Middle Generation Console Upgrade Discussion [Scorpio, 4Pro]

[iroboto]

The wording is exact mate. She has always referred to the game consoles as "semi-custom" design wins

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...gn-wins-point-to-new-console-hardware-in-2016

This is from a conference call she had in April 2016. Playstation 4 Pro was a semi-custom design for 2016

Good spot. Hmm.. I'm gonna be flip flopping on this one. Curiously, was the third semi custom win PS4 Slim?

 

[ramr]

No it doesn't. And stop saying, 'read it carefully' as if everyone's just being sloppy/lazy, especially when someone's gone to the effort of breaking it down. If you want to present an alternative reading that no-one else is getting, you'll have to spell it out.

"I talked about our Zen roadmap for our products, in terms of desktops, servers and notebooks, but one should expect Zen in our semi-custom roadmap as well as we look beyond 2017 into the 18/19 timeframe, and so we really do view this as developing foundational IP that can go into a number of different markets and we have good prospects in those areas."

Clause 1, recapping what's already been said.
Clause 2, these products are not the only products Zen will appear in
Clause 3, subordinate clause. "We look beyond 2017 into the 18/19 timeframe" means nothing without hanging off the previous clause.

If clause 3 didn't exist, you'd have a point - expect Zen in out roadmap - but clause 3 exists to clarify the timelines for the investors. That's the only purpose to clause 3 and the only interpretation that makes any logical or grammatical sense. That's the interpretation that everyone else is getting.

So again, if you disagree you'll have to break down what you're reading to spell it out for us thickies.

Thanks for proving my point for me. People are having problems parsing the sentence correctly, as you just demonstrated. Clause 3 says there will be future SOC; it does not explicitly constrain clause two although it obviously is designed to lead folks to think it does. That is exactly the kind of wordsmithing one would expect if there are competing agendas in play. I am not saying that zen will be there, but the current meme that this statement rules it out is incorrect.

 

[ramr]

na as we look beyond just means that your going to look at that time but it doesn't preclude anything before it. As for the weird phrasing its perhaps best when you can't announced any semi custom soc wins yet .

Eastmen has the correct interpretation of that clause.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

There is a massive difference between her saying "Semi-custom Zen designs will be available in 2017" compared to saying "Our first Zen semi-custom design will be available in 2017 with the Microsoft Scorpio"

Actually, there isn't. Everyone + their collective dogs would assume Zen would be in Scorpio and if true then Microsoft would lose their chance to be the ones announcing that. Announcing architecture details are definitely under NDA terms and again: Microsoft are definitely the ones who are going to make the reveal, and that is under contract.

lso lol @ if you want to stick your whole opinion based on a single sentence. Yes a single sentence from the CEO of AMD during an investors call, not some PR person on their Facebook page

And what you don't get is that humans can make mistakes and so far this has been a single sentence made by a person trying to be extremely cautious about not saying more than they should.
You want to see another sentence that was definitely over-analyzed?

Those products will launch sometime in 2016. And timing is only dependent on the customers, I won't comment on that. But what I can come from as we said previously, there are two products, it's a billion dollars of revenue starting sometime in 2016. One of the products is ARM. And the last thing I’ll say is we are looking at our semicustom business as going beyond gaming.

Where is the 2016 ARM product? Where is the 2016 "beyond gaming" semi-custom SoC?
If there's an ARM SoC, it's definitely not launching within the next 2 weeks. Same for the "beyond gaming" semi-custom design.
Bad wording that is later overly dissected and overly relied upon. It happens.

Regardless, some people, me or you will be eating crow next year.

No, I'm not going to eat crow over anything.
I recognize it could go either way (Zen, Excavator, Jaguar or even something entirely new) and I'm presenting arguments as to why nothing is fixed yet.
And at the same time I'm not criticizing other people's mental capabilities by accusing them of doing mental gymnastics when they present an argument opposed to mine.

 

[iroboto]

hmm.. I think it's about time we all just stop on this topic until new information is revealed. I appreciate the argument on both sides of the topic, but at this point in time we're deliberating over a single sentence by Lisa Su on an investor call, in which she is obviously bound by NDA and so her ability to discuss these topics is limited in scope.

Now that Ryzen has been announced, at least when MS does their hardware preview of Scorpio later this year (maybe May), we'll know for sure what it is without some other binding NDA.

edit: Do we have any lawyers in here? LOL. I would love their interpretation.
double edit: neg that. Lets just wait. Hate seeing you guys at each other over something like this.

 

[mrcorbo]

While you can certainly address each of the pieces of information out there individually and figure out ways that they could possibly not mean that Scorpio does not have a Zen-based CPU in it, there sure are a lot of pieces of information that, when interpreted in the most straightforward way possible, point in the direction of no Zen.

To put it in a less convoluted way; no Zen, to me, seems much more likely than Zen when looking at all of the information we have right now.

 

[Jubei]

hmm.. I think it's about time we all just stop on this topic until new information is revealed. I appreciate the argument on both sides of the topic, but at this point in time we're deliberating over a single sentence by Lisa Su on an investor call, in which she is obviously bound by NDA and so her ability to discuss these topics is limited in scope.

