Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[AlphaWolf]

Actually its quite a bit more secure than that. Done correctly with encrypted storage, encrypted memory and signed hashes it basically limited breaches to the point that the cost of piracy becomes extremely prohibitive. And it closes the number one mass piracy loophole with is the disc itself.

Right up until someone manages to crack it. It's not a matter of if, but when.

Those are all going to be realities of consoles going forward. MS/Sony/Nintendo don't really care for and don't want resale and if they can move to a model that doesn't allow it, they will. As far as required installs and online checks? You don't think those are coming? You don't think the game developers want to run off a HD with reasonable random access and high bandwidth vs optical?

I'm sure the developers and publishers want lots of things, but it's not entirely up to them.

And for the people doing the digital downloads/installs, its up and running the very second it goes live. And with the speeds of the optical drives doing linear reads in 3-4 years with BR you are looking at install times of under 8 minutes.

Perhaps. Assuming there's no issues. Ever play WoW on patch day?

Even if they don't undercut retail they still come out way ahead because of the additional revenue they made via DD. In the end it comes down to this: what is walmart going to do? They can either get what they can get or nothing. Walmart will choose to get what they can get. Its not like retailers have stopped selling CDs even though the market is rapidly shifting to online sales. The walmarts of the world stocked and sold CDs of music that was *given* away online!

What extra revenue? The $2 for packaging/shipping?

Wal-mart actually sells music online. I suppose they might wind up doing the same thing with games but that certainly doesn't eliminate the middle man and I'm unsure how that could work.

You think they'll just stop playing games? All those people are just going to pass on GTA V or Halo 4, etc?

All of them? No, but some will. While those games have shown mass appeal it doesn't mean that certain issues couldn't negatively impact their sales.

Steam is doing just fine now. Of course there were bumps initially, no one else had ever tried to do what steam did. Now its old hat, its been done, and its continuously gaining in popularity.

And the kind of issues Steam had with its launch would probably have killed a console. Anyway MS and Sony won't be using steam.

There's a significant number of console users who don't have them online (MS made a point of mentioning how many xbox live users there were, and its nowhere near 100%), I'm not sure that MS/Sony or Nintendo will be willing to give that market up with online requirements in the next generation. None of them have even offered a new full sized game for download yet. I have no doubt that there will be an increase in DD with the next generation, but I think there are too many issues to overcome for it to become the standard inside of 5 years.

 

[Deadly Towers]

correct me if I'm wrong, but the 360's main secutiry still isn't broken. so it's been over 2 years with no piracy of games that didn't ship on a disk.

 

[aaronspink]

correct me if I'm wrong, but the 360's main secutiry still isn't broken. so it's been over 2 years with no piracy of games that didn't ship on a disk.

Thats like saying...

There has been no piracy of HD-DVD nor BR movies that didn't ship on a disc!

Then again, if you are implying that the physical media is the weakest link in the security chain, I'll certainly agree with you. Designed correctly, you can limit hardware visibility for HD, mem, rom/flash to pretty much 0 via scrambling, encryption, and hashing. Which is why I think playable optical media may be on the way out for the next gen.... Primarily because I think the market overlap between those that buy consoles and those that don't have an internet connection is so small as to not to worry about.

So you'll get encrypted physical media with online authorization during installation to HD.

 

[assen]

correct me if I'm wrong, but the 360's main secutiry still isn't broken. so it's been over 2 years with no piracy of games that didn't ship on a disk.

You are *slightly* wrong - there used to be a bug in a previous version of the firmware that allows you to run unsigned code after jumping through enough hoops.

There is an anti-firmware-downgrade system in the CPU, but it also has been circumvented through even more hoops (you need to connect a FPGA to the motherboard AFAIK).

The security system has held up pretty well IMHO. Especially after the easy DVD hack that solves the problem for the pirates, proving yet another time that all the noble pretense of homebrew as a driving force for console hacking is nothing more than a pretense.

 

[bloodbob]

There is an anti-firmware-downgrade system in the CPU, but it also has been circumvented through even more hoops (you need to connect a FPGA to the motherboard AFAIK).

Actually it was a simply PIC. They used a side channel attack. ... Actually they also had a FPGA that was running as a flash ram emulator however you could use the really thing.

 

[Deadly Towers]

Thats like saying...

There has been no piracy of HD-DVD nor BR movies that didn't ship on a disc!

Then again, if you are implying that the physical media is the weakest link in the security chain, I'll certainly agree with you.

No - I was implying that there isn't piracy of 360 games that are only sold on xbox live arcade. I don't know if that is strictly true, but I can't find evidence of anyone pirating those games.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You said main security isn't broken, and it's only disc-based games being pirated. I'd hardly class disc-based games as a minor thing, nor think that developers will look at the situation and say unto themselves 'well at least our download titles aren't being copied!'

So I'm not quite sure what you meant by 'main security'? Running of unsigned code for homebrew? Hacking of Live! accounts? None of which has much relevance to the future consoles using based-based formats or not!

 

[assen]

You said main security isn't broken, and it's only disc-based games being pirated. I'd hardly class disc-based games as a minor thing, nor think that developers will look at the situation and say unto themselves 'well at least our download titles aren't being copied!'

So I'm not quite sure what you meant by 'main security'? Running of unsigned code for homebrew? Hacking of Live! accounts? None of which has much relevance to the future consoles using based-based formats or not!

