Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [2018]

[mpg1]

I'd be impressed if they even manage to hit 12 TFlops...

In order to hit 14 there can't be the 64CU limit and they'd need to take the Microsoft approach towards X1X where they engineered to handle much higher clocks than we were seeing in consoles...certainly won't be happening for $399.

 

[cheapchips]

Ooo, I saw this in today and can really go overboard in cluelessness. MS have Win 10 running on and various compilers available for their E2 EDGE processor. As I understand it, it make the CPU more GPU like in term of how it scales. Devs just have to recompile for it, so not an exotic beast for them like Cell was.

I'm going to go with MS rolling their own EDGE CPU which will enable multi TFLOP CPU performance.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/18/microsoft_e2_edge_windows_10/

GPU from Qualcomm, just for extra giggles.

(According to the article it's all running on FPGAs at the moment so waaaay too early for nextgen. Might be useful on the streaming server side in a few more years? Azure will presumably have a sea of virtual Xboxs running on them)

 

[anexanhume]

IIRC with a die size similar to the PS4/X1 on 7nm, we can reasonably expect an 8 core Zen and an RX580.

What impact would they have on clockspeeds though? Since 7nm allows you to clock higher with the same TDP but an APU necessitates lower clockspeeds, would the clockspeeds of an APU-bound RX580 be roughly those of the current 14nm RX580?

ARM has said clockspeed growth is not there. Most likely due to interconnect parasitics taking over due to Cu dimensions with the protective coating (why Intel went to Cobalt). Speed as a function of power dissipation improves though, so that is helpful.

 

[iroboto]

I'd be impressed if they even manage to hit 12 TFlops...

In order to hit 14 there can't be the 64CU limit and they'd need to take the Microsoft approach towards X1X where they engineered to handle much higher clocks than we were seeing in consoles...certainly won't be happening for $399.

Navi's thing according to old slide decks were
'scalability'
'next gen memory'

I'm going to assume 'scalability' should remove the 64 CU limit, and that 'next gen memory' is GDDR6

 

[ultragpu]

Yield mainly. The higher the clocks the less chips you'll have that can meet that requirement. If you have 10 chips per wafer, and you're losing several chips per wafer due to yield of not meeting those clockspeeds then the cost per chip skyrockets. Then the cooling requirements won't be cheap the higher you go.

Just go the higher CU quantity route if higher clock speed isn't feasible. It's not gonna be $399 let's face it, we are at a point settling for $399 is an auto fail due to the lack of performance for that value, so Company would be forced to launch a more expensive console if simply to avoid dead on arrival of a cheaper console. They've done it with PS3 and Xbox One, but the only difference now is to rectifying their critical flaws such as wasting money on Kinect or exotic/hard to program architecture.
$499 is pretty much a lock now I reckon, it has to.

 

[ultragpu]

I'd be impressed if they even manage to hit 12 TFlops...

In order to hit 14 there can't be the 64CU limit and they'd need to take the Microsoft approach towards X1X where they engineered to handle much higher clocks than we were seeing in consoles...certainly won't be happening for $399.

More expensive but with a reasonable amount of power to justify it is certainly more attractive than you think. Of course not factoring the competition's strategy.

 

[anexanhume]

Just go the higher CU quantity route if higher clock speed isn't feasible. It's not gonna be $399 let's face it, we are at a point settling for $399 is an auto fail due to the lack of performance for that value, so Company would be forced to launch a more expensive console if simply to avoid dead on arrival of a cheaper console. They've done it with PS3 and Xbox One, but the only difference now is to rectifying their critical flaws such as wasting money on Kinect or exotic/hard to program architecture.
$499 is pretty much a lock now I reckon, it has to.

MS set a precedent with the XB1X for sure. If they execute to that same standard and price point, 14 TF is doable IMO. However, they had to design it knowing their volume would be in the low millions. Can those design concepts scale to tens of millions?

 

[ultragpu]

MS set a precedent with the XB1X for sure. If they execute to that same standard and price point, 14 TF is doable IMO. However, they had to design it knowing their volume would be in the low millions. Can those design concepts scale to tens of millions?

They sure can ride it out for a few years while their last gen consoles provide them steady income, then refresh with cheaper Slim version.

 

[iroboto]

Just go the higher CU quantity route if higher clock speed isn't feasible. It's not gonna be $399 let's face it, we are at a point settling for $399 is an auto fail due to the lack of performance for that value, so Company would be forced to launch a more expensive console if simply to avoid dead on arrival of a cheaper console. They've done it with PS3 and Xbox One, but the only difference now is to rectifying their critical flaws such as wasting money on Kinect or exotic/hard to program architecture.
$499 is pretty much a lock now I reckon, it has to.

more CUs = die size costs. So there are absolute limitations here for those reasons. Yea I'm also thinking $499

 

[Lalaland]

I still see $399 as a price point both will target for mass market adoption. The XB1X was MS throwing in the towel on this gen and aiming for the minority of users for whom power matters. Neither MS nor Sony are likely to be satisfied with just that fraction of the market for their next box. Complicating all this is that the last data point we had MS managed to blow off not just their foot but the entire lower half when they launched a $499 media thing that was both more expensive and demonstrably slower than the competition.