Now that Ryzen has been announced, at least when MS does their hardware preview of Scorpio later this year (maybe May), we'll know for sure what it is without some other binding NDA.

edit: Do we have any lawyers in here? LOL. I would love their interpretation.
double edit: neg that. Lets just wait. Hate seeing you guys at each other over something like this.

Yeah i feel like the discussion will go nowhere without more evidence for either side. So lets change the topic, im still sure that Scorpio will have an upgraded cpu no matter the uarch. I just hope they handle it better than Sony has so far. I suspect that will be the case because of MS advocating dynamic resolutions early in XB1 life

 

[AlNom]

hmm.. I think it's about time we all just stop on this topic until new information is revealed.

When people run in circles it's a very very...

...multiply-add world.

 

[Esrever]

Microsoft made very minor mention of "8 core cpu" when they announced scorpio. That is enough to conclude it is jaguar for me.

 

[Jay]

Microsoft made very minor mention of "8 core cpu" when they announced scorpio. That is enough to conclude it is jaguar for me.

information provided:
memory - bandwidth
gpu - terraflops
cpu - cores

not really any less than any other part of the system.
or do you think it's still 8gb due to only bandwidth being given?
same gpu as x1 just at 6tf?

 

[iroboto]

information provided:
memory - bandwidth
gpu - terraflops
cpu - cores

not really any less than any other part of the system.
or do you think it's still 8gb due to only bandwidth being given?
same gpu as x1 just at 6tf?

Fairly positive it's > 8 GB. There was a bit of a unintended slip here on B3D. I'm not going to link it, but it's around.

 

[Jay]

Fairly positive it's > 8 GB. There was a bit of a unintended slip here on B3D. I'm not going to link it, but it's around.

yea, my point was about the fact that even though they only said 8 core cpu, they never really gave much more information about the other parts.

so I don't think that deduction holds up

Sony would be on a seriously tight schedule. PS4 2013 , Pro 2016, PS5 2019 . That's really quick , Sony would have 3 machines out in the time they used to have 2 machines.

but is that technically 6 years for the generation?

 

[MrFox]

information provided:
memory - bandwidth
gpu - terraflops
cpu - cores

not really any less than any other part of the system.
or do you think it's still 8gb due to only bandwidth being given?
same gpu as x1 just at 6tf?

We can be almost certain it's 12GB of GDDR5. Depending how much we consider their own render of the motherboard to be "information provided".

They unveiled scorpio with a render of the motherboard clearly showing 12 GDDR5 chips on a 384bits bus. All the glue logic, power regs, traces, pcie line pairs are coherent. They even put their usual weird-as-fuck array of bypass caps on the power plane. This is a very credible integration layout. If it's a mock up, it would be a lot of effort just for a misdirection about the amount of memory. It also makes no sense to misdirect about this.

 

[Jay]

We can be almost certain it's 12GB of GDDR5. Depending how much we consider their own render of the motherboard to be "information provided".

They unveiled scorpio with a render of the motherboard clearly showing 12 GDDR5 chips on a 384bits bus. All the glue logic, power regs, traces, pcie line pairs are coherent. They even put their usual weird-as-fuck array of bypass caps on the power plane. This is a very credible integration layout. If it's a mock up, it would be a lot of effort just for a misdirection about the amount of memory. It also makes no sense to misdirect about this.

or it's a render of one of the possible versions that was in the running.
like lots of pre release designs we see before an actual machine comes out.
may even be what ends up as Scorpio but not final, so changes, e.g. more memory

but my point was that I wouldn't deduce jaguar because they just said "8 core cpu".

 

[MrFox]

Well, it could still be 24GB

 

[mrcorbo]

or it's a render of one of the possible versions that was in the running.
like lots of pre release designs we see before an actual machine comes out.
may even be what ends up as Scorpio but not final, so changes, e.g. more memory

but my point was that I wouldn't deduce jaguar because they just said "8 core cpu".

Doesn't mean Jaguar but, to me, means small CPU core *like* Jaguar. Does AMD have another design available that fits the bill?

 

[Jay]

Well, it could still be 24GB

zen & vega so 8gb to cut cost

 

[Jubei]

Doesn't mean Jaguar but, to me, means small CPU core *like* Jaguar. Does AMD have another design available that fits the bill?

http://wccftech.com/amds-stoney-ridge-performance-market-positioning-detailed/

 

[Esrever]

information provided:
memory - bandwidth
gpu - terraflops
cpu - cores

not really any less than any other part of the system.
or do you think it's still 8gb due to only bandwidth being given?
same gpu as x1 just at 6tf?

Because if it was Zen it would be 4 cores. Unless you think they will put a CPU that is 8x more powerful than the jaguar in there with only a 4x increase in GPU.

 

[Jay]

Because if it was Zen it would be 4 cores. Unless you think they will put a CPU that is 8x more powerful than the jaguar in there with only a 4x increase in GPU.

8x?
if that's what you think then I can understand why you would think it's crazy