Lucid_Dreamer
Veteran
IBM, alone, never really had "it" to begin with. PCs don't have the TDP concerns that consoles do either.
News and Rumours: PS4
- Thread starter dobwal
- Start date
Honestly I expect to Sony exclusive to look phenomenal with the rumored hard (/ custom Kaveri as it makes more sense).
But if they are given more they would do more.
I'm pretty impressed too by what the devs manage to push on those old hardware.
I remember the talk about "un"optimized physx for CPU. Only with a recompile there were a clear jump in perf. Still not a nigh/day difference a lot of the code was serial and not executed on the SIMD.
There could be more optimization but one may question to which extend those calculations are SIMD friendly. Thing is those PC cpu are power of 2 more faster than say Xenon at that kind of of code.
If the devs kit includes really an A8 and the GPU is HD 6670 it would make a lot of sense for Sony to ship a custom Kaveri. Those APU should include Streamroller cores, it still not official but I expect those module to include 2 8 wide SIMD (instead of 4 wide) with only two modules the CPU should run around Xenon in every regard. I don't expect the CPU to be the more severe limitation (fillrate and plain shading power could be).
Some physics are obvious candidate for the GPU those, particles, etc. And for those stuffs GPU processing is already happening on the 360.
I agree with that, Sony has no Kinect for now, may ship a less powerful hardware, etc. But they should avoid a frontal battle with MSFT. They can't keep up with MSFT subsiding power.
They should keep their online policies and evolve PSN+ into something different from Live.
They should also keep the platform opened in regard to HDD upgrade.
The system should require a HDD but they should ship one SKU without it (so costumers buy there own ?use an old existing one) so they can ship a low price SKU.
They should go out for the core gamers on a budget and do it for cheap.
Then they should take time to come with properly designed and marketed peripheral. No rushing like imho Move looked to be.
Sony has to reclaim core gamers in Europe and Japan and take its chance in US (for those on a budget).
Looking at all the rumours about Sony's move towards using off the shelf PC hardware to create the PS4, and the fact that the Xbox has always been a PC at heart, I was struck by the realisation that Alienware has already beaten them to it.
The new X51 is basically a slightly more open spec console. If it had either a Sony or MS badge on it they could probably pass it off as the 'next' gen.!? Though it's slightly over priced. If the hardware was more tightly integrated with a fast linux kernel and the CPU and RAM dialled back some to reduce the cost? Could this be the benchmark to compare the next gen to?
The new X51 is basically a slightly more open spec console. If it had either a Sony or MS badge on it they could probably pass it off as the 'next' gen.!? Though it's slightly over priced. If the hardware was more tightly integrated with a fast linux kernel and the CPU and RAM dialled back some to reduce the cost? Could this be the benchmark to compare the next gen to?
The PC platform is restricted from peak efficiency by the need to maintain compatibility, both software and hardware-wise. I think there is more than enough of an advantage to using PC-derived parts that are tweaked for efficiency/performance as part of a custom design over using a straight PC-based design to justify the additional expense.
I heard rumour about x86 and AMD, not off-the-shelf PC hardware ... that is big difference in my opinion
I though it was AMD APU and AMD GPU even with minor modifications they are still off the shelf components. And considering Sonys financial situation and the Vita design (being off the shelf components) I highly doubt they will risk hundreds of millions this time round looking at highly customised parts.
Besides this time round they already have a hardcore gaming fanbase. Now they need to reach out to the casual gamer and beyond to users who don't game but are looking for media boxes that do lots of things that can either add these features to their TV's or can enhance their current experience. It's going to be all about the software and services and Sony are on the back foot to MS in this regard. I would hazard a guess that creating a competitive software platform is where they will be spending the money, not on exotic hardware.
The services on the 360, what are those exactly? Yes i am serious, i finally have a 360 and i would like to know what i am missing..
