Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[liolio]

Imagine tesselated cars and nearby surrounding with all the other elements made out of voxels :droll:

 

[Squilliam]

Imagine tesselated cars and nearby surrounding with all the other elements made out of voxels :droll:

So does that mean that in titles like GT6 you'll be able to drive through walls? Voxels also mean destructability right?

 

[liolio]

So does that mean that in titles like GT6 you'll be able to drive through walls? Voxels also mean destructability right?

May be
I was more thinking incredibly complex geometry for all the static non accessible parts of of track.

 

[Squilliam]

May be
I was more thinking incredibly complex geometry for all the static non accessible parts of of track.

I guess theres that too, though with my driving the concept of inaccessible sections of the track becomes a little blurred.

 

[I.S.T.]

You have it all backwards. Intel hasn't proven yet they can compete with Cell, let alone its next iteration. We know there's an x86 base, which means more transistors spent on instruction decode, which means less transistors spent on execution resources. IOW if both designs are tailored to the same die size, Intel's architecture should be expected to perform worse.

Not really. Intel spends few transistors on x86 decoding nowadays... IIRC, the percentage floating around is 1% for the newer designs. I can't find my old source for that though, so take the exact number with a grain of salt. =\

 

[MfA]

That PC will have to run windows, which is at least 50-60$ in bulk, not to mention MS will be reluctant to give them bulk pricing since it will compete directly with the 360.

That is indeed a big problem, and I did mention it, but on the other hand they could get in a fuckton of trouble with crystal clear anti-competitive behaviour.

 

[MfA]

The console is almost like a dvd player or a receiver, it needs to have lower power and heat than a PC to sell well.

The Xbox-360 sold well enough ... and I haven't had a PC ever which was as loud as that nasty thing.

The form factor and aesthetics used on most consoles make good silent cooling hard ... ideally you'd simply have 2 120 mm fans on the bottom, but that doesn't look pretty enough.

 

[3dilettante]

Not really. Intel spends few transistors on x86 decoding nowadays... IIRC, the percentage floating around is 1% for the newer designs. I can't find my old source for that though, so take the exact number with a grain of salt. =\

Intel showed a die shot of Nehalem that indicated that the area devoted to x86 decode and microcode was about the same size as the OOO logic, and about 2/3 the size of the core section devoted to execution units.
The logic most likely does not have the density of SRAM, which would reduce the transistor count versus cache, but at least in terms of physical die space, its signficance is higher than 1%.

 

[I.S.T.]

Intel showed a die shot of Nehalem that indicated that the area devoted to x86 decode and microcode was about the same size as the OOO logic, and about 2/3 the size of the core section devoted to execution units.
The logic most likely does not have the density of SRAM, which would reduce the transistor count versus cache, but at least in terms of physical die space, its signficance is higher than 1%.

Well, I guess I was wrong.

 

[corduroygt]

The Xbox-360 sold well enough ... and I haven't had a PC ever which was as loud as that nasty thing.

It sold well enough due to the strength of its software library, however financially it cost MS dearly due to high cooling demands resulting in an expensive console to manufacture and ship, and I'm not even mentioning RROD, disc scratching, or other errors, which was caused by the pressures to reduce manufacturing costs and going overboard with cost reduction. If MS had designed the 360 properly, they might not have had so many warranty claims but then the cost of the 360 would be higher, like what happened with the launch PS3. Both were destined to lose billions, wither due to expensive manufacturing costs or warranty claims...

I maintain that all consoles in next gen will compete to be cheap, which will REQUIRE them to be cool, slim, light, and quiet.

 

[LunchBox]

These days you can get a $400-500 PC that will shame all consoles, but I truly believe power/heat will be a big factor next gen. That's the reason I'm not getting an HTPC, because it'll be big, loud, and will have high power and cooling requirements. The console is almost like a dvd player or a receiver, it needs to have lower power and heat than a PC to sell well.

That is why I could see the PS4 use the cell and larrabee, since cell is already pretty efficient when it comes to performance/watt, and ever since the P4, Intel learnt their lesson and power/heat is #1 consideration in their chip designs ever since. This is directly opposed to ATI/Nvidia, where their video cards use more power than the total power of the x360 or ps3. Current GPU's definitely aren't power efficient compared to the Core architecture we've seen from Intel, and I believe Intel can make a much better GPU regarding performance per watt than both ATI and Nvidia.

It might have been true on the PS2 generation but that wasn't true at all with this generation. I have to state, when the first generation PS3, came out, it was sucking up around 200-230 Watts during gaming. Just for comparison, My lite gaming PC with a Core2Duo 8600 and a 4890 peaks at 213 Watts (using a P3 Watt meter) when I'm playing Crysis (Gamer Settings @ 1920x1200). I don't think they're worrying about power consumption that much because after a few revisions and die shrinks, the lowered TDP is an added effect from trying to make the system cheaper to manufacture.

 

[TheWretched]

My PAL launch PS3 only uses 180 Watts under load... and I was under the impression, that the US units used the same amount.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Come to think of it, Sony need to make sure they manufacture enough units of the PS4 next time around so that they can do a "proper" simultaneous world wide release of the console.

