Cooling Revolution.

[Joe DeFuria]

Joe I'm speculating on possible console uses for current technology in a thread in the console technology forum.. what exactly is your problem with that?

My only "problem" is it's rather pointless given we know basically nothing about Revolution to even begin any meaningful discussion.

The numbers I used are all based on real power consumption numbers.

We have actual PPU power consumption numbers? Or actual power consumption numbers for any of the other chips? Or just piling more guestimates on top of other guestimates?

Speculation is all well and good, but the thing that just "drew the line" for me was throwing in an Ageia PPU into the mix....and an integrated one at that....along with power consumption numbers...

Also your first sentence is nothing but a stupid generalisation, not all Nintendo fans think that graphics don't matter.

Did I say you thought graphics didn't matter? For the record though, do you think Revolution has to have graphics "on par" with Xbox / Sony in order to have a place in the market? I don't...and anyone who can't read the writing on the wall with Nintendo themselves downplaying "specs" is just living in denial, IMO.

Again, this is NOT to say that Rev won't or can't be a great console in its own right. It is simply not going to have the raw power of Sony and MS consoles.

 

[Teasy]

Of course we know enough to speculate on the system.

We have actual PPU power consumption numbers? Or actual power consumption numbers for any of the other chips? Or just piling more guestimates on top of other guestimates?

Speculation is all well and good, but the thing that just "drew the line" for me was throwing in an Ageia PPU into the mix....and an integrated one at that....along with power consumption numbers...

Yes we do have actual power consumption numbers for AGEIA's PPU, and for XBox 360/PS3's PPE core and XBox 360's GPU. Read the thread and you'll see them mentioned more then a couple of times. Those are the chips I based my speculation on (IBM is using the PPE in 360 and PS3, so it seems reasonable to speculate that they will use it in Revolution).

Did I say you thought graphics didn't matter? For the record though, do you think Revolution has to have graphics "on par" with Xbox / Sony in order to have a place in the market? I don't...and anyone who can't read the writing on the wall with Nintendo themselves downplaying "specs" is just living in denial, IMO.

I didn't say you did, and no I don't think Revolution needs graphics as good as the other consoles to have a place in the market. PS2 ruled the market with inferior graphics to GC and XBox (despite Nintendo playing down the role of graphics with GC I might add). All Nintendo need is graphics in the same league as the other consoles at SDTV resolutions, something that can be achieved with a much less powerful GPU then the one inside 360.

 

[pc999]

We have actual PPU power consumption numbers? Or actual power consumption numbers for any of the other chips? Or just piling more guestimates on top of other guestimates?

Yes it is official, 28W for the PPU.
Correction 28W

 

[Teasy]

By the way, just to be clear I was suggesting a cut down (half the power) version on 90nm (rather then the full blown PPU on its initial 130nm process). That's where I got the "around 10 watts" from.

 

[OtakingGX]

The more I've read about the Ageia PPU the less and less I think it could possibly used in a console. Apparently it does lots of array operations, something that GPUs with vertex shaders already do. So instead of dedicating an entire chip to the task, it seems more feasible to use a GPU to do the calculations.

That is only true for a system where air is undisturbed btw. And for a volume of air large enough to express temperature differences across it. Not neccessarily true of the conditions in a heatpipe.

I believe you misunderstood what I was getting at here. The vapor IN the heat pipe wants to rise against gravity. So there has to be a wick inside. The wick uses the capillary effect to make water run uphill, so it won't just sit in the bottom of the 'U'.

But the state is constantly changing. There's cool air blowing across the sink continuously in a normally functioning implementation.

Assuming that the CPU is running at a fairly constant load and that your room temperature is relatively constant, you will reach a steady state. That state is where the temperature of any point on the heat sink is no longer changing. The heat pipe would perform better than just a heat sink here because it's moving heat to the extremeties of the fins faster than it can get there just through the metal. The heat sink probably heats up more uniformly than it would without the heat pipe.

Naturally, the heatpipe won't transfer any more heat if the sink it attaches to heats up to the same temperature as the source (processor die) because there is no cooling of the sink, but neither will a conventional sink function under such conditions either.

Ideally a heat sink will heat up to the temperature of what it is cooling. The CPU is not a constant temperature source but a constant heat source. If you had a big heat sink that was the same temperature as the CPU all that cool air would remove LOTS of heat, and keep the temperature of the CPU low.

