Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [pre E3 2019]

[Shifty Geezer]

In the case of RT there's no hoops or any other shenigans. Everthing is donne on the GPU. There's seriously nothing complicated to understand or even argue about here. HW support means running entirely on the GPU.

No, it doesn't. Look at floating point unit for an example. In the olden times, CPUs only did integer maths in hardware. They could do floating point maths, but it was slow. Then dedicated hardware was created to do floating-point maths much faster, which was in a discrete hardware unit. These were then eventually incorporated into the CPU. Hardware support for floating point means 'having hardware dedicated to the task', and not 'being able to do the task in the existing hardware that isn't designed for it'.

The mention of hardware support for RT in PS5 means there are hardware considerations specifically for the purposes of accelerating raytracing beyond what is attainable through the existing compute workflow. And a DX12 GPU has to have hardware considerations for the same to support it in hardware, otherwise it's supporting it in software.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think the audio subsystem Cerny is talking about is using ray traced audio. Basically it's a real-time implementation of Steam Audio that uses Radeon Rays. The speedup is coming from dedicated hardware that Navi should have for raytracing (that much seems obvious by now?).

the article says it has an audio processor explicitly.

Also, it's one chip so an APU with Zen, 7nm. So we can hazard some guesses as to how much room is left for GPU.

 

[iroboto]

The earth being flat is also a fact according to those who believe it... (not saying you do... At least I hope not! ).
The convention is:
Running in GPU = HW
Running on CPU= HW

Just because you have a block on a GPU dedicated to slighlty speeding up a special compute task doesn't suddenly change the convention.

When we learn that their won't be such RT blocks on Navi... Will it suddenly become SW ?
Anyway. ..

I totally understand what you're trying to say. I'm not trying to stir the pot.

I'm just following this guy:
https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1026182/
at mark 50:58

he says
"we can scale down to Xbox One, ideally GPU ray tracing, but you can even go to GPU software, and even down to CPU, if you have DXR fixed function, then you can talk about scaling up."
And in context, as long as you support DXR you can support RT Irradiance Fields.

I'm following his use of words.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

the article says it has an audio processor explicitly.

Also, it's one chip so an APU with Zen, 7nm. So we can hazard some guesses as to how much room is left for GPU.

There's mention of a 3D audio "unit", but Cerny also clearly mentions using ray tracing for audio:

According to Cerny, the applications go beyond graphic implications. “If you wanted to run tests to see if the player can hear certain audio sources or if the enemies can hear the players’ footsteps, ray tracing is useful for that,” he says. “It's all the same thing as taking a ray through the environment.”

My guess would be that they're using an upgraded TrueAudio (maybe some more Tensilica DSPs) for convolution, but Navi's ray tracing hardware will be used for positional sound sources.

 

[Rootax]

I really doubt Navi arch. having RT hardware like the RTX have. It would be taking a lot of space in a SoC... But maybe the custom version for Sony (and MS I guess) ... ? Because on paper, well, Vega is supporting RT, we saw a demo few weeks ago. The question is at what speed...

 

[Ike Turner]

I totally understand what you're trying to say. I'm not trying to stir the pot.

I'm just following this guy:
https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1026182/
at mark 50:58

he says
"we can scale down to Xbox One, ideally GPU ray tracing, but you can even go to GPU software, and even down to CPU, if you have DXR fixed function, then you can talk about scaling up."
And in context, as long as you support DXR you can support RT Irradiance Fields.

I'm following his use of words.

Sure but this is coming out of the mouth of a " biased" party. McGuire is an Nvidia employee so yeah he's going to says such a thing (creating a new distinction between GPU "software" & GPU "hardware").
Example.. Nvidia iRay runs in SW on CPU using SSE2 instruction & in HW using CUDA on all NV GPUs.. Does it now suddenly become SW on non Turing GPUs because part of the process is now using RT Cord on Turing GPUs since OptiX 6?

 

[Shortbread]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1118144759015575558

So what type of bandwidth requirements are we talking about here? Coupled that with Wired being shown Spider-Man's (fast traveling) running on PS4 Pro with an SSD access of 15 secs,
and running on a PS5 SDK @0.8 secs.

Exciting times ahead....

 

[iroboto]

Sure but this is coming out of the mouth of a " biased" party. McGuire is an Nvidia employee so yeah he's going to says such a thing (creating a new distinction between GPU "software" & GPU "hardware").
Example.. Nvidia iRay runs on CPU using SSE2 instruction & in HW using CUDA on all NV GPUs.. Does it now suddenly become SW on non Turing GPUs because because part of the process is now using RT Cord on Turing GPUs since OptiX 6?

I mean I get where you are going with this but like the English language. Words are added and removed. Things change when it becomes appropriate to make the distinction.

You might not like that nvidia is the one changing the language to support their needs. But that’s on AMD to debate their use of language. For us here, I don’t think it’s fair among our forum users to hold us to a higher judgmental standard when there is no right or wrong; there is just language being used and not. Nvidia is defining the language because they are first out of the gates, if another IHV wants to debate it then they need to come out now instead of next year.

