[news] NVIDIA eDRAM and Sony PSP2?

[Arun]

News piece: click here.
Excerpt:

A quick look at NVIDIA's website will reveal that they are currently looking for eDRAM engineers. It's worth noting that they have never shipped any such design, and it seems extremely unlikely to us that anyone in the industry is planning to use eDRAM on products aimed at the PC market. As such, this could be a further confirmation that NVIDIA has the contract for Sony's PSP2 handheld.
[...]

And no, I haven't forgotten about the iPhone, one thing at a time!
As for EDRAM - assuming the PSP2's chip will be a mini-G8x/G9x derivative, and assuming a roughly VGA resolution with 16x CSAA (4xMSAA+coverage samples), that'd be 640x480x4x8/1024/1024 = 9.3MiB. Probably quite doable in that timeframe on 45nm, imo. That'd definitely be pretty cool for a handheld!


Uttar

 

[Rangers]

What's the point? PSP already looks better than anything in the portable world. Why throw more money at it?
PSP needs to just sit and gain momentum for a few years as well. I guess they are still scared of that rumored Xboy, if anything..

People seem to forget, historically handhelds have a ten year life cycle. Look at the original Gameboy..it languished for years before taking off again.

 

[Arun]

PSP needs to just sit and gain momentum for a few years as well

I wasn't aware 2009 wasn't a few years away. I'm glad you have a time machine, unlike the rest of us! Unless, of course, you were too lazy to read the full news post, and felt an urge to reply urgently. I fail to see why Sony would be aiming at something longer than a 5 years lifecycle.


Uttar

 

[Rangers]

Maybe if PSP sales start dropping off a cliff, I guess.

Seems like it would be a bad strategic move to me..unless PSP sales falter greatly and look unrecoverable. If anything it seems the PSP is gaining mini-momentum again lately.

We'll see. Lets say I dont expect it.. They have a ton of pricedropping left to do on PSP too (like, any)...

 

[Arwin]

Who knows what this is for ... maybe they were impressed with the Xenos' use of EDRAM and want to do more research. Or maybe they are just looking to integrate EDRAM into RSX for PS2 emulation.

 

[Arun]

Or maybe they are just looking to integrate EDRAM into RSX for PS2 emulation.

That would be Sony's job, not NVIDIA's, if they wanted to integrate an actual PS2 GPU in there. And for plain emulation, I doubt they'd need any EDRAM, but who knows that for sure, indeed. Given a variety of other hints, the PSP2 deal remains by far the most likely possibility though imo.


Uttar

 

[Arwin]

That would be Sony's job, not NVIDIA's, if they wanted to integrate an actual PS2 GPU in there. And for plain emulation, I doubt they'd need any EDRAM, but who knows that for sure, indeed. Given a variety of other hints, the PSP2 deal remains by far the most likely possibility though imo.

Yes, it does make sense.

 

[Bobbler]

I honestly don't think we'll see a new PSP until 2010 sometime, maybe even beyond that. There's a lot of life left in both handhelds -- '09 would be too soon for an upgrade.

It doesn't seem like there would be any reason to put out a new handheld in as soon as 2 year. Sure a lot can happen, but PSP still hasn't had any real price drops (only package changes). Nintendo seems quite content with keeping their DS as their handheld, so I doubt we'll see a new one from them (maybe another redesign and a dozen more colors and another price drop) any time soon. The handheld market seems like it's more suited for longer cycle times (as graphics aren't as important, making little reason for cycle upgrades).

eDram seems likely, as KK said reason there wasn't any in PS3 was because of the higher resolutions (making it still acceptable for PSP2, since it likely won't be hitting past 850x480 type resolutions). I'm not completely convinced this is necessarily for that though, but it certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility.

On a side note... anyone else get a little annoyed when websites/articles reference the supposed PSP redesign as the PSP2? (PSP with harddrive, or whatever the latest rumor is).

 

[Dave Baumann]

It's worth noting that they have never shipped any such design, and it seems extremely unlikely to us that anyone in the industry is planning to use eDRAM on products aimed at the PC market.

You're sure about this? Not in handheld designs? Not in PortalPlayer Designs?