If heatpipes stopped working when a temperature plateau has been reached in the cooler, then any CPU cooled by zalman's new "figure 8" heatpipe cooler (don't remember the product name but I'm sure you know which one I mean) would have been destroyed, seeing as only heatpipes attach to the hot-plate.

I'm really not sure what I said made it seem like a heat pipe would stop working once it reached a plateau. The Zalman Figure-8 is a great design by the way. It's all made of copper, the fins, which there are lots of, attach to the pipes, and air is pushed across the pipes and fins.

There's a partial vacuum in all heatpipes. Vapor is automatically distributed across the entire inner volume due to the pressure differential, it doesn't (particulary) matter if it is pointed up or down, the vapor "wants" to go to the other end anyway. Convection isn't the method which heatpipes function with...

I addressed this earlier. Heat pipes use capillary forces to get liquid back to the hot plate. There isn't a vacuum in all heat pipes, just in ones where water, or another fluid with a high vaporization temperature, is used. If you were using freon, which has a much lower boiling point, you don't need a vacuum to depress its boiling point more.

 

[Reznor007]

Here we can see the heatsink for the GPU extends from the yellow transistors on top to the yellow transistors on the bottom. It also stretches from the CPU heatsink to almost the black and silver chip on the upper-left.

Just to nitpick...those are aluminum electrolytic capacitors, not transistors If you're going to argue about electronics you should at least know the difference between a capacitor and a transistor.

 

[OtakingGX]

Just to nitpick...those are aluminum electrolytic capacitors, not transistors If you're going to argue about electronics you should at least know the difference between a capacitor and a transistor.

Hehe, I noticed that too, but wasn't going to say anything. Transistors come in various packages, but most look like this.

 

[Ty]

The bottom line is, if Revolution is going to be considerably smaller in size (which hints at significantly lower power consumption), and supposedly significantly less costly to manufacature then the console itself will be significantly less "powerful." (Note that I'm not passing any judgement on the console itself.)

This sort of reasoning has been brought up here many times before to no avail, but good luck to you!

 

[Powderkeg]

This sort of reasoning has been brought up here many times before to no avail, but good luck to you!

Yes, but only because certain Nintendo fans think Denial is a river in Egypt.

 

[Teasy]

Who exactly disagree's with that reasoning Ty? Given the same process technology and the same companies designing the parts that is..

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Yes it is official, 28W for the PPU.
Correction 28W

No, until there is actually product on the market, we don't know. Things have a strange tendency to change between paper, prototype and "mass produced product."

 

[OtakingGX]

We're assuming that IBM is going to deliver to Nintendo a number of PPEs (between 1 and 2) similar to that found in the X360 CPU or Cell. I'm starting to wonder if maybe Nintendo might do what people are saying, put a faster Gekko in the Revolution. Why not have IBM take their PPC 750 design back to the drawing board and cram into it all the things they've learned in the past few years?

Now, you might think I'm stupid for suggesting this, but I'll point you to another company that did the same thing, took a 2 generation old processor design, re-engineered it, and now it runs circles around their faster clocked offerings while running at a lower speed, using less power, and getting by on a much slower bus. If you haven't guessed it yet, I'm comparing the Pentium 3 based Pentium M to the Pentium 4.

 

[Ty]

Who exactly disagree's with that reasoning Ty? Given the same process technology and the same companies designing the parts that is..

I don't want to name names, but just a week ago someone thought precisely that, that Nintendo could get smaller, cheaper, and just as "powerful" as Sony and MS.

 

[pc999]

No, until there is actually product on the market, we don't know. Things have a strange tendency to change between paper, prototype and "mass produced product."

You asked for official numbers, if you belive on them or not it up to you, anyway if you will argue it needs to be around them (without any other info), but it ussualy happens what you said but normaly isnt a big difference.

OtakingGX

I would think more using some from what they learned to design the CPU, but they may still have some advantages (like power) in using Gekko basead CPU but still it may not be powerfull enought.

 

[PC-Engine]

the heatsink takes up the entire outlined space around the outer edges of the orange holes.

so yes, you are blind,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,or something.

Now that we've clarified that you are in fact blind, or something, would you like to reevaluate your position based on the newfound knowledge that your previous claims are based on such obviously bullshit claims?

Isn't this what I've been telling people??? Isn't this why I attached a pic of the Xbox360's motherboard without the heatsinks to show the white square outline around the GPU that corresponds to the area of the heatsink? Sorry, but maybe you're blind to my posts because you simply cannot accept that you're wrong.

