PlayStation 4 (codename Orbis) technical hardware investigation (news and rumours)

[Shifty Geezer]

Depends whether it'd sell enough. If not, they wouldn't cover costs to justify the emulators development. I'm unconvinced it'd prove popular enough.

Sony should Kickstart a PS2 emulator...

 

[Strange]

Depends whether it'd sell enough. If not, they wouldn't cover costs to justify the emulators development. I'm unconvinced it'd prove popular enough.

Sony should Kickstart a PS2 emulator...

50,000 USD PS emulator
100,000 USD 5 free PS games
500,000 USD PS2 emulator
1,000,000 USD 5 free PS2 games
2,000,000 USD PSP emulator
5,000,000 USD 5 free PSP games
10,000,000 USD PS3 emulator

100,000,000,000 USD Xbox emulator
200,000,000,000 USD Xbox 360 emulator
500,000,000,000 USD Xbox One emulator
1,000,000,000,000 USD We buy Microsoft

 

[Nesh]

Isnt PS1 emulation pretty much straightforward and low cost to implement?
The biggest challenge would be a PS2 or PS3 emulation

100,000,000,000 USD Xbox emulator
200,000,000,000 USD Xbox 360 emulator
500,000,000,000 USD Xbox One emulator
1,000,000,000,000 USD We buy Microsoft

 

[BoardBonobo]

Depends whether it'd sell enough. If not, they wouldn't cover costs to justify the emulators development. I'm unconvinced it'd prove popular enough.

Sony should Kickstart a PS2 emulator...

Why Kickstart when there are plenty of functional opensource emulators out there? Would it really be that much of a stretch to bring one of those to Playmobile or whatever version of that come with the PS4?

 

[ERP]

Indeed, I wonder if they just do blade server with a lot ps2 boards and use Gaikai streaming for ps1&2 BC.

For what it's worth the Gaikia servers for PS3 "emulation" were completely different hardware than any existing PS3 SKU, obviously they use the same core silicon, but Gaikai did a lot of work with the SCEI hardware team to be able to locate the racks in data centers.

 

[Lalaland]

Why Kickstart when there are plenty of functional opensource emulators out there? Would it really be that much of a stretch to bring one of those to Playmobile or whatever version of that come with the PS4?

I suspect that's a licensing/legal thing. With the Open Source emulators Sony may not want to inadvertently open up their proprietary source by contributing (of course whether this is a risk or not depends on the exact OS licensing model used). Even if they had an attractive OS licence Sony has not exactly embraced PCX2 and it's ilk so using that code may confer undeserved legitimacy in Sonys eyes. Better from a legal standpoint to spend $$$ reinventing the wheel than complicate any future IP litigation (eg random vendor X sells an ARM PS2 emulator using OS code, Sony sues to stop them, if Sony had contributed to that OS project it would complicate their legal arguments).

 

[Jay]

Pretty sure I've seen this slide posed before, but I didn't give it any weight as, as far as I was concerned it was unverified etc.

http://www.vgleaks.com/playstation-4-balanced-or-unbalanced/

 

[mrcorbo]

Pretty sure I've seen this slide posed before, but I didn't give it any weight as, as far as I was concerned it was unverified etc.

http://www.vgleaks.com/playstation-4-balanced-or-unbalanced/

The slide itself was never posted AFAIK, but it was the source of VGLeaks' initial "14+4" specification for the CUs in PS4 (then Orbis). It's already been debated to death here. The wording in the slide does support my interpretation of the various statements Sony have made on the subject, but I'm sure there are others who will somehow read it differently. Barring any developers giving real-world examples of ALU utilization while running only standard graphics pipeline operations vs. ALU utilization while running code in a 14/4 graphics to GPGPU ratio, I don't think it will ever really be settled.

 

[Jay]

Didn't realise that it was the source of the original vgleaks orbis brake down.
I thought it was something they were presenting to developers now/still.

Thanks, wasn't trying to reopen old wounds, was just posting a vgleaks report.

 

[mrcorbo]

Didn't realise that it was the source of the original vgleaks orbis brake down.
I thought it was something they were presenting to developers now/still.

Thanks, wasn't trying to reopen old wounds, was just posting a vgleaks report.

It was probably worth posting (for those who hadn't already seen it elsewhere) in that it definitively shows that "some" of the wording used by VGLeaks was straight from Sony and not a flawed interpretation by VGLeaks of the information Sony gave to developers.

 

[onQ]

Could the PS4 be using Stacked Memory? Sony patent


MEMORY SYSTEM, METHOD FOR CONTROLLING THE SAME, AND INFORMATION PROCESSING DEVICE

Abstract
A memory system method for controlling the same, and an information processing device using the same are provided. The system includes a plurality of memory chips electrically connected with one another by a bus (e.g. address bus, data bus, control bus, etc.), which are disposed in a stacked arrangement and extend through the plurality of memory chips in a stacking direction, and a memory controller connected to a plurality of processors and to the bus, and further to a chip select signal line for outputting a chip select signal to each of the plurality of memory chips. The memory controller converts an address signal from each of the processors into a set of the chip select signal and the address signal, which is outputted to the address bus, so as to relay inputs and outputs of data between each of the processors and each of the memory chips.

 

[3dilettante]

A quick skim makes me think it might be more relevant to the Vita, or an embedded device that is using Wide I/O mounted on the logic chip.

No pictures load for me, but the descriptions seem consistent with a chip that has a standard regular-speed narrow memory bus and a secondary wide memory bus tied to a coprocessor.

The apparent goal is to stack the standard RAM and Wide I/O RAM in the same stack using TSVs, and creating a memory controller that can switch between the types.
This would allow better physical integration of the existing split memory pools.

I don't see much consistent with Orbis.

 

[BRiT]

Could the PS4 be using Stacked Memory?

No. This is not for the PS4.

 

[BRiT]

*ahem* if there is something you would post in another thread but can't because its locked, don't post it in other open threads. There's reason for those threads to be locked. Failure to follow this may result in vacations from the forums.

 

[Airon]

Regarding the memory setting of PS4.

Do we know if the GDDR5 bandwith of 176GB/s of the PS4 is the peak, is theoretical?
Or we have to consider the 80% of it ?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Regarding the memory setting of PS4.

Do we know if the GDDR5 bandwith of 176GB/s of the PS4 is the peak, is theoretical?
Or we have to consider the 80% of it ?

It's the theoretical peak, like any reported BW, calculated as width x clock.

 

[BoardBonobo]

It's the theoretical peak, like any reported BW, calculated as width x clock.

We don't know the real world values yet do we? I'm guessing that is something that will come to light once the console is out there?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

We rarely get 'real world values'. Look up any bandwidth specification on any device and you'll get the peak figure. Real world results are basically down to the interface, so 'GDDR5' tells us what there is to know about that.

 

[Gipsel]

We don't know the real world values yet do we? I'm guessing that is something that will come to light once the console is out there?

Depending on the situation (as always) you can get pretty close to the theoretical value. Think of 90+%. As said already somewhere else, it makes no sense trying to break that down to some imaginary average or "real world value". To much depends on the situation.

 

[BoardBonobo]

Depending on the situation (as always) you can get pretty close to the theoretical value. Think of 90+%. As said already somewhere else, it makes no sense trying to break that down to some imaginary average or "real world value". To much depends on the situation.

Of course that will be the case. But it would be nice to have a frame of reference for comparison. Perhaps the top five most common uses.