Revolution Tech Details Emerge ( Xbox1+ performance, 128 MB RAM )

[Ooh-videogames]

even IGN doesn't know what the true capabilities of the Hollywood GPU are - they are only able to talk about development-kits with faster Flippers, which are probably a long ways off from final hardware.

Developers don't have hardware(Revolution) obviously. Nintendo decides to send out devkits that basically a souped up GC to help jumpstart development. They add 64MB of memory because assests require more.

How hard would it be for Nintendo to get ATI( or is it NEC) to produce a 100 or so souped up Flippers and IBM a 100 or so Gekko's?

Matt doesn't explain in any way what throught put numbers he has been told, polygon, flops, ops, bandwidth, shader model. He's more vague than Kaplan.

 

[jvd]

How hard would it be for Nintendo to get ATI( or is it NEC) to produce a 100 or so souped up Flippers and IBM a 100 or so Gekko's?

I'm sure they could most likely at this point in time easly clock the cpu and gpu at double or tripple the clock speeds



Whats interesting to figure out is exactly how big a gamecube on a chip would be (cpu + gpu and i guess south bridge if there was one ) How big would it be ?

 

[Megadrive1988]

I am hoping that Nintendo is not just doubling, more or less, the clockspeeds of Flipper and Gekko, but rather, at the very least, significantly enhancing their architectures, in addition to raising clockspeeds. otherwise, what have they been doing with ATI and IBM since 2000 ?

 

[Farid]

I am hoping that Nintendo is not just doubling, more or less, the clockspeeds of Flipper and Gekko, but rather, at the very least, significantly enhancing their architectures

From the lastest hearsay, VMX is in, for the CPU. Nothing great, but a lot better than a plain Vanilla <1GHz PPC750.

And whatever is the GPU, it should be the equivalent of the CPU.

 

[V3]

New, Nintendo patented techniques for efficiently producing high-end visuals at lower resolutions, perhaps?

One aspect, the third revolutionary aspect of Big N's next console, is still shrouded in mystery. Most believe it will focus on how we "see" the games visuals, as we already have a new way of interacting with them control-wise.

An interesting thing to note is the Nintendo patent for viewing gameplay outside of the realm of a static camera angle (uncovered by IGN many months ago). How they plan on doing this may just be the revolution we are trying to uncover. As the name of the console implies, we may just be able to "revolve" around or within the game while playing it, meaning that how we view the game will be dependent on our physical positioning. Now this truly would be a revolution...3d interaction within 3d space.

Link:

http://cube.ign.com/articles/583/583217p1.html

They are going to give us hologram ? Or just those stereographic images ? Those two sensors that you have to place beside your TV, imagine if they are able to produce hologram images, that would be cool.

Anyway, put it this way, this generation if you look all games that comes with gimmick controller like Beatmania, Guitar Freak, DK Junglebeat, Eyetoy, Samba De Amigo, etc. None of them had spectacular graphics. The appeal of those games rely on the controller and its gameplay. Revolution will be the same. The graphics just need to be sufficient, it'll be the gameplay that need to 'wow' gamers, instead of the graphics. And that's Nintendo whole aim with Revolution.

 

[Shogmaster]

From the lastest hearsay, VMX is in, for the CPU. Nothing great, but a lot better than a plain Vanilla <1GHz PPC750.

And whatever is the GPU, it should be the equivalent of the CPU.

What does that mean though? Chronologically I guess this CPU would be equivilent to 1GHz Motorola G4, which came out in early 2002 in a PowerMac. That's around GeForce 4 launch period. OMG ONLY SHADER MODEL 1 FOR THE REV!!! X_x

OK, seriously though, what did you mean?

 

[V3]

I'm sure they could most likely at this point in time easly clock the cpu and gpu at double or tripple the clock speeds

The 750 doesn't clock up that much. Most of the 750 that are promised to clock at over 1 GHz are vapoware. Heck I even hear that the one that was suppose to clock at 1 GHz was actually bug in the earlier version and can only be clock to 950 MHz.

As for GPU, since we roughly know the power consumption of the CPU, Nintendo actually can really beefed up the GPU if they wanted too and still fit in that small case. But those devs that spoke has already got the prelimenary performance figure of the GPU and they're treating it as Flipper with double clock, that is pretty telling even if they don't know what the GPU is.

Whats interesting to figure out is exactly how big a gamecube on a chip would be (cpu + gpu and i guess south bridge if there was one ) How big would it be ?

Pretty small, On 90nm process, you would expect it to be smaller than EE+GS@90nm. But integrating Gekko and Flipper isn't trivial matter.

 

[V3]

New, Nintendo patented techniques for efficiently producing high-end visuals at lower resolutions, perhaps?

One aspect, the third revolutionary aspect of Big N's next console, is still shrouded in mystery. Most believe it will focus on how we "see" the games visuals, as we already have a new way of interacting with them control-wise.

An interesting thing to note is the Nintendo patent for viewing gameplay outside of the realm of a static camera angle (uncovered by IGN many months ago). How they plan on doing this may just be the revolution we are trying to uncover. As the name of the console implies, we may just be able to "revolve" around or within the game while playing it, meaning that how we view the game will be dependent on our physical positioning. Now this truly would be a revolution...3d interaction within 3d space.

Link:

http://cube.ign.com/articles/583/583217p1.html

They are going to give us hologram ? Or just those stereographic images ? Those two sensors that you have to place beside your TV, imagine if they are able to produce hologram images, that would be cool.