 

[mrcorbo]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1118144759015575558

So what type of bandwidth requirements are we talking about here? Coupled that with Wired being shown Spider-Man's (fast traveling) running on PS4 Pro with an SSD access @15 secs,
and running on a PS5 SDK @0.8 secs

Exciting times ahead....

Faster than this, apparently.

https://www.amazon.com/SX8200-Pro-G...0&ascsubtag=US-001-3323075-000-1442206-web-20

 

[iroboto]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1118144759015575558

So what type of bandwidth requirements are we talking about here? Coupled that with Wired being shown Spider-Man's (fast traveling) running on PS4 Pro with an SSD access of @15 secs,
and running on a PS5 SDK @0.8 secs

Exciting times ahead....

The fast travelling is actually sort of weird

Is that a change to the game code? Would game code which normally is built around streaming rates, all of a sudden go faster. That’s sort of what made me question the depth of BC.
It’s a developer build for sure for this demo. I’m not confident in calling it perfect PS4 BC just yet.

 

[Shortbread]

Faster than this, apparently.

https://www.amazon.com/SX8200-Pro-G...0&ascsubtag=US-001-3323075-000-1442206-web-20

So more than likely the PS5 will have flash/NVMe related storage!? But faster...

 

[ultragpu]

8k and raytracing you say, sounds like expensive hardware . As others have mentioned, will there be enough room left for a big Tflops increase if you're dedicating silicons for RT, I really do hope it gets above 12 TF. Also with SSD and a possible HBM config this is easily $499 territory which I do adore.

 

[mrcorbo]

The fast travelling is actually sort of weird

Is that a change to the game code? Would game code change game streaming rates so that everything goes faster. That’s sort of what made me question the depth of BC.
It’s a developer build for sure for this demo. I’m not confident in calling it perfect PS4 BC just yet.

You don't put something out as part of your first reveal unless it is solid. Setting people's expectations to having full compatibility based on your reveal (since it doesn't mention any restrictions) and then later detailing those restrictions would be incredibly stupid and surely too stupid for anyone to credibly expect that that something they might do.

 

[iroboto]

You don't put something out as part of your first reveal unless it is solid. Setting people's expectations to having full compatibility based on your reveal (since it doesn't mention any restrictions) and then later detaailing those restrictions would be incredibly stupid and surely too stupid for anyone to credibly expect that that something they might do.

Good point. And I agree to it.
But a small counterpoint; they have not yet officially revealed the console yet. They need to showcase its power somehow without showcasing newer titles.

 

[mrcorbo]

So more than likely the PS5 will have flash/NVMe related storage!? But faster...

At the moment, Sony won’t cop to exact details about the SSD—who makes it, whether it utilizes the new PCIe 4.0 standard—but Cerny claims that it has a raw bandwidth higher than any SSD available for PCs. That’s not all. “The raw read speed is important,“ Cerny says, “but so are the details of the I/O [input-output] mechanisms and the software stack that we put on top of them.

That's all we know.

 

[mrcorbo]

Good point. And I agree to it.
But a small counterpoint; they have not yet officially revealed the console yet. They need to showcase its power somehow without showcasing newer titles.

Because it’s based in part on the PS4’s architecture, it will also be backward-compatible with games for that console.

Pretty black & white.

 

[Shortbread]

The fast travelling is actually sort of weird

Fast traveling in Spider-Man is where the gamer enters into one of the building hubs, roof-side, then a real-time cutscene of Spidey being whisked away by subway train. This usually takes about 15-18 secs on getting to the destination that you need, if you're not webbing it across town. Hearing 0.8 secs, is downright earthshattering IF the PS4 game code wasn't touched in this regard, other than getting it to post/run on a PS5 SDK.

 

[iroboto]

Pretty black & white.

Good catch. I must have been reading too fast.

 

[Ike Turner]

I mean I get where you are going with this but like the English language. Words are added and removed. Things change when it becomes appropriate to make the distinction.

You might not like that nvidia is the one changing the language to support their needs. But that’s on AMD to debate their use of language. For us here, I don’t think it’s fair among our forum users to hold us to a higher judgmental standard when there is no right or wrong; there is just language being used and not. Nvidia is defining the language because they are first out of the gates, if another IHV wants to debate it then they need to come out now instead of next year.

That's the thing. We can't really use Nvidia's new made up definition (which applies to its own HW & is here to differentiate between their GPUarchs) with hardware from other vendors which most probably won't support the same features in the same way.

 

[iroboto]

Fast traveling in Spider-Man is where the gamer enters into one of the building hubs, roof-side, then a real-time cutscene of Spidey being whisked away by subway train. This usually takes about 15-18 secs on getting to the destination they need. Hearing 0.8 secs, is downright earthshattering IF the PS4 game code wasn't touched in this regard, other than getting it to post/run on a PS5 SDK.

Ah. I thought the reference was to swinging faster

This part was what I confused it with

On the next-gen console, the camera speeds uptown like it’s mounted to a fighter jet. Periodically, Cerny pauses the action to prove that the surrounding environment remains perfectly crisp.