Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [2018]

[MrFox]

It works well for nintendo because their main home consoles are not powerful. Switch can successfully replace a wiiu and 3ds at the same time. It's pure genius, and they needed a clean break with no BC from either predecessors.

A portable ps5 in 2019 would have at best half the power of a $199 PS4 in portable mode but cost 499, and would never be reasonably good as a home console without pretty much an entire second console APU in the dock. It would cost as much as two separate devices.

I see no way to make a portable device without crippling the home console price/performance or the 200W power available.

 

[Picao84]

It's not a LEGO approach though. It's a cost-effective versatility between console and handheld that doesn't force cost/compromise on all shoppers, in a simple binary choice.

It's akin having a console and a handheld as two separate devices, both with the same $200 SOC and RAM. Separate off the SOC and RAM into a transportable package that can be put into either a console shell or a handheld shell, and you save $200 off the cost of ownership for both devices. I think that's a very easy sell.

You could even go one better and have a port in a TV, so sell a TV with a PS port to dock the PS5Core and save buying a $200 console body. So, for example, you could buy:

$500 console
$400 handheld

...In a conventional setup, or...

$500 console with PS5Core
$200 handheld body

...in the new model, for a saving of 22%, or if you were getting a TV too...

$1000 TV
$500 console
$400 handheld

...In a conventional setup, or...

$1000 TV with PS5 port
$400 handheld with PS5Core

...fitting the PS5Core straight into the TV and not needing a console body, saving over 25%.

Would never actually happen, but seems quite a cool idea. I've long wanted to do this with power tools. They all use a motor and all keep duplicating this cost where you could just swap the same motor into bodies - far more efficient and economical.

My LEGO comment was concerning the idea to have third parties releasing their own versions of the peripherals.

 

[iroboto]

OK maybe 1.5x is a bit overboard, how about the size of Xbox One or slightly larger? Millennials are all about thicc aren't they .

lol.
From my understanding of things, both externally and internally, it was thicker because they were behind schedule not because they wanted it to be.
Xbox One S is what they wanted to release. Xbox One original was a complete rush job.
Their cooling solution was over engineered to ensure they wouldn't suffer over heating issues as a result of rushing.

 

[Mobius1aic]

Would never actually happen, but seems quite a cool idea. I've long wanted to do this with power tools. They all use a motor and all keep duplicating this cost where you could just swap the same motor into bodies - far more efficient and economical.

They do the same with batteries. Each power tool company has a walled garden/family of tools made to run off the same proprietary power packs to encourage more purchases with them.

 

[Grall]

The original PS3 was a turbine!

Original PS3's impeller was much larger diameter than any current PS4 model, meaning its sound was lower pitched, and thus less intrusive to human ears. Also, I don't recall it as particularly loud, maybe you had a unit with poor (or poorly applied) thermal paste. My launch PS3 was quieter than my launch PS4...

I've long wanted to do this with power tools. They all use a motor and all keep duplicating this cost where you could just swap the same motor into bodies - far more efficient and economical.

I suspect different power tools might require different characteristics of motor - IE some high RPM, another low RPM/high torque and so on. One size fits all isn't always the most efficient approach...

 

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

It works well for nintendo because their main home consoles are not powerful. Switch can successfully replace a wiiu and 3ds at the same time. It's pure genius, and they needed a clean break with no BC from either predecessors.

A portable ps5 in 2019 would have at best half the power of a $199 PS4 in portable mode but cost 499, and would never be reasonably good as a home console without pretty much an entire second console APU in the dock. It would cost as much as two separate devices.

I see no way to make a portable device without crippling the home console price/performance or the 200W power available.

In reference to half the power of PS4 - the Raven Ridge 2400g is 1.4TF. If memory serves, both CPU and GPU are clocked higher than the PS4's, and the whole APU draws something like 54W under load.

So a shrink to 7nm should allow for greater than PS4 performance in laptop form factor, when portable.

But what are the upper limits that could be achieved? The limits when docked?

 

[Mobius1aic]

The 2400G easily boosts to 1250 MHz to hit the 1.76 TFLOP mark. It just needs the memory bandwidth to match the PS4.

 

[MrFox]

The 2400g 43GB/s versus 176GB/s is a problem if the goal is to run the same code. Around an additional 5W floor that is difficult to reduce (memory, display backlight, m/b stuff) , then it's difficult to have good battery life for anything above 10W average from the main SoC. Unless the console is as huge as a laptop and $999. The 2400g is 65W TDP. I think overall a ps4 equivalent performance, let alone one that can rum the same code, is a very big leap.

