Forbes: AMD Created Navi for Sony PS5, Vega Suffered [2018-06] *spawn*

The console market is a small (but still important) portion of overall software developers and engineers using Visual Studio. So, it isn't surprising that it takes time for tight integration (versus a smaller plugin) with the Xbox SDK to happen with each new version.

Regards,
SB

 

Well, Boby Angeluv is ranting today about NUMA and windows threads affinity and some said that at microsoft features count and if you think about performance...

Thats another way to put it and I don't disagree, but what about about my magical console from microsoft and at the same time diffrent from anything developed there? is it already a time for it to only become name for some subsciption?
On different note; xbox getting polite and civil with exclusives going Prasāda, UWP kinda sacrificed, edge html tossed for chromium? Whats all this ? is it only momentarily Satya inspired PR kumbaya or there is a new kind of catch ? You guys happened to trigger me on after this one to much unforeseen beer that if BRIT will split this to another Meme i will go to witcher thread teaching about proper polish country syntax and accents beloning to rendered bioms

 

What doesn't make sense is the fact that people aren't even reading the title and calling "dumb" to a rumor they made up themselves.
But regardless yes, it makes no sense.

Just to clarify, the first line of the news title says:

Sources: AMD Created Navi

Shocked B3D posters:

OMG Sony created Navi? What a dumb rumor.



Yes, it's a dumb rumor. That you fabricated yourself.

 

maybe you should read beyond the headline?

 

Did you read what you quoted?

Sony creating Navi is never once suggested in the article. Your quote says it was created for Sony, not by Sony.

 

Thats just pedantic. Sony didn't create it but it was done specifically for Sony. Wow big difference?

 

AMD did create Navi for Sony.

(and for themselves, and for other clients)

 

So I guess whenever you go to a restaurant you claim bragging rights for cooking and preparing everything you order from the waiter, despite all the food being made by others.

You're obviously a spectacular cook, and claiming otherwise is just being pedantic.

 

So what? Doesn't make the rumor any less dumb? Sony pays AMD specifically for Navi developed for Sony is just as dumb of a rumor. You are just being pedantic about the word choice and not about what the topic is.

 

So now you're changing goalposts without acknowledging your previous failure to read even the article's title.
What a great way to start a discussion.

And you're just a great cook, right?

Because it would totally be the first time that Sony ordered the design of a hardware IP for using in their Playstation console and said technology was then used by Microsoft for their Xbox, right?

Where else did we see this "Power Processing Element"?

Wow, so dumb. Recorded History is full of dumbness, isn't it?
It's almost like IBM or AMD or any other company can make R&D licensing agreements that allow them to charge different costs depending on different types of exclusivity.

 

It's fitting for this thread, but ultimately worthless.

Any time anything is posed like the bolded, it should be immediately dismissed as bollocks. Either those sources are willing to go on record, or they're as worthwhile as rumours because they're indistinguishable from them. That shit is not good journalism, it's cheap gossip.

Now, according to my sources, Navi was actually made by Sony for Microsoft. Those same sources tell me that AMD are making a super-Vega for Sony, who will forego traditional rendering in favour of pure compute.

See how easy it would be for me to post that same shit on some website which pretends to have validity? It's hearsay and conjecture. All we have is maths, RDNA1 benchmarks, and a picture of the X1X SoC.

 

And had you written hundreds of articles related to gaming and technology for Forbes, PCWorld and others, co-founded a gaming news website and worked for AMD as technical marketing specialist, etc. all of which would have allowed you to gather the same level of industry connections as Jason Evangelho does, people might take you seriously.

As it is, no one will. Unlike the author of that article.

Unfortunately, some people tend to get emotional when Sony breathes, let alone have them dare to do R&D or partially subsidize the development of a GPU architecture with technical input.

 

Why are you still on this? It just shows how pedantic you are if you can't drop a point like this. Also your own analogy is completely flawed. In this case it would be Sony asking a chef to design a recipe for Sony, thus implying Sony owns the rights to the recipe. Using your example of the cooks making food, do you think Sony credits the sweatshop workers that physically makes the Playstation?

PPE was just part of the project of CELL, it wasn't created for Sony. Nowhere does your sources say that the PPE was designed FOR Sony. If that were true, IBM would have gotten sued. IBM designed their processors with their own IP and part of it went into the PS3 and the 360. The point isn't that both consoles share IP. It's that generally, if something is designed FOR a company, it is something specifically FOR that company.

 

That's a difference take on semantics. Chemically toughened glass was created by Corning but lacked a solid market. Apple asked for a glass to be developed for their iPhone. Gorrilla Glass was developer for Apple, but not with an exclusive contract, and it came to Apple's rivals too. Likewise, IBM did R&D to develop a processor for Sony, and then used that research to develop a processor for MS. MS benefited from Sony's investment into a low-power processor, but they didn't really get Cell tech.