 

[rendezvous]

You're sure about this? Not in handheld designs? Not in PortalPlayer Designs?

From what can be read from the specifications of availible chips for handelds, including PortalPlayer, at nvidia's site, all the embedded memory is SRAM.

 

[Arun]

You're sure about this? Not in handheld designs? Not in PortalPlayer Designs?

GoForce and PortalPlayer designs (at least, the ones which are documented) never used eDRAM, AFAIK. And yes, I did read every single one of the handheld PDFs from NVIDIA and ATI a few months ago, so I hope I'd have noticed such a thing!

I fail to see any other product line that might have used EDRAM, either, unless you are thinking of non-public information here - which I wouldn't be aware of, then.


Uttar

 

[Nappe1]

News piece: click here.
Excerpt:

A quick look at NVIDIA's website will reveal that they are currently looking for eDRAM engineers. It's worth noting that they have never shipped any such design, and it seems extremely unlikely to us that anyone in the industry is planning to use eDRAM on products aimed at the PC market. As such, this could be a further confirmation that NVIDIA has the contract for Sony's PSP2 handheld.
[...]

And no, I haven't forgotten about the iPhone, one thing at a time!
As for EDRAM - assuming the PSP2's chip will be a mini-G8x/G9x derivative, and assuming a roughly VGA resolution with 16x CSAA (4xMSAA+coverage samples), that'd be 640x480x4x8/1024/1024 = 9.3MiB. Probably quite doable in that timeframe on 45nm, imo. That'd definitely be pretty cool for a handheld!


Uttar

No wonder they were so interested about Bitboys...

 

[Arun]

No wonder they were so interested about Bitboys...

They being who, here? Sony, NVIDIA, ATI? And I'd expect the Bitboys part of ATI to have been in the running for that contract, yeah - this would point towards NV thinking they got it, but perhaps not quite so - who knows.


Uttar

 

[Nappe1]

They being who, here? Sony, NVIDIA, ATI? And I'd expect the Bitboys part of ATI to have been in the running for that contract, yeah - this would point towards NV thinking they got it, but perhaps not quite so - who knows.


Uttar

the point of my post was supposed to be the fact that nVidia had an offer from Bitboys as well, when the boys decided to go with the ATI. When nVidia noticed that they lost the deal, they went for getting something close enough to Nokia, and found Hybrid Graphics, that was a big name in API / Driver development.

 

[Arun]

When nVidia noticed that they lost the deal, they went for getting something close enough to Nokia, and found Hybrid Graphics, that was a big name in API / Driver development.

Yeah, that makes fair enough sense... Although they probably benefit from Hybrid as much if not more than they would have from Bitboys imo, since API/Driver development was faaar from NVIDIA's forte in the handheld space.

Not that they wouldn't have benefit a fair bit from having another distinct handheld development team, though - that's always an order of magnitude faster (and better?) than trying to build the talent yourself. Arguably, this forces them to try to maximize synergies with the PC GPU team, since they're likely not big enough to do things from scratch themselves for ultra-programmable architectures.


Uttar

 

[Dave Baumann]

GoForce and PortalPlayer designs (at least, the ones which are documented) never used eDRAM, AFAIK. And yes, I did read every single one of the handheld PDFs from NVIDIA and ATI a few months ago, so I hope I'd have noticed such a thing!

http://www.nvidia.com/object/hh_compare.html

 

[Arun]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/hh_compare.html

Indeed - well, you can't blame me for not being aware of new designs!

 

[Dave Baumann]

Actually, that wasn't quite the point.

 

[akira888]

People seem to forget, historically handhelds have a ten year life cycle. Look at the original Gameboy..it languished for years before taking off again.

The original Game Boy was the exception; both of its successors, the Game Boy Color and the Game Boy Advance, only had an effective life span of about three or four years as Nintendo's flagship handheld. As for non-Nintendo platforms, neither the Game Gear, Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket (Mono or Color), Wonderswan (Mono or Color), Gizmondo, Zodiac, nor Game.com lasted for more than five years as a serious competitor to the Game Boy line.

 

[geekcomputing]

atari lynx... now that was a GREAT system.

great hardware and design, lacked the 3d party support.