Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[babybumb]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...mises_Full_Fusion_of_CPU_and_GPU_in_2014.html

AMD's Chips in 2014 to Support CPU-GPU Context Switching

If they can get some tech early (like 360) it might actually be decent

 

[Rangers]

Yeah, if the rumors for PS4, 720 and WiiU are all true, I don't see any reason to even upgrade. Sigh...

I strongly doubt theyre not going to give you a reason to upgrade, as I've said right along.

 

[eastmen]

Yeah, if the rumors for PS4, 720 and WiiU are all true, I don't see any reason to even upgrade. Sigh...

even trinity would give a good reason to upgrade over a ps3 .

Anyway if AMD for the cpu is correct , I expect them to be using an 8 "core" piledriver which is more than enough cpu power

 

[TheChefO]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=35615404&postcount=1

Hello Playstation Vaio !

Wow.

That's rather sad, smart, and confusing all at the same time.

The Good:
-Timeframe > Sony will be able to hit market whenever they choose (just grab the latest APU and go).
-Software > Insta-ports of existing pc games should be a snap and help fill the gap while developers come to grips with using the hardware in more meaningful ways.
-PC software > PC games will see a (modest) bump in baseline target spec
-R&D costs > how much does it cost Sony for a tablet to look up Newegg.com?

The Bad:
-Performance > will be very limited (assuming Sony isn't getting a custom part)
-Price > Will Sony hold a manufacture license? If not, don't hold your breath for a loss-leader.
-TDP? > Bulldozer cores were horrible for TDP, Llano was also rather hot...
-Competitive weakness?

The Ugly:
-Death of custom hardware? > Even the original Xbox had custom tech inside (nvidia's GPU was derivative but custom, and the RT Dolby Digitial encoding was cutting edge for the time)
-Backwards Compatiblity is a laughable mention at this point. Good bye to the DLC investments.
-Kutaragi's face when he finds out.


All of the above is assuming this story to be correct, and if it is, this is certainly an interesting turn for Sony and for the industry. Leaves me rather mixed.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Wow.

That's rather sad, smart, and confusing all at the same time.

Not confusing at all when you listen to what devs have been saying over this whole generation and now. Ease of development is key. A software infrastructure is key. In fact a PC-like system would ease the possibility of PSS apps on PC, increasing Sony's reach. x86 comes as a surprise to me as there was always the concern about licensing costs, but now we see Sony only have to support two hardware platforms - x86 and ARM - for all their software. That makes a lot of sense.

 

[TheChefO]

Not confusing at all when you listen to what devs have been saying over this whole generation and now. Ease of development is key. A software infrastructure is key. In fact a PC-like system would ease the possibility of PSS apps on PC, increasing Sony's reach. x86 comes as a surprise to me as there was always the concern about licensing costs, but now we see Sony only have to support two hardware platforms - x86 and ARM - for all their software. That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, I mentioned that.

Still, this move is hardly what I'd call an obviously advantageous one.


I wonder how long it will take someone to get one of these and load win8 on it

 

[Arwin]

It all depends on the chip it ends up being. If it successfully marries the CPU and GPU components, that could give some pretty good results. All depends on how well it integrates with memory, what kind of memory, etc. Even the two chips in the Vita aren't completely off-the-shelf, but have some performance enhancements, and you have to admit that if you hold the Vita next to the PSP, it's still quite a massive improvement. The Vita has 640MB of RAM versus 36 in the PSP, and in terms of processing power it runs quite a few more polygons at four times the resolution.

So whatever the AMD CPU/GPU combo ends up being, it's got plenty of potential to result in a system that's quite far beyond what the PS3 currently does. What I'm personally curious about is whether Sony will put some SPEs in there for backward compatibility. They don't have to put in the PPE, as the work that component does can be fairly easily emulated on anything else. But perhaps they will put SPEs, or SPE like components inbetween the CPU/GPU components in the AMD chipset, to help running older titles on the new platform?

Also lets not forget that there is a pretty decent chance that the GPU in the PS3 is quite likely to be more 'off-the-shelf' than what AMD would put in the PS4

Whatever they end up doing, I'm super happy with the Vita so far, and I agree with Richard that the Vita has one of the best software line-ups so far at launch for a system ever.

 

[hoho]

If they go with APU I wonder what kind of memory will they attach to it and how. Soldering a metric ton of DDR3 chips to the board to properly feed the CPU+GPU doesn't seem all that good idea.

 

[Crossbar]

Wow.

That's rather sad, smart, and confusing all at the same time.

The Good:
-Timeframe > Sony will be able to hit market whenever they choose (just grab the latest APU and go).
-Software > Insta-ports of existing pc games should be a snap and help fill the gap while developers come to grips with using the hardware in more meaningful ways.
-PC software > PC games will see a (modest) bump in baseline target spec
-R&D costs > how much does it cost Sony for a tablet to look up Newegg.com?

The Bad:
-Performance > will be very limited (assuming Sony isn't getting a custom part)
-Price > Will Sony hold a manufacture license? If not, don't hold your breath for a loss-leader.
-TDP? > Bulldozer cores were horrible for TDP, Llano was also rather hot...
-Competitive weakness?