Anyway, put it this way, this generation if you look all games that comes with gimmick controller like Beatmania, Guitar Freak, DK Junglebeat, Eyetoy, Samba De Amigo, etc. None of them had spectacular graphics. The appeal of those games rely on the controller and its gameplay. Revolution will be the same. The graphics just need to be sufficient, it'll be the gameplay that need to 'wow' gamers, instead of the graphics. And that's Nintendo whole aim with Revolution.

 

[jvd]

The 750 doesn't clock up that much. Most of the 750 that are promised to clock at over 1 GHz are vapoware. Heck I even hear that the one that was suppose to clock at 1 GHz was actually bug in the earlier version and can only be clock to 950 MHz.

True but the gekko has been produced for what now 4 years ? and its droped micron processes 2 or 3 times ? I would htink it can clock much higher than it currently is

 

[Ty]

True but the gekko has been produced for what now 4 years ? and its droped micron processes 2 or 3 times ? I would htink it can clock much higher than it currently is

Well the problem is that when you design a chip, you are targeting a specific clock range and things just begin to fall apart after a certain amount.

This is what I gathered from one of Simon's posts many many moons ago so I might be misstating it so apologies to Simon if I am. Yet perhaps process shrinks allows you to target a different clock speed?

 

[jvd]

Well the problem is that when you design a chip, you are targeting a specific clock range and things just begin to fall apart after a certain amount.

This is what I gathered from one of Simon's posts many many moons ago so I might be misstating it so apologies to Simon if I am. Yet perhaps process shrinks allows you to target a different clock speed?

well what i'm trying to say is that if devs are just getting faster gekkos and flippers that hte micron drops alone should have let them clock much higher .

I mean they most likely went through 2 major process shrinks and not just optical ones along with at least one optical one .

I would think that with such huge drops in size and heat and power needs they could clock higher . I don't really know honestly how much work they put into with droping an athlon 64 from say 110nm to 90nm.

 

[DeanoC]

I like that insight. But I question this.



So is B3D so stupid that if he or Nintendo gave us the specs, we couldn't figure it's position of power?

If Nintendo released specs that said no fp16 or fp32 formats, a large portion of the 'tech aware' readers would assume no HDR even though thats simple not true... Ask Marco for the details on how a few pixel shader instructions get you fp16 quality HDR on ARGB8.

So I kind of agree, the 'tech aware' readers often forget that 9 times out of 10, clever software trumps hardware. If the system is very easy to develop for, its entirely possible that more time can be dedicated to clever software and so effectively the system can punch above its weight.

 

[pc999]

So is B3D so stupid that if he or Nintendo gave us the specs, we couldn't figure it's position of power?

Interesting I dont recal of seeing B3D writen anyhere, but the fact is that most people if he said tha it would have (generic thought) a 20 core CPU but at 2.8Ghz most people would think it as very inferior to the others.

In fact one shouldnt think he knows the true "specs" from a system without know intimately his architeture or being told by those how know. So he is completely right and even B3D which members are more knowleadge than the averange/most off others internet foruns there still many members like me and you that are far way from being expertice at all, just see like I and others thought that Gekko architeture could be clocked to more than 1Ghz here in fact it cant or had even be made for that, probably the big difference is that we want to learn and use reason to understand why one can say something like that.

So from some that point of view he/they are right if they cant/want to put out there a 1Tflop machine (most of those flops are to suport HD anyway) as most people would always see it as a inferior one (even if it can do the best eg soft shadows in the biggest RTS game for free, or something like), still I cant wait for some qualitity leaks.

Edit: beaten by DeanoC

 

[pc999]

I am hoping that Nintendo is not just doubling, more or less, the clockspeeds of Flipper and Gekko, but rather, at the very least, significantly enhancing their architectures, in addition to raising clockspeeds. otherwise, what have they been doing with ATI and IBM since 2000 ?

Wouldnt be easyer/cheaper to add BC to a newer chip?

 

[Rodéric]

Wouldnt be easyer/cheaper to add BC to a newer chip?

The PS2 did include PS1 hardware for backward compatibility, that's an easy and sure solution, though maybe expensive.

 

[jvd]

The PS2 did include PS1 hardware for backward compatibility, that's an easy and sure solution, though maybe expensive.

unless used as something else in the main console .

Wasn't the ps1 used as the sound chip ?

 

[pc999]

The PS2 did include PS1 hardware for backward compatibility, that's an easy and sure solution, though maybe expensive.

I am thinking more in the sense of adding costum instructions that Gekko have but new CPUs does not, I guess after that once they are both have PPC instruction set (a simple 970 can run a programe made for a simple 750 right? like a P4 can run one made for P3) shouldnt be a problem for rest of the CPU or I am wrong?

 

[Farid]

The PSone CPU in the PS2 was used for I/O.

OK, seriously though, what did you mean?

Just what I said, that I expect the GPU to be on par with the CPU.
But that's pure speculation based on very little infos at this point in time.

Also the Shader Model is not an issue, it's more in term of raw power that I think the GPU and the CPU will be comparable.

 

[Tahir2]

You obviously need balance in a system, there is no point in having a superfast GPU if the CPU cannot feed it data quick enough and it is idle some of the time waiting for thre CPU to catch up.

I have not followed this entire thread but what is this talk of a 750 CPU being in Revolution? Is Nintendo wanting to save that much money on the hardware? It doesn't make sense to me.

 

[dukmahsik]

If the system is very easy to develop for, its entirely possible that more time can be dedicated to clever software and so effectively the system can punch above its weight.

words to live by