PlayStation 4K - Codename Neo - Technical analysis
- Thread starter Recall
- Start date
We don't know. 
I believe it's what devs are being provided, which could just be available silicon while the final design is being designed and made. 8 is the most CPU cores in an APU though. Not sure 12 would be possible. I think faster cores would be preferable anyhow.
I believe it's what devs are being provided, which could just be available silicon while the final design is being designed and made. 8 is the most CPU cores in an APU though. Not sure 12 would be possible. I think faster cores would be preferable anyhow.
In this case, clocked higher has limits. So for more processing power than PS4 where clocks are limited, Neo needs either more cores or more effective cores. I think many of us are pinning our hopes on the latter!
Jawed
Legend
As a simple insight on this topic: since HD2900XT in the PC Space in 2007 until Fury X in 2015, the ratio of compute:bandwidth increased by 4.5x.
Well, like shifty already worte, we don't know.
But, what is done with the CPU in current games?
in the Old generation, the PS3 had a 1 core CPU with 7 SPEs. The xbox 360 had 3 CPU cores with HT. so multip-platform titels most times only used one "real" cpu core and tried to use the SPEs. As we know, the SPEs are not really good for general CPU workloads, so most times they were used to help the GPU.
Even on PC most of the time the CPU is doing work for the GPU (e.g. draw calls). That's what really can change with Mantle/DX12/Vulkan. So in future (and some current titles) the CPU has to do less and can do other tasks. This might not count for consoles, but as most multip-plat titles get also released on the PC you really have limited CPU time for non-graphical tasks in <DX12/Vulkan.
So, where are we now? In theory we should now have more CPU-time to use for AI, physics etc. The problem is (at least on PCs) you don't know what CPU your customer has. So you can't assume the customer has the latest/best CPU. Game mechanics shouldn't change with CPU speed, so you are again limited to use now "free" cpu resources to tasks, that don't influence the gameplay (e.g. physics or again help with some graphics tasks). It is easy to scale the graphics part of a game, so the game can run on a low-end GPU and on a high-end GPU and the gameplay doesn't change.
With the PS4k it is the same thing. You must provide a game, that runs on PS4 and PS4k, so in most cases, you just can't saturate additions CPU cores because the game shouldn't change. You've got a little bit more horsepower, so you can do the caculations a bit faster, that's all. This might be needed to saturate the GPU workloads, because the GPU is a bit bigger and you still need to provide some data for it, so you need a cpu that is at least a bit faster.
You can't reduce AI, because if you do the gameplay might be broken. Scaling graphics is also the easiest part, because the user might be able to really see the difference, so investing here might be worth the development time to do so. Less-visible tasks don't pay off that much. E.g. audio calculations (which are done by the cpu). They get better, but we already reached a level of audio quality, the "normal" user doesn't hear a difference, so why invest more development-time here?
One example that came to my mind, even the Wii was able to play "Call of Duty - Black Ops", so you might imagine, how much "CPU" time is really needed if you just throw away some graphical stuff.
Love_In_Rio
Veteran
We don't know.
12*2,1 = 25,2
8*1,6*2 = 25,6
12 cores at 2,1 GHz is so near to being exactly 2 times as powerful as PS4 CPU than the 2,1 GHz clock seems suspect about final specs.
My guess is ps4k and ps4 will use pretty much the same chip. The chips that can clock higher go to ps4k and the not so good chips go to ps4. That would be pretty good on cost optimization POV as there is one chip manufactured and based on functionality it can go to low cost or higher cost model.
Sony might add 4k output(hdmi), blu-ray 4k etc. support on ps4k but that is something mostly outside basic cpu/gpu functionality.
Sony might add 4k output(hdmi), blu-ray 4k etc. support on ps4k but that is something mostly outside basic cpu/gpu functionality.
That also means a ps4 slim. Due to the smaller fabrication it shares with ps4k
They specifically talked about an improved GPU in the specs. They would have done the same for the CPU if they had improved the Jaguar in a way or another IMO.
Easily explained if Neo devkits have 16GB of memory instead of 8GB...
Love_In_Rio
Veteran
Curiously the only reference I have found about shrinking Jaguar to 14nm is about AMD Cheetah cores and with little ARM cores attached to those managing automatically the compute tasks sent to the GPU
but why only 512mb extra?
Well I would suspect, that the current streaming-technique is such a memory eater. With a newer codec in hardware it might need less memory. Else they could easily also have the normal PS4 512MB more ram.
I wonder why xbox and PS4 still reserve 3GB for OS-stuff.
Well the xbox has at least the apps while also running a game... but still 3GB. That is 6 times the amount of memory the xbox 360 had.
xbox is running all this vm stuff and some sort of windows so no wonder imo
Phones do that with 2Gb total RAM, and they are usually doing a lot more multi-tasking. I can see their os using the 3Gb for its os, but it would still just be thanks to bad optimisation.
But is it true multitasking? 
depending on the phone OS. Lollipop with 2GB RAM is still a huge pain, especially if you use apps that cannot "save state" like web browsers, games, video editor, etc.
Windows PC? 2 GB of RAM is already plenty for huge amount of multitask compared to phone.
as for PS4, i suspect sony did not put any ability to "page" the RAM into "pagefile". So you either keep it running in the RAM, or hibernate it into hard drive.
as a trick, they can have "background service" that have utter minimal feature to allow multitask. Example are Spotify and Media Player App.
the only one with true multitasking is the USB Media Player app. or at least the "background service" is feature-rich enough.