The Ugly:
-Death of custom hardware? > Even the original Xbox had custom tech inside (nvidia's GPU was derivative but custom, and the RT Dolby Digitial encoding was cutting edge for the time)
-Backwards Compatiblity is a laughable mention at this point. Good bye to the DLC investments.
-Kutaragi's face when he finds out.


All of the above is assuming this story to be correct, and if it is, this is certainly an interesting turn for Sony and for the industry. Leaves me rather mixed.

A funny thing that struck me when reading this post was that with very little effort I could move any of the bullet points to any of the Good, Bad and Ugly headlines, maybe with the exception of BC. By making some arbitrary assumptions it would be easy to support them in the same style. I guess that's what keeps this thread going.

Though I am little surprised you find the Llano TDP at 85-100 W to be on the high side, but I've noticed the expectations of next gen do vary a lot, so I should not be that surprised.

 

[babybumb]

http://semiaccurate.com/2011/06/22/amd-and-arm-join-forces-at-last/

What if its.. ARM which seems to be moving to dominate all more. Nvidia is also developing high performance on ARM

 

[McHuj]

even trinity would give a good reason to upgrade over a ps3 .

hell, even last year's Llano would be a huge upgrade. I think people are forgetting how old and dated the current console's are and will be amazed what an even modest GPU upgrade with a modern architecture will be able to do for visuals in a closed system.

 

[Love_In_Rio]

A Kaveri with 1024 shader processors would put it at 150 watts and graphics near a 7850. Anything about that and we are talking...
Anything near a 6670 from Sony and Microsoft and i will go back to my beloved PC world.

 

[bgassassin]

Yeah, if the rumors for PS4, 720 and WiiU are all true, I don't see any reason to even upgrade. Sigh...

I'm going a little off-topic, but that's rather extreme isn't it? In the end they'd still get a lot new games that PS360 won't have.

 

[Rangers]

I know AMD has talked bout fusion in consoles in the past so I set about googling and found this from last March:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amdfusion-2011-neal_8.html#sect0

Fusion for Next-Generation Consoles?

X-bit labs: What do you think about next-gen consoles and GPGPU? For example, Nvidia believes into its ARM-based SoCs, Intel is working onto x86-based offerings...

Neal Robison: I think a Fusion-based system makes a huge amount of sense for next-generation consoles. If you are looking at a system that can provide a great deal of horsepower, the Fusion architecture certainly makes sense. With the processing power on its CPU in addition to just general graphics performance, I think it is really interesting because it gives a bit of headroom... In a typical console lifecycle you basically try to take advantage of the chipset as best you can at the introduction and over the lifecycle of the product, developers tend to refine and tweak [their titles] in order to take advantage of more power. I think that [cycle] would happen as you see a very good balance between the GPU core and CPU core. [...] It makes a lot of sense for the next-generation consoles.

X-bit labs: Traditionally, game consoles used custom processors based on various micro-architectures, most recently Power, MIPS, Cell (heterogeneous multi-core Power, if you wish), not x86.

Neal Robison: The original Microsoft Xbox did use x86 and the Xbox has proven that there is great performance to be had with the x86 architecture. [Everything] comes down to tools, again. That is what the most important aspects of it. As well as being able to really harness the processing power of all the chips involved. Look at the PlayStation 3. I think they thought that the Cell processor was going to be everything that they would need and that it would handle both the traditional CPU tasks and the GPU tasks. It turned out that it simply did not have the horsepower necessary for GPU tasks. So, they actually added a GPU to the system quite late in the design of the entire console. I think there is an opportunity for a very good well-balanced multi-core processor arrangement inside the next-generation consoles.

X-bit labs: Current generation consoles already use multi-core microprocessors. PS3 even uses heterogeneous multi-core microprocessor. Maybe you foresee a console with a heterogeneous multi-core CPU with some high-speed stream processor inside along with a discrete graphics chips with fixed-function hardware, etc.? Or you insist that Fusion can be scaled up so high that its CPU and GPU will be able to handle next-generation games at more or less high, but not extreme cost?

Neal Robison: Definitely. I see the Fusion architecture as capable of scaling both up and down. We’ve already talked in the past about the role of the Fusion architecture in areas such as server, and we think that our architecture is strong enough to be able to scale to many different usage scenarios.

The bolded parts indicate to me hinting at powerful SOC's, not weak ones. Talking about the ability to scale, great deal of horsepower, etc.

Neal Robinson was also the guy who provided the famous "avatar graphics" quotes for what thats worth, although if you research the actual interview he seemed to be talking in general terms there,. IE "we're almost at Avatar graphics" not "next consoles will provide avatar graphics". I guess the point is he seems to be the guy for AMD and consoles.

I believe there is more that AMD has said but I dont know if I will be able to find it. I almost think I recall them stating Fusion would be in a next gen console in some financials related interview.

 

[east of eastside]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...mises_Full_Fusion_of_CPU_and_GPU_in_2014.html

AMD's Chips in 2014 to Support CPU-GPU Context Switching

If they can get some tech early (like 360) it might actually be decent

That is one of the reasons I want 2014 console launches. It will be worth the wait. Sony and MS can bring in some more profit in 2013 and 2014 selling 360 and PS3 cheaply (maybe new dieshrunk models) at mass market prices.

