News & Rumours: Playstation 4/ Orbis *spin*

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bkilian said:
Well, yes, if you're talking the entire CELL as a unit, then even an 8 core jaguar would not be able to compete. The cell had about 150Gflops or more of compute. An 8 core Jag sits at about 100Gflops. Add a single CU from the GPU and you've exceeded the cell.

As for latency sensitive operations, sure it's going to be trickier, but they'll manage. Doesn't matter if it takes twice as long to return a result if you can throw 4x as many resources at it.
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They have dedicated audio, video and decompression units to fill in some of the slacks. ^_^
 
MikeR said:
Who knows... only MS can answer that. I was just wishful thinking out loud on the Jaguar capabilities of supporting 4 CUs on chip. It's somewhat (is) too late for Sony to make any dramatic changes to its current flavor. I'm more inclined to believe (97.9% sure) MS next system has a greater LC count - be it a AMD or IBM solution. The Kinect 2 is somewhat CPU intensive ...it's not hard to fathom the Win8 derivative reserving 1 core and Kinect reserving 1-2 cores alone.
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>_<"

If Sony wanted to increase the computing power, it would be DF's note about additional compute units. But what for ?

They should only include enough for their target use, and within the price and power profile.
 
Feels like someone here is a spy for Microsoft. ~ Grrr. Kinect with the Infrared Light & Camera for data acquisition is a brilliant more I wish Sony had followed. Maybe we can make better avatars with two Video Camera on the PS4?

I feel like the thread of thought here suggests AMD 6300.
It is the cause of my believing Sony could reconsider. then Reduce GDDR5 AND add L3.

Call this old school exposure. But my Barton core with the extra cache didn't slow down with XP updates. And I've got Phenom and Intel cpu's around here that I let sit because of how fast XP can be. There is even an Intel Pentium 233MHz (2MB off core L2 Cache) is kicking Windows 98SE from 2001 just fine. Cache. What is it good for? Longevity!

So, anyone here think maybe Sony needs a nudge, we'd rather have L3 & 6GB than no L3 and 8GB?
 
LuckyGuess said:
Feels like someone here is a spy for Microsoft. ~ Grrr. Kinect with the Infrared Light & Camera for data acquisition is a brilliant more I wish Sony had followed. Maybe we can make better avatars with two Video Camera on the PS4?
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You mean like PS Home, Mii and Kinect Avatar ?
It's probably the art direction that will impact avatar look most. :)

I think there are lot's of interesting uses for camera input. we haven't heard anything about bundled PSEye yet. Let's see what Sony include in the base package first.

I feel like the thread of thought here suggests AMD 6300.
It is the cause of my believing Sony could reconsider. then Reduce GDDR5 AND add L3.

Call this old school exposure. But my Barton core with the extra cache didn't slow down with XP updates. And I've got Phenom and Intel cpu's around here that I let sit because of how fast XP can be. There is even an Intel Pentium 233MHz (2MB off core L2 Cache) is kicking Windows 98SE from 2001 just fine. Cache. What is it good for? Longevity!

So, anyone here think maybe Sony needs a nudge, we'd rather have L3 & 6GB than no L3 and 8GB?
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I suppose they upgraded to 8GB based on game developers' feedback. Will have to see what they can do with my money. 8^{

Off the top of my head, we can run more things concurrently with a larger memory size. It should help in longevity as dataset becomes bigger, and people want more services while gaming.
 
patsu said:
What do you know about the secondary custom chip ?
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The PS4 specter vector? I'm not a 100% sure what it is at this stage... I'm 45% leaning towards physics offloading or helping out within that department. The other 55% is screaming a modified component for helping PS3 games work within the G/Cloud environment. ​
 
Thank everyone for their insights.
(Anguish gone. Suck it up and buy both systems... eventually. ~ Build info blew my mind.)

Summary:

PlayStation fan wonders strongly, if some of the GDRR5 budget, should still be directed toward L3 cache or eDRAM?

"Remember the PS2", It lived for nearly a decade, thanks to low latency Quad-Ported 1,024bit eDRAM.
IMO = Speed and low latency allows independent developers to compete with the magic of big production houses.

Sony...What happened to waiting? {{8 Cores, 4MB L2, 12MB L3, APU, 4-8GB DDR4?}}
29m:33s into this video http://www.gametrailers.com/netstorage/psmeeting/index.html
 
MikeR said:
The PS4 specter vector? I'm not a 100% sure what it is at this stage... I'm 45% leaning towards physics offloading or helping out within that department. The other 55% is screaming a modified component for helping PS3 games work within the G/Cloud environment. ​
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I knew it!

it's not like Sony to not have a Vector Processing Unit in it's console.


My Guess is it's just like the SPEs on the Cell can be used for all types of tasks whatever it's good at & should be a big part in the PlayStation4 Eye Image Processing that is if there isn't another chip for the PlayStation4 Eye.
 
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It kind of explains the comment made by amd that they will be selling a similar apu at the end of the year without the sony technology. I was wondering what that sony tech could be.
 
I still have a very hard time believing either Sony or MS would mess with clocks. After the RROD and YLOD debacle and 3 billion+ dollars spent in buying back good will; I would think both companies would learn a valuable lesson.

In any case, if Sony were to mysteriously clock up the CPU to 2 GHZ and the GPU to 1 GHZ, it would make PS4 eerily close to that magical 2.5 TF number. Here's to Sony figuring out the kinks, but I remain highly pessimistic mr. Mike.
 
thuway said:
I still have a very hard time believing either Sony or MS would mess with clocks. After the RROD and YLOD debacle and 3 billion+ dollars spent in buying back good will; I would think both companies would learn a valuable lesson.