 

[Anarchist4000]

The 2400g 43GB/s versus 176GB/s is a problem if the goal is to run the same code. Around an additional 5W floor that is difficult to reduce (memory, display backlight, m/b stuff) , then it's difficult to have good battery life for anything above 10W average from the main SoC. Unless the console is as huge as a laptop and $999. The 2400g is 65W TDP. I think overall a ps4 equivalent performance, let alone one that can rum the same code, is a very big leap.

An AMD variation of KabyG with a single small stack of HBM and shared memory pools might manage it. Power and bandwidth could be achieved in a small form factor, the cost and storage however would be interesting. Less memory capacity with faster flash might be viable. HBM+LPDDR4 perhaps?

 

[Magnum_Force]

I think the portable future console is the way to go, I mentioned it in a post a while back.

I'm in the process of trying to frankenstein a PS4 Slim into a portable console. I've got a 200w/154wh power pack with an AC converter built into it, and have found a tablet that actually has a HDMI IN port (these are like gold dust).

The PS4 slim apparently uses around 88 Watts on most games, so I should hopefully get about 2 hours out of the power pack.

I looked at getting a gaming laptop that would suit my needs, but all of the gaming laptop I looked at had dire performance when not plugged in - they were more or less just desktop replacements.

Another possible project of mine is a Ryzen 2400g in a mini itx mobile and the smallest case I can find. I'll also be looking to build a Dock which houses a bigger hdd, an optical drive and also a psu and Gfx card, kind of what I think a future PS4 will look like.

 

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

I think the portable future console is the way to go, I mentioned it in a post a while back.

I'm in the process of trying to frankenstein a PS4 Slim into a portable console. I've got a 200w/154wh power pack with an AC converter built into it, and have found a tablet that actually has a HDMI IN port (these are like gold dust).

The PS4 slim apparently uses around 88 Watts on most games, so I should hopefully get about 2 hours out of the power pack.

I looked at getting a gaming laptop that would suit my needs, but all of the gaming laptop I looked at had dire performance when not plugged in - they were more or less just desktop replacements.

Another possible project of mine is a Ryzen 2400g in a mini itx mobile and the smallest case I can find. I'll also be looking to build a Dock which houses a bigger hdd, an optical drive and also a psu and Gfx card, kind of what I think a future PS4 will look like.

Impressive. Good luck! I once began working on turning a PSP into a clamshell. Then Sony released the PSPGo and rendered my endeavour basically pointless.

What form is your project taking? How extensively is the PS4 dismantled?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm in the process of trying to frankenstein a PS4 Slim into a portable console. I've got a 200w/154wh power pack with an AC converter built into it, and have found a tablet that actually has a HDMI IN port (these are like gold dust).

What tablet has the HDMI in? Always struck me as an obvious functionality, a screen you can use with cameras or whatever, and I'm shocked I've never found a tablet with HDMI - not even high end ones like the Surface Pro. HDMI in remains the reserve of overpriced video monitors.

As for your power pack, will that be discrete and attached by a wire? Or is it a handheld that doubles up with weight-training as you play?

 

[iroboto]

What tablet has the HDMI in? Always struck me as an obvious functionality, a screen you can use with cameras or whatever, and I'm shocked I've never found a tablet with HDMI - not even high end ones like the Surface Pro. HDMI in remains the reserve of overpriced video monitors.

As for your power pack, will that be discrete and attached by a wire? Or is it a handheld that doubles up with weight-training as you play?

Probably those tablets for Raspberry Pis are miniature screens with HDMI in.

This one comes to mind
https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ...V3LrACh2y-ANXEAYYBiABEgJBNvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

[ultragpu]

So as far as NV having an efficiency advantage in TF performance whether due to better driver or OS, would the same amount of AMD TFs in a console optimized environment match to those NVs or are AMD TFs fundamentally inferior?

 

[_cat]

You mean, if forexample both @14TF Vega64 and GTX1080Ti
in optimal circumstances whould deliver same Game-Performance.
Well such will likely never happen because optimizations whould be so deep that you will more or less end up with 2 seperate games.

You need to avoid weaknesses 100%.

I´m curious to reading a good answer, too.

 

[iroboto]

So as far as NV having an efficiency advantage in TF performance whether due to better driver or OS, would the same amount of AMD TFs in a console optimized environment match to those NVs or are AMD TFs fundamentally inferior?

drivers should only really affect the CPU.
The APIs on console are pretty low level as it is, so it's up to the developers to push performance.

as for nvidia vs AMD. At best, without offending anyone, we can say that the bottlenecks are not in the same areas.
But console developers can code around bottlenecks (really designing the whole game and engine around a specific profile), maximizing the GPU and therefore getting close to it's theoretical maxima.