The PS4... it's all about being on time, and being able to communicate in a modern fashion via the internet, a competitive price and hardware that delivers from day one. If the rumours are true then the hardware may be based on PC components as in bigger or smalle "fragments" from GPUS and CPUS, but not anything that you can put in a pc today, it's still going to be custom designed and made just for the consoles. The difference is that it's not a CPU made from the ground up just to be in a console.
The reason we keep on using CPU's and GPU's as of today as reference is that we know what can be done today, with that in mind we can at least expect the same performance in the next gen but more likely more. This is all imho of course.
I was generalising in this regard. My PS3 primarily gets used for Netflix, iPlayer, Lovefilm etc by the family (90% of the time) and sometimes for games (me 10%). In terms of the services it delivers they are adequate for our expectations of it now. Obviously the 360 has Sky etc. And MS are working very hard at getting more and more media services ready for the 360 and onwards.
But since I got this gen of consoles I've also bought a iPad 2, iPad 3 , Kindle, Transformer Prime, and the Vita. Now the whole family have different expectations about what hardware can deliver in terms of services. And this is where, in general, Sony is weaker than MS; not through inability but through experience. MS is already having to fight the always on, socially networked, access everything fight with Windows 8, they've got a head start on Sony already.
Sony has never been a great software developer. They were always too interested in trying to lock you into particular hardware choices. I often think they should hand the entire of the interface design to a studio like Media Molecule. Little Big Desktop!
If Sony, as a whole, good leverage all it's media assets onto the SEN that would be a great start. Imagine being able to watch a movie on the day it was released but without having to queue up or miss out because you couldn't make it for some reason.
The Vita is the shining beacon of Sony's weakness. It's an absolutely amazing piece of kit but it's being completely let down by Sony and a complete drought of decent software and games.
I think it's going to be a little more generic than esoteric. No more CELL or Emotion Engine etc. But more RSX done properly. Sony simply hasn't got the finances or support to extend themselves like they did with the PS3. This whole generation is just going to be a lot safer and simpler.
Hi,
You really think that SONY is gonna dump all their works in the CELL and RSX and collaborate with AMD (who is not,by far, the best of the known CPU manufacturers these days)?What about their contracts with IBM and N'Vidia??
I'm really sceptical about that rumours .It implies billions dollars in R&D dumped ,just like that...Sounds like a nonsense ,financially ...
You really think that SONY is gonna dump all their works in the CELL and RSX and collaborate with AMD (who is not,by far, the best of the known CPU manufacturers these days)?What about their contracts with IBM and N'Vidia??
I'm really sceptical about that rumours .It implies billions dollars in R&D dumped ,just like that...Sounds like a nonsense ,financially ...
I think we had a discussion about Sony's incredible lack of vision and desire to always do things wrong in another thread, the short story, i agree with you that Sony have everything to win, problem is they arent trying to win. I don't agree with the software part, they can and should be able to create the needed software to bind everything together. And if needed they could find the needed partners/partner if they lack Cloud experience. If i was Sony i would do the following..
Call larry page and sergey brin and ask for a cloud
Sync every device they make from here and onwards with a cloud service, for free.
Use their significant strength in music and movie to push every device they make.
Open up everything they can about their products to 3rd party developers.
Be very open about every god damn standard there is in the world when it comes to streaming music/movies and share data. MKV? but of course!
In Microsofts case i still think that they like their little garden of theirs to much, they are like Apple focused on their own solutions, but unlike Apple Microsoft just makes some stuff that is piss poorly executed eventhough they should be able to make some great stuff.
They wonder why their media center isn't used by more people.. well, how about looking at the software?
