that which is available today, but if you see 3 or 4GB of gddr5, it would probably be for the entire system. A console isn't going to be running above 1080p (4K is a pipe dream, get over it already) so the benefits of more than 2GB just for graphics are pretty limited and GDDR5 still isn't cheap.

[playaplayer]

Originally Posted by AlStrong

What's an 8850?

I meant 8870.