Charlie: Nvidia out of the race for Next-Gen consoles
- Thread starter Arty
- Start date
Intel won the GPU contract for PS4? Somehow I doubt that...
lol, I love the bit about Intel also possibly designing the CPU for PS4 as well. Dream on, Charlie.
lol, I love the bit about Intel also possibly designing the CPU for PS4 as well. Dream on, Charlie.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Makes sense in a way. If Nvidia are as ruthless with Sony and the PS3 as they were with MS and the Xbox, I can see where Sony might not want to partner up with them again.
Especially if like I speculate in the console forum (pure speculation nothing more) that Nvidia might block attempts to integrate RSX and Cell for a smaller PS3.
Still, going with Larrabee? That's a bit of a stretch unless Intel has demo'd Larrabee to Sony and they like what they see? Possibly to use Larrabee for other tasks traditionally done by the GPU or SPU in Playstations past and present?
Does anyone know if ATI get's a small percentage of X360 and Wii sales? Or was it just a one off design contract for both MS and Nintendo?
Regards,
SB
Especially if like I speculate in the console forum (pure speculation nothing more) that Nvidia might block attempts to integrate RSX and Cell for a smaller PS3.
Still, going with Larrabee? That's a bit of a stretch unless Intel has demo'd Larrabee to Sony and they like what they see? Possibly to use Larrabee for other tasks traditionally done by the GPU or SPU in Playstations past and present?
Does anyone know if ATI get's a small percentage of X360 and Wii sales? Or was it just a one off design contract for both MS and Nintendo?
Regards,
SB
Charlie doesn't even know who won which handheld contracts, how can he claim to have any idea what the relationships between the different companies are? Still, it wouldn't surprise me much if NV lost the PS4 contract. Doesn't mean I trust his sources' objectivity, but y'know, he could be right by mistake or something.
Nvidia ruthless? Wasn't it Microsoft who tried to renegotiate their fabrication contract when Xbox sales turned out to be disappointing, and then punished Nvidia for not giving in by excluding them from consultation for the DirectX9 specification?
This looks like an interesting bit of history. Do you happen to have any more information?
Intel are going to design a CPU?! That's crazy talk!!!
Panajev2001a
Veteran
Intel are going to design a CPU?! That's crazy talk!!!
That's not the problem...
The problem is all on SCE's side... it would mean to throw away a tons of man-hours and R&D dollars spent on CELL HW and most of all on CELL optimized SW: PS3 OS, CELL compilers, the Edge/ICE programs, etc... this would be the third time in a row they do that and as consoles are becoming more and more complex multi-functional machines getting a stable SW SDK is almost more important than finalizing the HW specs.
In the end MS could afford to quite drastically change performance distribution (strong OOOe CPU and normal GPU --> weaker in-order CPU and fast GPU to make a long story very short) and not get developers too too angry at them.
SCE had the hardware down first (especially on the CPU side), but their OS was in a bloated state of flux till the last minute (tools and libraries included).
If they were to change CPU architecture to x86 they would be in danger of being late again with the SDK and the final devkit and it does not fit with the multiple times mentioned new focus on Software first (Hardware chosen in function of the Software requirements and not vice-versa).
Either Intel gives them a BIG BIG hand and they get a lot of work done... now!!!! (and they would still be losing all the development experience people got with CELL so far) or they are much better off using a CBEAv2 based CPU even if they use Larrabee as GPU... porting libGCM or whatever kind of low-level 3D API to Larrabee (written using low-level Larrabee tuned code) as well as offering a PPC version of the OpenGL driver Intel is working on for Larrabee.
Endianess and ISA of the host CPU are the least of their problems right now... besides... you want a single unified programming model for both? OpenCL to the rescue
.OpenCL + OpenGL == ultimate 3D development solution for a CELLv2 + LRB based PS4
?
This is some pretty good fiction if you ask me... Shit if they wanted something like Larrabee they could just revisit the early (pre-PowerPC) Cell concepts again.