It absolutely infuriated me that the PAL version of the PS3 was released close to a year after the Jap and US versions (IIRC... if not, itr sure felt like a year).

In my opinion that cost them a lot of ground with the PS3 here in the UK, as many of my friends got fed up of being screwed over (something we Brits are used to) and went out and got a 360.

They cant do that again.

 

[corduroygt]

It might have been true on the PS2 generation but that wasn't true at all with this generation. I have to state, when the first generation PS3, came out, it was sucking up around 200-230 Watts during gaming.

That's what I am saying too, both the PS3 and 360 were sucking too much power and generating so much heat that it cost Sony and MS billions, either in manufacturing or in warranty costs. It's a shame that the PS3 "slim" is bigger than the launch PS2.

 

[Grall]

More than likely, any future-gen consoles will not be a significant leap in power.

Hardware manufacturers have been smarting for years this current gen, for different reasons. Sony because of expensive components and the hodge-podge nature of the PS3 hardware, and MS because of their rushed design cycle and resulting poor design and build quality.

Exploding dev costs of games is already a killer - literally - for the software companies, any new console features that forces even more resources to be spent creating content would not be popular; such as 8GB of RAM as someone speculated.

Some more RAM compared to today would lower dev costs in the short run where programmers would not have to spend so much time optimizing and shoe-horning stuff into a limited space. However we all know software magically expands to fill all available space, so as future next-gen games progress we would soon be back on square one.

This gen's consoles were generally very large, power-hungry, and relatively (or in MS's case excessively) noisy. They were both difficult to program, developers frequently complained (one moreso than the other, obviously). Also add the unexpected success of teh wii waggle, and certain trends start to condense out of the misty fogs of the future.

I personally would expect the next gen to not be all that more powerful. Current hardware deals pretty well with HD imagery. Some progress will of course happen; Moore's oft-quoted non-law law sees to that. However it will not be the main driving focus. Instead most focus will be placed on ease of development, and hardware non-complexity. Big chips are expensive to make and cool (which burned Sony), and they dissipate a lot of heat too (which burned MS). So less focus on big complicated hardware that needs a lot of support structures in the form of high-capacity voltage regulators, heatpipe coolers and so on.

And more focus on various forms of waggle, of course. Social gaming (some call it "casual", often in a disparaging tone) is on the rise. Waggle don't need 8GB RAM...

 

[jlippo]

More than likely, any future-gen consoles will not be a significant leap in power.

Even if they would take the most basic off the shelf GPUs during the launch they would have console with significant leap in power.
Only way not to archive that is by going nintendo way and using 'old' parts again.

 

[Entropy]

Grall, I have the feeling there's a lot of people that share your analysis, at least in major parts. However, reasonable as it may be, it is also not very exciting for those who, well, want to get excited.
Balancing cost, performance, power draw, market appeal, size and design constraints, ease of development, profitability, et cetera is difficult for anyone, and not really the stuff to get hyped about.

I'll take the liberty of condensing your post:
"The next generation from Sony and Microsoft is likely to be relatively straight forward extensions of the current designs, with a keen eye on keeping cost down and power draw suitable for a living room entertainment device."

How could the above possibly sustain a 108 page thread?

 

[cbarcus]

Grall, I have the feeling there's a lot of people that share your analysis, at least in major parts. However, reasonable as it may be, it is also not very exciting for those who, well, want to get excited.
Balancing cost, performance, power draw, market appeal, size and design constraints, ease of development, profitability, et cetera is difficult for anyone, and not really the stuff to get hyped about.

I'll take the liberty of condensing your post:
"The next generation from Sony and Microsoft is likely to be relatively straight forward extensions of the current designs, with a keen eye on keeping cost down and power draw suitable for a living room entertainment device."

How could the above possibly sustain a 108 page thread?

Possibly several reasons:

- Enthusiasm for performance and its role in rendering realism

- A widespread lack of technical understanding of the embedded marketplace

-Changing economic conditions and uncertainty regarding how they relate to the console business

-A general lack of business knowledge that is applicable for analysis of this complex market

-All of the above leads to suggestibility to the technical and financial prognostications of pundits- and the repetition of all of those memes that we're so very tired of

The last console cycle saw two major players make a huge technological jump, changing architecture, and sacrificing backward compatibility. Many people remain fixated on this. A conservative assessment dismisses this as a possibility for the next generation. Sony already has a scalable architecture, Microsoft is unlikely to take the risk, and Nintendo isn't gunning for performance.

I'll repeat that important insight:

"The next generation from Sony and Microsoft is likely to be relatively straight forward extensions of the current designs, with a keen eye on keeping cost down and power draw suitable for a living room entertainment device."

Still, since the timing for the next generation has not been settled upon, the door is open on what exactly we're going to see.

Anyway, I think this has on whole been a very interesting thread these past years (despite the noise), and I am grateful that Joshua Luna consolidated speculation here.

 

[Squilliam]

Unfortunately its hard to speculate without a reasonable idea about:

-What is to be asked of next generation hardware?
-When the next generation will start?
-How the next generation will transition?
-Why, as in what reason will spur the next generation?
-Who will be the first mover?

There are so many different possibilities.

 

[liolio]

This article is interesting.