Since you like to pretend the pic I posted didn't exist and yet posted the same pic yourself, here it is again.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=75&d=1132831953

See that white outline around the GPU? Yes that's right. That's the area the heatsink takes up. That's the same pic you posted to show the heatsink is big. Sorry but that's hardly big at all considering the heatsink itself is very low profile about half an inch high. Heck the GCN's heatsink is bigger than that!

How do you know that 1 PPE+cut down PPU is equal to XeCPU, that is wrong unless there is someone using 4 threads for physics and animation, and we dont even know how much can help with animation (besides physics basead animation), still 1 PPE still hot, plus I dont think that there is a lot of chances (but still some) of we see a AGEIA PPU in Rev unless they GIVE the Novodex to Nintendo for all the games (1,2,3 partys) (it may be a good trade off if there is enought ports from/to PC which is possible considering that it can work as a mouse too, but I still have a few doubts) I think it would be more probable a maths processor from IBM (basic as a bounch of VMX units) or ATI (a bounch of pipelines) as they are used to do inexpensive and coll HW, anyways I dont think a PPE would be ideal (hot, expensive) as it is in order and they can make a lot of money from companys how cant afford make a game for XB/PS but still have great ideas (as it happens for DS).

I'm just speculating a full blown PPU is more powerful than 2 PPEs while a cut down version could be made to be equal to 2 PPEs. Remember that AGEIA's PPU isn't running at GHz speeds like PPEs so clock for clock it is likely more powerful. A miniPPU integrated onto the same die as a single PPE can operate at much higher speeds. I speculate 1.6GHz or half the speed of the 3.2GHz PPE.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

You asked for official numbers, if you belive on them or not it up to you, anyway if you will argue it needs to be around them (without any other info), but it ussualy happens what you said but normaly isnt a big difference.

No, I asked if we had actual numbers. "Officially" phys-x boards were supposed to be on the market by now...but then what happened?

Anyway, I don't see where those numbers are even "official...", but that's besides the point.

 

[pc999]

PC-Engine:

Lets supose that it is true, how will/would use 2/3 of the XeCPU power for physics only (and limited animation as far as we know), some schems that we saw pointed at 1 thread for physics at max (lets say about 1/6 instead of 4/6)? I dont think it is a good trade of as complex physics would probably taxe in others parts of the game like AI, animation, sound, network...


Joe DeFuria:

We need to wait till know if they lied or not, BTW they gave those numbers somehere (dont remember here)I pointed that site because he colects that info, almost sure you can trace the origin clicing in the links .
They have been delayed till software that uses it came out (as long as they said).

 

[Powderkeg]

Isn't this what I've been telling people??? Isn't this why I attached a pic of the Xbox360's motherboard without the heatsinks to show the white square outline around the GPU that corresponds to the area of the heatsink? Sorry, but maybe you're blind to my posts because you simply cannot accept that you're wrong.

Since you like to pretend the pic I posted didn't exist and yet posted the same pic yourself, here it is again.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=75&d=1132831953

See that white outline around the GPU? Yes that's right. That's the area the heatsink takes up. That's the same pic you posted to show the heatsink is big. Sorry but that's hardly big at all considering the heatsink itself is very low profile about half an inch high. Heck the GCN's heatsink is bigger than that!

You really do live in an alternate reality where things only exist in 2 dimensions, don't you?

How do you figure a heatsink measuring over 4" X 6" is small? Smaller than the GCN? If you tried putting that heatsink in the GCN it would poke through the side of the case. The GCN's heatsink is almost an inch shorter on both sides.

And I just love how you are dodging the fan issue. There are 2 fans, 1 for the CPU and the other for the GPU. Each one of these fans is taller and requires more space than the Revolution provides.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I pointed that site because he colects that info, almost sure you can trace the origin clicing in the links .

I tried a couple of them...(including Ageia's site). No luck.

They have been delayed till software that uses it came out (as long as they said).

If you believe that's the whole story...

 

[pc999]

I tried a couple of them...(including Ageia's site). No luck.



If you believe that's the whole story...

Well it wouldnt make sense release it without games, this they can debug it more and update drivers.

BTW how are colled the laptops with 3Ghz P4 (celeron or centrino?) and Geforces GO7800 (300 Mghz, and ~enought to play a 640p PS3 games, I expect), as they are ~as thin as Rev will be but larger yet they bring HDD (some even 2), Power Suply, baterys, Keyboard and probably some more things that arent need in Rev (honest question, no hints, flame war, sarcasm etc...)