I use it to record some stuff for the kids, then i jump through loops, downloads 3rd party apps and in general enjoy myself cutting my wrists on the file format that only microsoft uses, for no apparent reason other than they are being Microsoft
Just because i want to see those files on something that isn't a Windows Media PC. Media Player? should be renamed to Microsoft Format Player with the worst UI since DOS.As you might have guessed i am not to sure about Microsoft's ability to create a better experience with Windows 8
They should be able to. Microsoft excel at copying good ideas from other companies. there's nothing anyone else can do that MS couldn't implement and could be expected to do so if they go that route. Sony OTOH have terrible software and no proven track record of copying the best ideas invented by others, so I find it much harder to believe that Sony will offer a cohesive, easy, welcoming software platform from them.As you might have guessed i am not to sure about Microsoft's ability to create a better experience with Windows 8
Sounds like a $5.7 billion loss to me
Though obviously not all that is lost R&D, just a whole lot of mistakes and poor marketing.RSX isn't worth keeping as it stands and there isn't an awful lot of headroom to improve it. The best improvement would be to replace it with something else entirely. Which is what they are doing.
CELL is a favourite of mine and I kind of hoped Sony would continue with it for the PS4. Especially now that there are such mature libraries for it. But I think they want third party studios to hit the ground running and not rely on first party outings like they have for the PS3.
I use it to record some stuff for the kids, then i jump through loops, downloads 3rd party apps and in general enjoy myself cutting my wrists on the file format that only microsoft uses, for no apparent reason other than they are being Microsoft
As you might have guessed i am not to sure about Microsoft's ability to create a better experience with Windows 8
I'm surprised to see you post this. I would expect you to know better. DRM is the reason you have to deal with a custom file format for WMC recordings and it's also the reason that Sony embracing Matroska is a pipe dream. I'm unaware of a non-proprietary file format that supports the necessary DRM for content owners to allow for recording and sharing of recordings.
As an aside, I recently added a SSD to my desktop and it's incredible how snappy WMC is now. As good as any CE device I've used.
What is it that you liked so much about Cell?
For me, the brute peak performance specs. Massive on- and off-chip bandwidth and float performance. The latter hasn't been approached, much less matched by any other CPU until quite recently AFAIK.
It was a wild, reckless leap, a cutting edge silicon engineering effort. The geek in me really geeks out at stuff like that. Then the harsh reality comes crashing down of course, it wasn't the most ideal solution for a lot of problems, but it was a bold try to reach very high performance all the same. I will always applaud that.
From my perspective, AI programming\research, the accessible parallel architecture made it a perfect fit, doesn't matter how screwy it is. You get used to bending your head around exotic architectures, it's an occupational hazard.
So you can blame Turing for that one! I still have some Transputer boards knocking around somewhere and I was so tempted when Danny Hillis was selling off the Thinking Machines kit, if I'd had the space...
But I just like CELL for it's parallelism; as GPUs move towards CPU, the CELL was the only CPU moving towards GPU. It was a bold move in conservative market where old rope is exceedingly expensive.
From my perspective, AI programming\research, the accessible parallel architecture made it a perfect fit, doesn't matter how screwy it is. You get used to bending your head around exotic architectures, it's an occupational hazard.
So you can blame Turing for that one! I still have some Transputer boards knocking around somewhere and I was so tempted when Danny Hillis was selling off the Thinking Machines kit, if I'd had the space...
But I just like CELL for it's parallelism; as GPUs move towards CPU, the CELL was the only CPU moving towards GPU. It was a bold move in conservative market where old rope is exceedingly expensive.
AMD's APU roadmap as they implement their HSA initiatives looks an awful lot like a better implementation of the paradigm Cell was based on to me. I don't understand why people who were enthusiastic about Cell would be unimpressed by the direction AMD will be evolving their APU concept over the next 2 years.
I've no idea where AMD will take their APUs, I haven't bothered with checking out any roadmaps or nuttin because APUs are permanently relegated towards the lower end of the market so hence uninteresting to me (the antithesis of Cell), and also, AMD has disappointed repeatedly on CPU performance for years now and is bleeding money like crazy, so who knows if they'll even be around to make good on those plans.
You should, unless your OK with dismissing something from a position of ignorance.