Sony had the pricier box in the Xbox360 gen and it cost them, MS had the pricier box in the PS4 era and it cost them, it's a brave engineer who walks into a meeting and says "Hey I know this didn't work for the last two gens but this time consumers will care about the Flops"

 

[anexanhume]

They sure can ride it out for a few years while their last gen consoles provide them steady income, then refresh with cheaper Slim version.

You can ride out high costs, but are there genuine yield issues that would limit them ramping production? At some point, that has to become a factor.

I still see $399 as a price point both will target for mass market adoption. The XB1X was MS throwing in the towel on this gen and aiming for the minority of users for whom power matters. Neither MS nor Sony are likely to be satisfied with just that fraction of the market for their next box. Complicating all this is that the last data point we had MS managed to blow off not just their foot but the entire lower half when they launched a $499 media thing that was both more expensive and demonstrably slower than the competition.

Sony had the pricier box in the Xbox360 gen and it cost them, MS had the pricier box in the PS4 era and it cost them, it's a brave engineer who walks into a meeting and says "Hey I know this didn't work for the last two gens but this time consumers will care about the Flops"

It’s a good price point, but when you factor in inflation and the fact that the leading selling “performance” console hasn’t launched at the same price in NA for three generations in a row historically (PS4 and X360 were both 399, PS2 and PS1 were 299, NES and SNES were 199), it could be time for a MSRP bump.

 

[iroboto]

I still see $399 as a price point both will target for mass market adoption. The XB1X was MS throwing in the towel on this gen and aiming for the minority of users for whom power matters. Neither MS nor Sony are likely to be satisfied with just that fraction of the market for their next box. Complicating all this is that the last data point we had MS managed to blow off not just their foot but the entire lower half when they launched a $499 media thing that was both more expensive and demonstrably slower than the competition.

Sony had the pricier box in the Xbox360 gen and it cost them, MS had the pricier box in the PS4 era and it cost them, it's a brave engineer who walks into a meeting and says "Hey I know this didn't work for the last two gens but this time consumers will care about the Flops"

This is true, the mid gen refreshes aren't doing all that poorly imo. So 8TF target seems like a mass market target imo. Bring the costs down and the yield up.

 

[steveOrino]

$499 launch is absurd. This industry is price sensitive on upfront cost, always has been, but this community weighs hardware power more than other places so I get it. Getting a large install base as quickly as possible is the only thing that matters. The only thing holding this generation back was the dog shit Jaguar CPUs so you won't need enormous GPU dies to make a huge improvement this time around.

 

[iroboto]

$499 launch is absurd. This industry is price sensitive on upfront cost, always has been, but this community weighs hardware power more than other places so I get it. Getting a large install base as quickly as possible is the only thing that matters. The only thing holding this generation back was the dog shit Jaguar CPUs so you won't need enormous GPU dies to make a huge improvement this time around.

having said this, your prediction is?

 

[vipa899]

I'd be impressed if they even manage to hit 12 TFlops...

A Titan V is about 15 Tflops, 1080ti 11+ tflops, both released late 2017. PS5 or the next xbox launching somewhere 2020 could have much more power then that?

 

[Xbat]

I feel they will subsidise the hardware by quite a big margin for the first year or two, they make way to much money from the network. Microsoft has stated they will have the most powerful console from now on, which means it's going to be an arms race.

There's no way it's going to be comparable to a 1080 ti though. Unless Navi is something special.

 

[anexanhume]

A Titan V is about 15 Tflops, 1080ti 11+ tflops, both released late 2017. PS5 or the next xbox launching somewhere 2020 could have much more power then that?

AMD TF =/= NVIDIA TLFOPS. Generally AMD has more TF/Watt but less perf/Watt.

I feel they will subsidise the hardware by quite a big margin for the first year or two, they make way to much money from the network. Microsoft has stated they will have the most powerful console from now on, which means it's going to be an arms race.

There's no way it's going to be comparable to a 1080 ti though. Unless Navi is something special.

No way? The next gen APUs may well have more raw compute than Vega 64 and 1.25-1.75x the memory bandwidth of 1080 ti. If they can’t beat it with that, I’d be surprised.

 

[vipa899]

AMD TF =/= NVIDIA TLFOPS. Generally AMD has more TF/Watt but less perf/Watt.

That would put a Titan V at how many 'amd tflops'?

 

[Flappy Pannus]

There's no way it's going to be comparable to a 1080 ti though. Unless Navi is something special.

I would absolutely expect at least 1080ti level performance in a 2020 system, even at $399. That's not outrageous at all.

 

[steveOrino]

having said this, your prediction is?

$399