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

[Sonic]

Has this Altera Cyclone chip been confirmed to be inside PS4? Here's a link to a pdf from Altera's website with some technical details about the line of Cyclone series in OnQ's picture.

http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/cyc/cyc_c5v1.pdf

 

[3dilettante]

No, beyond the fact that certain models from that manufacturer use a very common and generic package format, there is no additional information corroborating that claim.

 

[Sonic]

Thank you.

 

[onQ]

PS4 Audio Chip based on True Audio

 

[scf]

There is a live stream on gamespot.com. They just try different stuff and games.

 

[Deleted member 7537]

PS4 Audio Chip based on True Audio

Isn't that just a feature for the lastest AMD GPUs? Good to hear.

 

[DJ12]

PS4 Audio Chip based on True Audio

Says who?

Edit: from the inside ps4 event. Should've said I thought it was another one of your overly optimistic dreams lol

Would've thought it was the other way around though as the ps4 was developed well before the r series GPUs

 

[Deleted member 7537]

Says who?

It has been revealed by Sony R&D VP at the AMDAPU13

 

[Bagel seed]

*Bows to Cerny*

Good to know they didn't skimp on audio

 

[patsu]

What's so special about TrueAudio ?

 

[Ketto]

I honestly didn't see that coming. Good to hear (pun intended).

 

[djskribbles]

PS4 Audio Chip based on True Audio

Nice. :smile:

 

[3dilettante]

What's so special about TrueAudio ?

Depending on the exact details, it would keep the various platforms closer in terms of feature support for audio offload from the CPU cores.
It also goes to comments in the AMD 290 threads that one of the reasons why the newest GPUs have TrueAudio hardware instead of running shaders in the CUs is due to synchronization concerns.

The earlier presumed heavy reliance on the GPU in Orbis to take up some of this slack would have run headlong into whatever problems that entailed.
If there's a TrueAudio DSP block of some kind, it's one technical misstep that was avoided.
Its presence in the PS4 might give TrueAudio a bit of an adoption push.

 

[patsu]

Yeah, I'm wondering about the specs beyond decoding 200 MP3s. ^_^

Did a quick read up, so it's a DSP block, helps to apply audio effects. Certainly very helpful to offload the CPU.

Some examples of using the GPGPU for audio raytracing, and then TrueAudio for applying the effects would be very nice~

 

[pMax]

PS4 Audio Chip based on True Audio

I was heavily, heavily suspecting that...
I just wonder if it is not the other way round

 

[Ceger]

Any details? Is it the actual TrueAudio chipset or something "based" on it? I think the actual tweet from AMD simply said that it has it, not based on it.

 

[PeterAce]

Any idea if the PS4 support down-mixing 5.1 channels to 2 channel stereo? As I currently use this on PS3.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Wow that's big news IMO. It puts the PS4 ahead of the XBO in the audio department doesn't it? In a way it's not surprising, it would have been crazy to strip that functionality out considering it's already right there in the chip but the fact that they didn't whisper a word about it despite all the SHAPE hype made me pretty much discount the possiblity.

This is great news for the PC anyway as it means adoption of TrueAudio should be much, much greater.

 

[TheChosenOne]

Any details? Is it the actual TrueAudio chipset or something "based" on it? I think the actual tweet from AMD simply said that it has it, not based on it.

The actual statement by Dominic Mallinson at APU13 was "But also within the APU there is an audio chip, which is based on the True Audio technology, for audio processing."

He gave no details beyond that.

 

[patsu]

So far, rumors has it that the developers don't have direct access to the audio h/w.

Perhaps Sony use their own audio algorithms on top of the h/w (Maybe tweak the h/w a little for performance/$ ?). AV techniques is their bread and butter.