 

[Prophecy2k]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=35615404&postcount=1

Originally Posted by Richard Leadbetter
I recently heard from a reputable source that the forthcoming Sony console is "essentially a PC" in terms of its technological make-up and in this sense, an AMD collaboration on the CPU holds many attractions - for the first time since the launch of the original Xbox, we could well be seeing an x86 processor in a console. It may be hard to imagine that the company that brought us the Cell would be embracing PC tech so wholeheartedly, but a look at the make-up of Vita suggests a fundamental shift in the way Sony builds its consoles in the wake of Ken Kutaragi's departure.

It's not about exotic, groundbreaking hardware anymore, it's all about creating the best possible games machine with an enviable set of development tools - and it's an approach that has already yielded results. While PlayStation Vita may lack a stand-out killer app, I still think that it's set the bar in terms of overall quality and quantity over and above any console launch I've seen in over 21 years in the business. Extrapolating that same philosophy towards PlayStation 4 makes a PC-style approach to Sony's next console seem very likely indeed.

Hello Playstation Vaio !

To be fair the only thing that seems like the "rumour" part from Leadbetter's "source" roll is the "essentially a PC", part which is vague and ambiguous.

Everything else about x86 and an all-AMD system is purely Leadbetter's own speculation and extrapolation. Conjecture is conjecture.

An AMD GPU and more conventional OoOE IBM CPU would still be "essentially a PC", in contrast to what the CELL-RSX combo presented. We really need to know the context in which the statement was made to take anything from it.

I think the only thing of value from that is that it corroborates Kotaku's rumour of Sony dropping a CELL variant for PS4.

I just hope that whatever they do, that it manages at least some kind of BC that doesn't require me to rebuy all my PS3 games... ESPECIALLY the PSN ones.

 

[Rangers]

To be fair the only thing that seems like the "rumour" part from Leadbetter's "source" () is the "essentially a PC", part which is vague and ambiguous.

It does jive with something I heard some months ago from a dev that PS4 will be "easy to program for like Vita" or something like that.

Cell was never expected by me, I had read too many B3D posts for that Some had pointed out it was basically dead ended a long time ago by IBM.

Besides, to have Cell in next gen you'd have to scale it to 32 SPU's or something. I am sure Devs would have recoiled in abject horror at such a thing.
They may have gone on strike from developing from PS4 altogether.

Here is more from Carmack that "Fusion isn't so bad"

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editor...ce-Intel-Graphics-Ray-Tracing-Voxels-and-more

The process of updating a textures on the PC is on the order of “tens of thousands of times slower” than on the Xbox 360 and PS3

One interesting side effect of this talk – Intel’s integrated graphics actually has impressed Carmack quite a bit and the shared memory address space could potentially fix much of this issue. AMD’s Fusion architecture, seen in the Llano APU and upcoming Trinity design, would also fit into the same mold here. He calls it “almost a forgone conclusion” that eventually this type of architecture is going to be the dominant force. You might remember our discussion of this topic with Josh’s analysis of AMD’s Fusion System Architecture – it would appear that AMD has a potential ally on its side if they are paying attention.

I suppose he was speaking of PC there, but nonetheless.

 

[babybumb]

http://www.monolithic3d.com/2/post/...pu-gpu-integration-at-the-vlsi-symposium.html

AMD 3D stacking

 

[Prophecy2k]

It does jive with something I heard some months ago from a dev that PS4 will be "easy to program for like Vita" or something like that.

Cell was never expected by me, I had read too many B3D posts for that Some had pointed out it was basically dead ended a long time ago by IBM.

Besides, to have Cell in next gen you'd have to scale it to 32 SPU's or something. I am sure Devs would have recoiled in abject horror at such a thing.
They may have gone on strike from developing from PS4 altogether.

Here is more from Carmack that "Fusion isn't so bad"

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editor...ce-Intel-Graphics-Ray-Tracing-Voxels-and-more

I suppose he was speaking of PC there, but nonetheless.

That's all fine but the fact remains that going from "it's essentially a PC" to "it's an AMD fusion part with AMD GPU and x86 CPU" is a leap that defies all notion of temperance or reason.

Also, there's no reason whatsoever to assume that a hypothetical CELL2 would have been a 32SPU processor. In fact a more reasonable solution would have been a modern 3-4 core PowerPC chip with 8+ SPUs. They could have easily asked IBM to make them the same 3-core PPC IBM chip that'll be in WiiU and stick the original CELL's 8 SPUs on die. Wham-bam-thankyou-mam you have a competant next-gen CPU chip with full BC.

Of course it'll most likely be a whole lot more complex than that. But my original point was that you cannot assume it'll be an AMD Fusion chip, nor even x86 simply from a quote stating "it's essentially a PC".

 

[Prophecy2k]

http://www.monolithic3d.com/2/post/...pu-gpu-integration-at-the-vlsi-symposium.html

AMD 3D stacking

I look at that and all i see is molten cake