In any case, if Sony were to mysteriously clock up the CPU to 2 GHZ and the GPU to 1 GHZ, it would make PS4 eerily close to that magical 2.5 TF number. Here's to Sony figuring out the kinks, but I remain highly pessimistic mr. Mike.
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Good to see you here & I don't think 1.8 to 2.0 GHz is going to be a problem for a CPU that was made for moblie hardware & besides where did the 1.6 numbers come from? if 1.8GHz is the standard Jaguar clockrate 2.0 GHz for a Console isn't pushing it too much.


but on another note if the Vector Processing Unit is as powerful as the SPUs this should push the PS4 above 2TFLOPs total.
 
onQ said:
Good to see you here & I don't think 1.8 to 2.0 GHz is going to be a problem for a CPU that was made for moblie hardware & besides where did the 1.6 numbers come from? if 1.8GHz is the standard Jaguar clockrate 2.0 GHz for a Console isn't pushing it too much.


but on another note if the Vector Processing Unit is as powerful as the SPUs this should push the PS4 above 2TFLOPs total.
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Nice to see you too buddy :). Trust me, I want PS4/Durango to hit 2.5 TF magic. I am sure you remember the old threads I highly doubt it, the current specs look nice.

I suspect Sony and MS are holding back clock rates because they do not want to play the game of overheating units. Perhaps, a few years down the line we could see the rates go up like they did with PSP, but for now, I doubt we'll hear a peep about it.

Mr. Cerny did mention 'nearly 2 TF', if Sony had any intention of surpassing 2 TF I am sure it would be a bulletpoint. 2.3 TF is a couple mhz away, but I doubt any one wants to play with a loaded revolver.
 
Speaking of the Vector Processing Unit I found a few post from someone going into a lot of detail about it on PlayStation® Community Forums

Is there anyone here who can back up what he is saying or shut it down?
:

JonathanCarabalo said:
The PS4's world-famous Vector co-processor

A truly innovative feature - the Playstation 4's world-famous vector co-processor. It's connected to a CPU core. It doesn't look like much on paper:


  • 100 million transistors
  • 300 mhz
  • $25 to produce
  • 25 nm production process
  • 16-way SIMD floating-point multiply-add instructions (512-bit)
  • 1024-bit load-store instructions
  • 512 Kbytes local memory
  • L2 cache of the X86 CPU
  • Write-to-memory feature - bypassing the CPU
  • Has a connection to the instruction dispatch of a regular x86 Jaguar core

It doesn't look like much, except for the 16-way multiply-adder! Besides that though - it only costs $25.00. "How can $25.00 worth of CPU logic improve the graphics pipeline?" Thus - top-secret alien technology. The world-famous vector co-processor. With it - developers can pull off pretty amazing effects, in real-time. I've already seen:

Full-screen per-pixel lighting! Pretty amazing - I haven't seen any games do that.
Extremely realistic fire effects
Extremely realistic ice simulation
Massive degrees of normal/displacement mapping
And this is just the start.
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http://community.us.playstation.com...IMD-Vector-Processor-Comparison/td-p/39499285


JonathanCarabalo said:
SIMD Vector Processor Comparison


Playstation 3 - Cell

  • Developed by IBM, Sony, and Toshiba - mostly IBM, at Austin Texas
  • Based on the Power4 architecture, the PowerPC 970 main core
  • 7, 128-bit Floating point multiply-adders
  • 256 Kbyte local memory for each SPU
  • 1 PowerPC 970-based main core
  • 512 Kbytes L2 cache connected to the 7 SPUs via a Token-Ring bus - which they used to inter-communicate as well
  • 200 GB/s EIB L2 cache bandwidth
  • 3.2 ghz clockrate
  • 230 million transistors
  • $400 million to develop, $100 to produce
  • 4-way SIMD



Playstation 4 - Vector Co-Processor

  • Developed by AMD and me (just a joke)
  • Based on the X86 architecture
  • 1, 512-bit floating point multiply-adder
  • 1.6 ghz clock rate
  • 512 Kbyte local buffer + the CPU core's main buffer
  • Connected to the bus directly via a bus-interface unit, and to a CPU core
  • About 300 million transistors
  • $0 to develop, $80 to produce
  • 307.2 GB/s buffer to execution unit
  • 16-way SIMD
  • 8 X86-based cores, each with 128-bit FP unit, L2 cache, and shared local memory

between pairs of CPUs and between all 8
Doesn't seem as powerful as Cell does it? In fact - it's way, way more powerful. I just found this an interesting comparison. This design is more powerful - as the CPUs do not require direct developer intervention to get them to perform, as opposed to Cell, which only worked if the developers specifically coded for it.

16-way SIMD makes it 4 times faster, per clock. I.e. to do 16 FP multiply-adds, it takes 8 cycles. 4 load-stores, followed by 4 multiply adds - the Cell. But for the Vector Co-Processor to do 16 FP mulitply-adds, it takes 1 cycles. The Out-of-Order, 512-bit load-stores load the data, while the Vector Co-Processor is performing the data. Thus - the Vector Co-Processor alone is equal to 8 SPUs.
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thuway said:
Mr. Cerny did mention 'nearly 2 TF', if Sony had any intention of surpassing 2 TF I am sure it would be a bulletpoint. 2.3 TF is a couple mhz away, but I doubt any one wants to play with a loaded revolver.
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I agree with this, mark clearly said "Nearly 2TF" so it seemed like they have it locked, but they are only a hair away from 2TF so it's very conceivable that something may get a minor tweak to take them over the line.

Also about your second point; i do not want them to overclock this to any significant degree IF they do decide to OC at all, i'd rather my PS4 be smaller, cooler and above all QUIETER than what the PS3 was/is.
 
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