Ati on Xenos

[ralexand]

Sounds like PR piece saying why Xbox360 is superior than PS3...looks like they are trying hard to change perception that PS3 is superior hardware..
What is funny is that it was Microsoft who said that it is games that matters, but they seems to be more focused on spec wars than Sony..since they released several "unofficial" articles on why Xbox360 is superior platform.

Like you said, unofficial. I'm sure all of this is response to the e3 press conferences and the bad press that resulted from MS talking about velocity girl and not about the hardware.

 

[Inane_Dork]

Is this not true of all chips? If you fit your workload to the architecture, you should get close to the max possible, regardless of architecture. I know Xenos can adapt to the workload rather than vice versa, but this seems to be an odd comment given that this is what an architecture like Xenos is supposed to negate (fitting your work to the architecture).

I expect better efficiency on the RSX than for an arbitrary PC video card. So you're right in that.

But some things inherently screw the efficiency up. Stencil only work, depth only first pass, shadow map generation and post processing are examples of work that is all one shader.

 

[a688]

Sounds like PR piece saying why Xbox360 is superior than PS3...looks like they are trying hard to change perception that PS3 is superior hardware..
What is funny is that it was Microsoft who said that it is games that matters, but they seems to be more focused on spec wars than Sony..since they released several "unofficial" articles on why Xbox360 is superior platform.

ATI made the hardware (GPU) of course they want to say that their hardware is better. ATI != Microsoft and its ATI saying why their chip is better than nVidia's, only indirectly is it saying that Xbox360 is better than PS3.

 

[persiannight]

And the Sony Fanboys go crazy... seriously, if this was Nvidia who came out and said this stuff, ya'll be lapping it up like puppies...

 

[SteamedRice]

or there are some that think that BOTH are simply throwing doodoo in each other's face.

Until the systems are out, its all PR and speculation.

 

[Edge]

> "Xenos can run at 100% efficiency all the time."

Sounds to me he does not know what he is talking about. The biggest bunch of nonsense have ever heard about any chip, especially on a unified shader architecture, which means each shader has one execution unit not doing work each cycle to either accomodate a pixel or vertex operation, and not both. That's a huge chunk of your transistors doing no work each cycle. Maybe I'm missing something, how is that efficient? I guess efficiency is all based on how you can spin it.

As to whether the architectures for vertex and pixel processors should be the same, it's a good question, and time will tell the answer. It's not clear to me that an architecture for a good, efficient, and fast vertex shader is the same as the architecture for a good and fast pixel shader. A pixel shader would need far, far more texture math performance and read bandwidth than an optimized vertex shader. So, if you used that pixel shader to do vertex shading, most of the hardware would be idle, most of the time. Which is better—a lean and mean optimized vertex shader and a lean and mean optimized pixel shader or two less-efficient hybrid shaders? There is an old saying: "Jack of all trades, master of none."

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1745060,00.asp

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

Sounds like PR piece saying why Xbox360 is superior than PS3...looks like they are trying hard to change perception that PS3 is superior hardware..
What is funny is that it was Microsoft who said that it is games that matters, but they seems to be more focused on spec wars than Sony..since they released several "unofficial" articles on why Xbox360 is superior platform.

First off, this wasn't from MS, but ATI. Secondly, this is needed to balance out Kutaragi's "Xbox 1.5" bullshit-fest. I don't see anyone complaining when Kutaragi promises God-in-a-box.

 

[Jawed]

Edge, you're missing the fact that Xenos's unified architecture splits the texture units apart from the ALUs. So there's no idle texture units when ALUs are performing vertex shading, for example.

Jawed

 

[gosh]

> "Xenos can run at 100% efficiency all the time."

Sounds to me he does not know what he is talking about. The biggest bunch of nonsense have ever heard about any chip, especially on a unified shader architecture, which means each shader has one execution unit not doing work each cycle to either accomodate a pixel or vertex operation, and not both. That's a huge chunk of your transistors doing no work each cycle. Maybe I'm missing something, how is that efficient? I guess efficiency is all based on how you can spin it.

As to whether the architectures for vertex and pixel processors should be the same, it's a good question, and time will tell the answer. It's not clear to me that an architecture for a good, efficient, and fast vertex shader is the same as the architecture for a good and fast pixel shader. A pixel shader would need far, far more texture math performance and read bandwidth than an optimized vertex shader. So, if you used that pixel shader to do vertex shading, most of the hardware would be idle, most of the time. Which is better—a lean and mean optimized vertex shader and a lean and mean optimized pixel shader or two less-efficient hybrid shaders? There is an old saying: "Jack of all trades, master of none."