The idea of Sony funding Navi and everyone getting it is very unrealistic. Sony knew AMD were creating a GCN successor. Why would they want to fit the bill and fund their rivals? Why not just let AMD get on with it and buy into whatever they produced? There'd have to be something exceptional to the deal, like some tech only Sony could use for a period, or which was refused on other platforms (maybe allowed on PC but not other consoles). It's far more realistic that Sony just had some involvement, perhaps regards supporting BC.

 

A history in the industry doesn't preclude him from odd bouts of laziness, sloppiness, or dishonesty. Especially when there's an industry wide trend towards no-one being expected to provide sources.

The trouble with paying any attention to "anonymous sources say" journalism is that it could be anything. The source could be Sony's or AMD's marketing teams wanting to let out a trickle of information to feed the social media masses; it could be some random toss pot on Twitter, masquerading as someone legitimate, and able to fool the author well enough; it could be the author's mum, Ken Kuturagi, or Don Mattrick; it could be absolutely no-one at all, and the author's made it up entirely, knowing that they can never be fact checked because there's nothing concrete to pin anything on; it could even be a senior technician at AMD.

Without anyone beyond the author willing to put their name to such "reporting," it's completely worthless. As much as anything, even if the source is legitimate, how can we be sure the author is accurately relaying their source's words? If the source has told the author something to the effect of "Navi is being developed specifically with Sony in mind, because of hardware considerations related to backwards compatibility, and because such considerations impact x, y, and z aspects of architecture design. Sony is spending n engineering man-hours testing hardware and reporting back to AMD," the author may well just condense that down to "it's being made for Sony." Meanwhile, Microsoft and their DirectX and Xbox teams are just as involved as they always have been.

I completely agree with your last sentence. Of course Sony have been involved in the R&D for Navi - they needed to be.

 

Any customer of a technical product is going to provide feedback. I’m sure Sony, Microsoft provided tons of feedback about their console GPUs and asked for various features and improvements when they signed the contracts for ps5 and series x. The idea that Navi was designed for Sony seems quite dumb because it even hit the pc market well before it’ll end up in a console. Most of the changes in Navi honestly seem like reactionary changes to keep pace with Nvidia. I’m sure Sony had input in the same was the board partners do, and Microsoft does.

 

I agree. However, if Sony funded AMD to provide a solution that would be more amendable to PS related BC, it wouldn't matter who else took advantage of the design. Its not like the Xbox, PC or any Navi-based hardware will gain the ability to play PS games. So any BC related influence no matter how much it affected the fundamental design of Navi, is almost exclusively for the benefit of Sony. Outside of making Navi more ammendable to the BC of platforms with a previous GCN based product.

 

Yes, but that wouldn't be Navi being made for Sony, but Sony having some input on Navi.

The rumour is stating Navi is in essence being created for Sony, like Cell was, and then being shared with the world, as Cell wasn't. The Cell analogy would be more like Sony paying AMD to make a new GPU that wasn't GCN, and AMD creating the Unreality Engine using what it calls its new Unreality Drivers coupled with a RayTraceratron unit, and Amorphic Emulisers , and then rejigging that architecture into a new family of GPUs with just the Unreality Drivers, now called RDNA, which it otherwise wasn't going to make.

That is, AMD has GCN. It's intending to use GCN or something not RDNA for the next umpteen years. Sony commissions RDNA. AMD creates RDNA. AMD now uses that as the basis of their next generation of GPUs for everyone. This scenario did not happen.

 

That's what is interpreted. Exclusivity isn't inherent to the act of commissioning. All Sony has to do is say, "I need this, this and this" and AMD says okay and creates a design that provides those functions.

The reason why AMD runs a semi-custom division is that there is a cost-saving when designing and producing hardware where everybody uses the same basic building blocks. It is cheaper for Sony to strongly influence basic design blocks versus paying for exclusivity in relation to custom design blocks they can only use. It would be advantageous to make any effort to maintain hardware compatibility as a part of the basic design. Exclusivity is maintained at the software level (what else plays PS software) so it is unnecessary to wrap exclusivity around a hardware design. Exclusivity would probably be more appropriate for something novel that wasn't easily replicated by an alternative method.

AMD press release for RDNA made a statement about the GCN being in 450 million devices. Roughly 150 million of these devices are consoles across only 6 skus. While the other 300 million gpus span 5 different GCN gens across dozens of chips in 100s of different products. Console manufacturers have an order of magnitude more influence than any other outside buyer.

Sony influence on the basic design of Navi may have been strong enough for some to interpret that AMD built Navi for Sony it doesn't mean AMD built Navi for only Sony.

 

Or it could all be bullshit.

I lean towards BS.