This is probably the next best piece of fiction... It's amazing that this shit still persists...
homerdog said:
This is probably the next best piece of fiction... It's amazing that this shit still persists...
Last edited by a moderator:
Megadrive1988
Veteran
In my opinion it would be better if Sony got both Larrabee AND and Nvidia GPU for PS4. Not one or the other, but both. They can work together. Larrabee can take over the front-end of the graphics pipeline from CELL, so CELL can do more physics and game A.I. While Larrabee does the geometry, lighting, vertex/geometry shading, tesselation, etc. Nvidia GPU does the pixel shading, texture, rasterization, AA, etc.
High-end next-gen console architecture should look like this
_____________________
| [CPU from IBM or Intel]|
| [Larrabee]
| [ATI / Nvidia GPU]
|____________________|
High-end next-gen console architecture should look like this
_____________________
| [CPU from IBM or Intel]|
| [Larrabee]
| [ATI / Nvidia GPU]
|____________________|
I wouldn't discount the possiblity of Larrabee showing up in the next generation Playstation.
NVidia screwed Microsoft on the XBox 1. NVidia screwed (is screwing?) Sony on the PS3. I don't expect an NVidia GPU in either next generation console.
If Sony does go with Larrabee, I expect the system to have a second generataion Cell CPU - it would be a waste to throw away all the software work that has gone into making it actually usable, and a Larrabee based GPU.
The advantage of a Larrabee is that there is a lot of potential to implement non-traditional (possibly revolutionary) rendering algorithms on it. It seems a lot less likely that anyone in the PC space would ever take advantage of this potential. The risk is that Larrabee won't be (price&power)/performance competitive with a more convential GPU design on traditional workloads.
-Michael-
NVidia screwed Microsoft on the XBox 1. NVidia screwed (is screwing?) Sony on the PS3. I don't expect an NVidia GPU in either next generation console.
If Sony does go with Larrabee, I expect the system to have a second generataion Cell CPU - it would be a waste to throw away all the software work that has gone into making it actually usable, and a Larrabee based GPU.
The advantage of a Larrabee is that there is a lot of potential to implement non-traditional (possibly revolutionary) rendering algorithms on it. It seems a lot less likely that anyone in the PC space would ever take advantage of this potential. The risk is that Larrabee won't be (price&power)/performance competitive with a more convential GPU design on traditional workloads.
-Michael-
If we think Nvidia is being a dick about its GPUs, it's nothing like what Intel has been in order to keep a grip on its x86, and Microsoft wasn't enamoured of how Intel treated it either with the Xbox.
Intel's going to have make some pretty interesting concessions, and even if it does any console maker is going to suspect that it's getting screwed anyway.
How could it not when the design partner owns the IP, owns the manufacturing, has a vested interest in restricting any non-game use of Larrabee, and has a heavy hand in the software stack?
Intel's going to have make some pretty interesting concessions, and even if it does any console maker is going to suspect that it's getting screwed anyway.
How could it not when the design partner owns the IP, owns the manufacturing, has a vested interest in restricting any non-game use of Larrabee, and has a heavy hand in the software stack?
picosec said:
Did I miss something? Since when was it determined that Nvidia was screwing Sony (aside from Charlie's assertions)?
This isn't an advantage of Larrabee, you could essentially have the same benefit with any CPU based rendering solution.
3dilettante said:
if anyone was being "dickish" it was AMD not Intel. Intel was just playing it smartly and MS cried foul because it couldn't what it wanted at the price it demanded.
How did AMD dictate Intel's decisions with regards to the Xbox CPU?
I was referring back to the less than perfect Xbox experience.
As far as Sony and Nvidia are concerned, I would think that RSX is what Sony should have expected, given the time frame Nvidia had to supply a solution.
As far as Sony and Nvidia are concerned, I would think that RSX is what Sony should have expected, given the time frame Nvidia had to supply a solution.
Similar threads
