anexanhume
Veteran
Burning a couple of more watts is not going to kill any kind of system budget. The biggest impediment would be yield or cost for the higher binned modules.
Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [pre E3 2019]
- Thread starter AlNom
- Start date
-
- Tags
- 5 bytes non sequitur
- Status
Samsung said their 20gbps test was bypassing the actual dram, because current process cannot yield a fast enough dram array. Not even for a test chip. So they only tested the interface.
Maybe 18gbps needs to wait for process improvements to get a reasonable percentage of chips passing that speed.
Maybe 18gbps needs to wait for process improvements to get a reasonable percentage of chips passing that speed.
Invest in ECC. :V
rokkerkory
Regular
Do you guys think the bare min will be 16GB for next-gen lower end models or will it match X's 12GB? Obviously the speed/bandwidth will be faster than the X.
Ok, this is tricky. They actually didn't announce the mass production of 18Gbps GDDR6 in January 2018. They only announced mass producing 16-Gigabit GDDR6 and only talked about 18Gbps speeds available eventually.
That's their actual announcement:
And then in the article they talk about the max available speed [eventually available].
https://news.samsung.com/global/sam...6-gigabit-gddr6-for-advanced-graphics-systems
The anandtech author (and everybody else) got tricked by the dubious wording. But I think they actually started mass producing those speeds relatively recently, I read an article about it, but I can't find the source anymore.
Last edited:
Thanks for clearing that up!
It may be more complicated than optimum power/performance since using the same chiplet also gets them a major bidding competitor: AMD's own much more lucrative products.
A chiplet that performs well at low power could go into semi-custom products that might be in the teens for margins, or go into a server SKU that sells for an order (orders?) of magnitude more.
So maybe they can buy the most mediocre-clocked ones that are just okay for power?
It looks like half of Vega20's area is everything but graphics, so a good chunk of xGMI, infinity fabric, and high-end controllers could be removed.
If the GPU's are backwards-compatible at a hardware level to the Sea Islands architecture--and the customized ones in the consoles in particular, it might have an area cost that Vega 20 didn't have.
That looks like an expensive lateral move. The amount of bandwidth cannot significantly change for consistency reasons, but the standards likely don't behave identically in ways that may cause games to diverge in performance between consoles. At least for mainline consoles, the core elements are something the vendor has to commit to.
... so you're confirming 16 GB on a 256-bit bus, clocked at 14 gb/pin, so they can match clocks with dev kits running with more memory in clamshell mode?
Right, I'm off to the bookies!
Yeah I'm having too much fun "exploring" fringe possibilities, but before the crazy leak talk, most predictions have been narrowing it down to almost a concensus somewhere around 10TF and 16GB/256bit.
It seems to be at a nice "knee" of the diminishing returns from raising the BOM. Anything more gets expensive really fast for not much more performance. And anything less means next gen isn't exactly worth spending hundreds of millions developping a new platform.
But... We also thought 8GB for the ps4 would be too expensive, so I don't know if such a surprise is possible again.
(the reason something is a surprise is because the chances were slim)
Last edited:
Let's remember that current gen came in at low-mid PC specs of the time, with the exception of a relatively large pool of memory enabled by low pricing which may not be as favorable again (and MS still dropped the ball). This time we're getting lucky with the CPU chiplet but I wouldn't expect an expensive GPU/RAM combo.
anexanhume
Veteran
PS4 GPU was between a 7850 and 7870. That’s not low-mid. Only enthusiast GPUs were above it (7950, 7970).
The rumored forthcoming Navi 10 and Navi 12 are in that tier, with Navi 20 to follow later.
290x (and 780 Ti) came out in the same month. Plus the massive CPU deficit.
anexanhume
Veteran
And a lag of some features is to be expected given when the design is finalized. I don’t think anyone would dispute the CPU claim, which is why I didn’t address it. I also don’t think anyone would dispute that Zen 2 should be a huge leap forward, and actually relevant to current desktop CPU performance.
Let's assume $400-450 is the price target. Let's also assume that 350mm of 7nm die in 2020 likely costs more than 350mm of 28nm in 2013. You may be able to balance that by decoupling and binning the CPU chiplet, which also improves yield on the GPU die. Vega 20 is 330mm without the chiplet IF link a console version would need. Without density improvements on Navi, at best you're looking at 75% of Vega 20 die size, and 75% of the frequency (< 150W console TDP). That could be < 8 TFLOPS, and definitely < 10.
I'm not even factoring in the larger memory costs, or the need for NAND.
I'm not even factoring in the larger memory costs, or the need for NAND.
anexanhume
Veteran
The memory costs won’t be larger if they only go with 16GB.
I follow your line of reasoning, but, sincerely, if Sony releases a lower than 8tf next-gen machine, next year.... then better not releasing anything imo.
- Status
Similar threads