Put it this way: if the Xbox360 was download-only, there would be no way to pirate games with what is known today about its security holes. Its main exploit comes exactly from the DVD drive firmware, and it allowed for the subsequent exploration and finding of new bugs (together with poorly protected/packed/encrypted games, IIRC somebody was keeping their shaders in plaintext in separate files on the DVD).

 

[liolio]

So far I would dare to say that the main protection against piracy on the 360 is the RroD who prevent a lot of people to do changes on the machine and thus kill the garantee.

 

[Heinrich4]

My 2 cents or speculation for "ps4" in next generation,

If cell 65nm today cost is around US$60 (Isuppli resource and others),at =~25nm maybe is less of US$15 in 2011/2012 and accordance with specs of the patent 9/26/2002 USA with cpu part with with 4 cell each with 8 SPEs its possible reach US$90 at same price launching in 2006.

The Gpu part ... with 4 cells each one w/4 SPEs customize for graphs (more LS like vizualizer in patent ) + 4 RSX (with pixel shaders only each core ) at 25nm also could be possible same price of us$126 of ps3 launch.


In summary...cpu alone of this ps4 hypothetical maybe could reach something like 1 TFlop at 4GHz (like previews time ins 2002/2003) and Gpu with Cell nucleus like strean processors of gpu Unified Shaders at clock 2 GHz (282 GFlops sustained) + nucleus with 4 Pixel Engines/RSX( containing only pixel shader pipe = 96 pixel shaders pipe to maintaining compatibility with ps3/ps2 or going ahead to G200?) with same 500MHz totalizing of this time a "true econsole with 2 TFlops" be able of processing something like 5 or 6 times more processing power and graphs than ps3,what at first apearence could be little improvement, but we are not speaking of an addition of 35 * jump ps2 6.2Gflops to "350Gflops" of ps3 (cpu + gpu at MADD processing,pixel shaders etc),but jump from 350 gflops (ps3) to 2 tflops at this Ps4(1.7Tflops difference!) ,that even so it does not seem to much in quantitative,but in qualitative and flexibility processing power available maybe can do much more as much spected than generations before and physics,IQ,AI etc.


And this console could delivery inferior cost of ps3 (= US$600/840) at the launch date, therefore this ps4 will not count high costs of expensive blu-ray drive at release and certainly comming acordance with "new paradign" release by wii console (my guess is ps4 in prices in the extreme/maximum of US$400/450).

(I dreamming one day see ray-tracing of cgs top in real time in game or something with similar results)

 

[wco81]

Will Sony really shoot for the same BOM cost and hence price at launch?

Even if there are savings to be had with the Blu-Ray drive and the CPU/GPU, wouldn't costs for bigger HDD and more RAM (probably faster, more expensive RAM) offset any savings?

 

[22psi]

I wanted to ask this in this thread without creating a new one. What kind of target resolutions and affects do you guys think next gen should have?

Would it be reasonable to expect the following for next gen?
- 1080p
- 4xAA
- 4xAF

 

[Nano]

I wanted to ask this in this thread without creating a new one. What kind of target resolutions and affects do you guys think next gen should have?

Would it be reasonable to expect the following for next gen?
- 1080p
- 4xAA
- 4xAF

Personally, I think 1080p will become a standard, but AA and AF pushing a lot higher in that regard.

 

[22psi]

Personally, I think 1080p will become a standard, but AA and AF pushing a lot higher in that regard.

I should have stated that I expect that as a minimum. But I would love to have at least 8xAA next gen as baseline.

 

[liolio]

Nobody has answered my question so I ask again.

How many millions of transistors per mm² should allow a 32 nm process?

 

[AlNom]

Nobody has answered my question so I ask again.

How many millions of transistors per mm² should allow a 32 nm process?

Until TSMC or other release transistor densities or a product is made using 32nm GS etc (whatever they come up with besides Low Power that would be applicable to these chips), we won't know for sure.

edit: well, you could try to do a guesstimate using this table, but they mention SRAM 6T size for 32nm LP.

http://www.realworldtech.com/includes/images/articles/iedm-2007-2.gif

 

[liolio]

Thanks Alstrong for your quick answer
I will keep this figure as if process density is likely to improve, logic density might be lower.

So with a silicon budget between 300 and 350 mm² we could expect ~2 billions of transistors for the next gen systems.

 

[kyetech]

Thanks Alstrong for your quick answer
I will keep this figure as if process density is likely to improve, logic density might be lower.

So with a silicon budget between 300 and 350 mm² we could expect ~2 billions of transistors for the next gen systems.

sounds about right. Ive mentioned before that I expect no more than 400mm^2 for the total budget of transistors across both the GPU and CPU (a reduction from this gen) I also expect consoles to be produced with a 32nm density. Later than expected 2012/13. and may even start life as a large single chip (SoC) or may not?

Id be dissapointed if there wasnt 3GB of ram, I think 2GB is possible (dissapointing), But given my timeframe I hope they should target 4GB. This would be enough to see the consoles through to.... dare I say it 2020 for the next round, (assuming things continue to slow down?)

 

[pjbliverpool]

I should have stated that I expect that as a minimum. But I would love to have at least 8xAA next gen as baseline.

I highly doubt that. 1080p will almost certainly be the standard but as far as AA and AF goes, I expect something similar to this gen. I.e. they will implement it when possible but they won't worry too much about it. And I expect the max to be 4xAA. At 1080p on a TV, higher than that would be unoticable to 95% of gamers so its not worth the performance penalty to implement IMO.

 

[Megadrive1988]

If either next-gen Xbox or next-gen PlayStation use a significant amount of EDRAM, I'd expect total transistor budget to exceed 2 billion.