Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [post E3 2019, pre GDC 2020] [XBSX, PS5]

I think it's a bit silly to assume the PS5 will only has the same number of CUs as the PSPro did 4 years and a process node earlier. It's also kinda obnoxious for them to repeat the "Cerny only talked about audio retracing" crap that was debunked by the Wired author like the same day the article was published.

 

Disgusting, absolutely disgusting, I'm horrified why would you be content with 10.5 TF. It might be manageable at the start of the gen but few years later you'll see framrate drops, dialed down settings, lowered res, blurry iq and so on, that extra 2 TF you would have gotten if they pushed it a bit more would be sorely missed. A 12-13 TF console is a 4k console while a 10 TF is not. Ain't no forum dwellers is gonna take my TFs away from me.

 

A lot of this nonsense is based on rumors or conjecture and then regurgitated all across gaming forums. As I stated many times, it's cool to speculate and post others speculation, but don't take speculation (especially your own brand of speculation) as being the truth. If Sony or Microsoft hasn't confirmed anything, then everything should be considered speculation at this point, including rumored developers stating which system is performing better.

 

ha ha ha... Cooooostsssss.... you have to fight eventually against a 129 dollars (or even 69) Stadia.... It cannot be expensive this time. Sorry....

 

It was also reported by Benji ("near 13TF). Knowing TDP and die size of the chip, I am absolutely sure you are not gonna see Navi at 13TF in consoles.

 

not to mention that the times where consoles were squished to the max to get some little extra performance are gone for good. Current consoles are so powerful and have so much memory, similar unified architectures, that, while they underperform compared to PC, developers just have to tweak a few settings here and there and call it a day when they port a game.Hence you can hardly distinguish a PS4 capture from a Xbox screengrab, save from a shadow and a solitary leaf of a tree that is present in one version but not on the other.

As for DF, what still holds me spellbound is DF Retro, 'cos many details that remained a mystery about games I discussed over a lot with fellow forumers, like the admired Gran Turismo 4 could come to light someday. Like the eternal debate, which was better, Forza or GT4 and its 60fps? Was GT4 actually running at 60fps or was it wishful thinking?

 

Nothing silly in that. Mind you, node reduction from 16nm to 7nm was not as big as numbers suggest (28nm to 16nm was bigger one), and RDNA arch has bigger CUs then GCN had, so comparison is really not simple one.

Lets work with what we know. 40CU 5700XT GPU has 9.8TF at 1905MHz and die size of 255mm2. This means that, with 8 core Zen2, your die size will already be ~325mm2. If there is RT hardware included in this (and there seems to be), you can add another 20-30mm2. In that case we have a die size that is bigger then PS4 and PS4Pro ones, as well as more expensive one (when looked at $/mm2 7nm process is more expensive one then 28nm and 16nm node).

People said TF don't matter because Nvidia cards with considerably less TF perform better then GCN with more TF. Now we get NAVI cards that are kinda following this philosophy with 9.75TF NAVI being faster then 12.5TF GCN, which means consoles will be packing more performance then VEGA56 cards that where said to be very hard to achieve a year ago. So I think clinging on CU number is a wrong way to go. If indeed these GPUs will be clocked so high (1.8GHz), then 40CUs is more then enough and more then was expected actually.

 

One possible explanation of how project scarlett can be 4x the power of xb1x:

fp16 performance of xb1x : 6tflops
fp16 performance of scarlett : 24tflops

Which means the single precision performance of scarlett is 12tflops.

 

Further comments from Phil Spencer have stated this is CPU speedup, which makes sense.

1.6 GHz Jaguar:
1.5 * 1.05 * 1.15 IPC improvements
2.0 * clock improvement.

Roughly 4x.

https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/breaking-down-what-we-know-about-the-next-xbox-1203239065/

Some good content here on TSMC's 7nm process.


This talks about identifying yield issues and fixing them. This is important because Sony/MS can apply things learned on Navi and Zen 2 by virtue of debuting next year.


https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2408...ls-2nd-gen-7nm-and-the-snapdragon-855-dtco/2/

More importantly, there is a 2nd generation 7nm process that has a 5% performance gain with the exact same design rules and toolset (no EUV). This is not 7nm+ EUV or 6nm. I see no reason consoles wouldn't benefit from these enhancements.

What's important here is that the y-delta is bigger than 5% once you get past the mid-point on the x-axis. That is, if you maintain the same speed, you'll get back more than 5% in power. 5% on a 180W GPU would be a total of 8W. David Schor confirmed this is available now. The question is whether Navi and/or Zen 2 already use it.

 

Still, even the 2nd gen 7nm seems to be far from the node's specs announced by TSMC.

 

So now we have two tech speculation threads. Yay!

 

Hyperthreading + Speculative execution?

Vulnerable to meltdown

 

Nope.

 

Is it true that three has never been more than 4x CPU increase?

 

Regarding the use of words from Mark Cerny in the Wired interview "The GPU, a custom variant of Radeon’s Navi family, will support ray tracing"
He didn't use words like integrated or hardware ray tracing. That has been discussed here. He later said “we are cloud-gaming pioneers, and our vision should become clear as we head toward launch” then there is this slide and text from AMD under cloud: Could it be that Sony have chosen ray tracing support only via cloud? He also talked about using ray tracing for sound localisation in games, so I don't know, just speculating.

 

Pretty sure X360 CPU and Cell (especially that one) where comfortably 4x faster.

 

The in order execution and issues with multi threading probably muted whatever benefit the PS3 and 360 CPUs launched with.

 

The 4-10x clock speed advantage was negated? I think not.

 

I believe Matt from Resetera confirmed that it was hardware ray tracing to calm 60 pages of back and forth.

 

If Sony's machine is going to be more powerful, I wonder at what point it would make more sense to go chiplet instead of APU? Zen 2 chiplet yields are supposed to be in the ~70%, but that's for only a 74mm² die, and the 251mm² size of Navi will grow with any serious RT hardware in addition to more CUs. Also, I do not see either MS or Sony going ~1900 MHz GPU unless AMD makes some real power consumption breakthroughs with 2nd Gen Navi. The CU count is going to grow substantially if 10 to 12 theoretical TFLOPS is the goal.

With that in mind, the 331mm² Radeon VII die is probably at the current upper practical limit for 7nm as far as yields go, and what if 2nd Gen Navi creeps up to such a number? The addition of 2x Zen 2 CCXs, and IO die functions, will bring such an APU well above 450nm². My bet is Sony (and MS) go wide (but slower) with the CUs. Until yields pan out to make a full APU viable, going chiplet will benefit yields, while still making it possible to use harvested CPU & GPU dies for PC products. Harvested console Navi dies could be the basis for the downgraded model MS is supposedly working on, while still having access to full speed CPU dies needed for runtime parity between top end and budget console models.

The interposer holding the chiplets can have separate memory pathways for DDR4 coming from the IO chip, while allowing GPU memory pathways to pass through the interposer to GDDR6.