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1745060,00.asp

Oh ya! WOW! you say the biggest crap coming out of ATI by qouting Nvidia. How unbiased. LOL

 

[Rockster]

especially on a unified shader architecture, which means each shader has one execution unit not doing work each cycle to either accomodate a pixel or vertex operation, and not both.

That's incorrect. The same execution units can work on either pixels or vertices. Hence unified. Current designs have a specific number of execution units for only vertex operations and a specific number for only pixels ops. This leads to inefficiency in current designs if the ratio of vertex to pixel ops doesn't correspond with the ratio of vertex units to pixel units. A unified architecture is supposed to allow that ratio to be dynamic based on the workload and hence more efficient, among other things. It's obvious that no architecture can be 100% efficient, and is, as you say, "nonsense."

 

[gosh]

especially on a unified shader architecture, which means each shader has one execution unit not doing work each cycle to either accomodate a pixel or vertex operation, and not both.

That's incorrect. The same execution units can work on either pixels or vertices. Hence unified. Current designs have a specific number of execution units for only vertex operations and a specific number for only pixels ops. This leads to inefficiency in current designs if the ratio of vertex to pixel ops doesn't correspond with the ratio of vertex units to pixel units. A unified architecture is supposed to allow that ratio to be dynamic based on the workload and hence more efficient, among other things. It's obvious that no architecture can be 100% efficient, and is, as you say, "nonsense."

and you are an ATI engineer? this is next gen no?

 

[scooby_dooby]

What's funny is it IS the games that matter.

And they released 1 article, and 1 interview. Can you blame them after all the slander and mud-slinging from KK?

And the idiot journalists that wrote dozens of articles about how the PS3 clearly had the graphical advantage?

I don't blame them.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Funnily enough, KK's never talked against XB360's gameplaying ability.

 

[blakjedi]

Funnily enough, KK's never talked against XB360's gameplaying ability.

Except to say that x360 games will really be competing against PS2 games

 

[EpicZero]

Sounds like PR piece saying why Xbox360 is superior than PS3...looks like they are trying hard to change perception that PS3 is superior hardware..
What is funny is that it was Microsoft who said that it is games that matters, but they seems to be more focused on spec wars than Sony..since they released several "unofficial" articles on why Xbox360 is superior platform.

First off, this wasn't from MS, but ATI. Secondly, this is needed to balance out Kutaragi's "Xbox 1.5" bullshit-fest. I don't see anyone complaining when Kutaragi promises God-in-a-box.

So, it would be ok if nVidia came out and promised how much better the RSX would be than the Xenos?

 

[Tap In]

So, it would be ok if nVidia came out and promised how much better the RSX would be than the Xenos?

if it were true..... sure.

 

[pc999]

Funnily enough, KK's never talked against XB360's gameplaying ability.

Except to say that x360 games will really be competing against PS2 games

Considering that PS2 do have great games( and I did not say because I am a XB fan), that is a compliment .

 

[Inane_Dork]

Current designs have a specific number of execution units for only vertex operations and a specific number for only pixels ops. This leads to inefficiency in current designs if the ratio of vertex to pixel ops doesn't correspond with the ratio of vertex units to pixel units.

Yep. And I may be wrong about this, but I think it goes deeper than just that.

Take the 6800. Per pixel pipe, it's likely that it's not feeding each ALU as well as it could. Overall, the 2nd ALU per pipe is a win, but it's not fully taken advantage of.

Also, pixels are processed in quads. This leads to unused pipes.

Now, not that Xenos necessarily solves these issues, but there's quite a bit of simplification going on in PC cards. Enough that 60% is believable, IMO.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Funnily enough, KK's never talked against XB360's gameplaying ability.

Except to say that x360 games will really be competing against PS2 games

It seems to me people are confusing KK's opinions on system design philosophy with performance. From KK's perspective, XB360 is a games console. MS have gone to lengths to promote this idea. He hates this idea, offering instead a new computing platform optimized for entertainment (unlike the PC which is legacy driven). In his opinion the future of entertainment should be designed as such from the beginning. Anything built on existing concepts doesn't attain that 'next generation', it only improves the current generation.

I agree with his idea. I hate legacy holding things back. I'm not sure PS3 offers a real/huge technological advantage over 360, except if they can get inter-Cell network processing going.

But anyhow, as such he's not complaining about his competitors' hardware, but they're approach to providing an entertainment platform. He thinks they're backward thinking.

 

[Farid]

So, Bit-tech.net ran a 3 pages marketing interview with Ati?
Because there's nothing technical, even on a high level, in this article.