The idea of NV FLOPS vs AMD FLOPs isn't that their FLOPS are any different, FLOP is a unit of measurement, but people tend to describe a whole cards performance around it's FLOP number, with the expectation that the entire card has it's entire pipeline built around that compute number, but that isn't really reflective of reality. If AMD cards are bottlenecking elsewhere due to the way the game is designed, then it can never leverage it's full resources.

But that shouldn't be as big of a crux of an argument on console.

 

[Magnum_Force]

I did have a look at the rasberry pi monitors, but a most of the screens were low resolution. Eventually I stumbled onto this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B076VCW1CM/?tag=b3d-21

For the price its not bad value - the Android OS is outdated and the HDMI IN only allows for a max of 1080p at 30hz (720p is 60hz however), but it's the only tablet I have found that supports HDMI IN.

As for the power bank, that will be a vented bag along with the PS4 (or the mini itx pc) and a thin hdmi cable will connect to the screen, and the screen will be attached to a game pad. The vented bag will most like be a customised (butchered) hard cover laptop case.

I'm hope Sony (or ms) jump on this idea and make a proper portable of the current gen in a similar style/format - portable doesn't need to mean handheld in the conventional sense.

 

[monstercameron]

Maybe Nvidia’s rtx will be a changing point in the industry. If it’s as good as I hope (real time ray/path tracing) then that might be the future going forward and consoles could go to nvidia. As much as I’m in the amd camp, they aren’t innovating anymore, I mean what have they done since hbm 2 years ago?

 

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

Yeah, it's strange that a laptop style portable console never received any focus, considering that the PSOne had an official screen accessory, and the GameCube was built to take a battery pack and screen.

Sony may be best testing the waters with an iteration of an already successful platform, and, come 2019, release a PS4Micro in the vein of PSTV/PSVitaTV (only, not shit) :

-- No HDD or ODD --
Just a small SD card for local storage, but plenty of USB 3 type C ports.

-- Improve PS4 interoperability part 1 --
Let one PS4 access another via Remote Play.
You can sort of do this at the moment via Share Play, but only sort of, meaning you can't login to someone else's PS4 and access your own, primary PS4, whereas you can do so with your Vita/smartphone.

-- Improve PS4 interoperability part 2 --
If you place a game disk in your primary PS4, you may login on a secondary PS4, establish a link with your primary console, and download game data to the secondary console. As long as both consoles are connected to PSN, the primary console has the disk inserted, and the primary console is going unused or being used by another user, then the secondary console can play the disk based game.

-- Release a laptop/tablet style enclosure --
Personally, I'd prefer a laptop style to protect the screen and more easily accommodate a decently sized HDD. Include dual cameras at the top and some wireless streaming solution for PSVR, and you have a compelling accessory IMO.

Then, transition the PS4Pro to a mass market price, and make it a solid hub. Maybe take the opportunity to include a UHD BR drive. Definitely improve its streaming capabilities, up to 4K60 streaming and recording, simultaneously.

At this point, PS+ will no longer provide PS3 and PSVita games, so use the revenue and time before the PS5 to evolve the network:

-- Turn access to the network into a two tier system: PS+ and PS+Now. In other words, rebrand PSNow, and functionally alter it, so a subscription to PSNow will also get you all of the features of PS+.

-- Make PS+Now more functional than it is at present. It needs to operate as though you're renting your own PS3/4/4Pro, and allow you to play any content that you've bought, as well as its current Netflix-style library.

-- Bring back a refined version of PS Home, and make it a natural interface for all system functions: launching games, going to the store, meeting up with friends etc. If you're subscribed to PS+Now, you can enter Home and only suspend your current game.

That lays the groundwork for a PlayStation in every room, and on the go. And it does so without betting the farm on a new platform.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I think the portable future console is the way to go, I mentioned it in a post a while back.

I'm in the process of trying to frankenstein a PS4 Slim into a portable console. I've got a 200w/154wh power pack with an AC converter built into it, and have found a tablet that actually has a HDMI IN port (these are like gold dust).

The PS4 slim apparently uses around 88 Watts on most games, so I should hopefully get about 2 hours out of the power pack.

If you're going to take apart the PS4 Slim, you're probably much better off taking the PSU and the AC converter out, and use DC converters instead.
Otherwise you'll be wasting some 15% of your battery pack converting from DC to AC and then another 15% at the PSU from AC to DC.

According to ifixit's teardown, the PSU only has two DC voltage outputs, 4.8V and 12V. There's a chance that your power pack has one of these voltages as configurable output (or even both, which would save you a ton of hassle).
Beware that 200W is quite a bit below the Pro PSU's capability, though.

Best of luck to your project!