nVidia building the PS3 GPU in its "entirety"

[London Geezer]

Intriguing. PR gurus at their best from now till release...

To the console-exclusive gamers:

If you thought Sony or MS were bad, wait till u see NVIDIA spinning around in their golden hotpants.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Jaws wrote:

Apparently 50 enginneres ar working on it as opposed to 200 enginners for the xbox but they pretty much designed the whole system ass opposed to the GPU.

that is probably a clue.

I kinda doubt only 50 engineers are working on Playstation3 GPU. maybe only 50 Nvidia engineers, which means probably that Sony is also working on it. I just don't see a simply Nvidia-designed (Nvidia only) GPU in PS3.

 

[j^aws]

Apparently 50 enginneres ar working on it as opposed to 200 enginners for the xbox but they pretty much designed the whole system ass opposed to the GPU.

hmmm that's probably a clue. I kinda doubt only 50 engineers are working on Playstation3 GPU. maybe only 50 Nvidia engineers, which means probably that Sony is also working on it. I just don't see a simply Nvidia-designed (Nvidia only) GPU in PS3.

Yes...50 NV engineers but total from Sony not disclosed...

 

[London Geezer]

So there's gonna be a GPU with NVIDIA's name on it, on which NVIDIA worked on with Sony...

What's new?

 

[AlNom]

The PS3 will be black and green.

 

[Megadrive1988]

as far as I am concerned, it's still a custom Sony-Nvidia, or, Nvidia-Sony GPU for Playstation3. not exactly an 'NV5A' 8)

 

[Trawler]

So there's gonna be a GPU with NVIDIA's name on it, on which NVIDIA worked on with Sony...

What's new?

It confirms that Sony wanted more from NVIDIA than just IP for starters...

 

[one]

I'm still having problems with this webcast. had to start over again, and I cannot skip ahead. have to listen to it from start to finish. cannot get the full functioning version because it keeps detecting pop-up blockers even though Ive disabled all of mine. anyway, lets not jump to any conclusions about whether Nvidia is designing the whole GPU or parts of it..

Oh, doesn't the direct link I posted above work for you? As the URL contains a UUID in it, it may work only for me though. I can open it in Windows Media Player and can skip in the stream ahead.

Intriguing. PR gurus at their best from now till release...

Paraphrasing the same PR in 37337 ways until the PS3 release day.

 

[Fafalada]

Still not clear how much influence SCE are having but he emphasises custom gpu.

Translation - no hardware clip! 8)

 

[Megadrive1988]

Jen first mentions PS3 using "one of our GPUs" at around 31:15 mark

 

[j^aws]

So there's gonna be a GPU with NVIDIA's name on it, on which NVIDIA worked on with Sony...

What's new?

Nothing new really except of the level of investment ~ $ 1 billion from NV gone into it and they're looking to recoup $ 300 miilion+ from the deal.

And the GPU is basically a programmable DSP processor that would be suitable for non graphics tasks also...

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Nothing new really except of the level of investment ~ $ 1 billion from NV gone into it and they're looking to recoup $ 300 miilion+ from the deal.

Ummm....I hope nVidia doesn't make too many deals like that.

Seriously, IIRC, the 1 Billion dollar statement was made in reference to not direct PS3 R&D costs...but overall investment for all their tech / GPUs since the x Box chip. (I'll have to go back and find that statement again to be sure.)

And the GPU is basically a programmable DSP processor that would be suitable for non graphics tasks also...

Where was this said / implied? (I haven't heard the entire thing yet, or I may have missed it while trying to do about three things at once here....)

 

[bbot]

So the gpu will be based on Nvidia's next-generation gpu. But which one? Is it NV5X?


In one corner, ATI R500. In the other corner NV5X. Fight!

 

[j^aws]

Nothing new really except of the level of investment ~ $ 1 billion from NV gone into it and they're looking to recoup $ 300 miilion+ from the deal.

Ummm....I hope nVidia doesn't make too many deals like that.

Seriously, IIRC, the 1 Billion dollar statement was made in reference to not direct PS3 R&D costs...but overall investment for all their tech / GPUs since the x Box chip. (I'll have to go back and find that statement again to be sure.)

Yeah! ...I already mentioned that in my earlier post...just too lazy to re-type! ...but that ROI was for PS3 and not for further CE returns...iirc.

And the GPU is basically a programmable DSP processor that would be suitable for non graphics tasks also...

Where was this said / implied? (I haven't heard the entire thing yet, or I may have missed it while trying to do about three things at once here....)

31 mins+

'GPU is the digital signal processor of the 21st century'...

 

[Qroach]

This seems WAY more in line with what I thought.

Sure it's a custom GPU (so is NV2A) because sony will have some input, but for the most part this isn't some radical new technology only developed for Sony, I see it as a combination of technology Nvidia planned for PC.

 

[Qroach]

I'm kinda curious to see what vince is going to say regarding this info.

 

[Brimstone]

How many engineers does Nvidia use when they make a variant of their cores?

I'm guessing that the NV40 would take more people than say a NV47. So if the Sony GPU is based off a NV50 design it wouldn't be as labor intensive.

 

[bbot]

Jaws wrote:

Apparently 50 enginneres ar working on it as opposed to 200 enginners for the xbox but they pretty much designed the whole system ass opposed to the GPU.

that is probably a clue.

I kinda doubt only 50 engineers are working on Playstation3 GPU. maybe only 50 Nvidia engineers, which means probably that Sony is also working on it. I just don't see a simply Nvidia-designed (Nvidia only) GPU in PS3.

Yeah, but he also said the next-gen gpu architecture took _hundreds_ of engineers to design. That 50 number refers to the number of engineers it took to design that (for the PS3) particular implementation of the gpu architecture.

 

[Megadrive1988]

bbot wrote:

Yeah, but he also said the next-gen gpu architecture took _hundreds_ of engineers to design. That 50 number refers to the number of engineers it took to design that (for the PS3) particular implementation of the gpu architecture.

now that I've heard the whole conference call thingy, I say you're right, I agree that is basicly true. Nvidia pours alot of resources into the next-gen desktop architecture, but only a small amount to actually implement the PS3 version of it.

 

[PC-Engine]

Why do people automatically assume Nvidia needs help from SONY or Toshiba if the design requires eDRAM? How difficult is it to add an embedded frame buffer into a GPU design? You do realize that IBM has manufactured TigerSHARC chips for Texas instruments with 24Mb of eDRAM right? What makes TI any different from Nvidia?