Predict: Next gen console tech (9th iteration and 10th iteration edition) [2014 - 2017]

Status
Not open for further replies.
Even the concept of swap file makes my skin crawl, just thinking of the days when my PC had 32MB of RAM and it kept dumping data to HDD, completely halting any sort of operation for minutes, hours, until I rebooted the bloody thing.

Urgh. Arriving in Hell in Diablo2 locked my PC for several minutes on 32mb of RAM. It was so painful.
 
Even the concept of swap file makes my skin crawl,
so you would prefer an error message "cannot run insufficient memory"

What do you mean by 'needs 10 GB to run'? You can have 10 GBs of assets and resources in a level and stream them in/out as needed - no need for PC-style virtual memory because the console devs can control this explicitly.

needs 10gb to run, yes I am well aware a dev can create a game that needs less, but what if someone wrote a game that absolutely needed 10gb would the game just crash, would o/s realize memory was needed and start paging ram to disk, would the dev have to code his own virtual memory, or is that not possible ?
 
Last edited:
I'll throw my hat in.

8 core amd apu . 2.5ghz to 3ghz range
for ms a 128meg sram on die.
2017 gpu
32 gigs of ram. Split 16 gigs HBM and 16 gigs DDR4
2TB SSD .

Launch in 2017 for MS.

If vr proves extremely popular

8 core amd cpu

Dual gpus with 128 meg sram on die
32 gigs of ram. 12 gigs HBM per gpu and 8 gigs of ddr 4 .

Both designs will have a small 8 core arm set up with its own 4 gigs of ram or so to run the OS and apps
 
I'll throw my hat in.

8 core amd apu . 2.5ghz to 3ghz range
for ms a 128meg sram on die.
2017 gpu
32 gigs of ram. Split 16 gigs HBM and 16 gigs DDR4
2TB SSD .

Launch in 2017 for MS.

If vr proves extremely popular

8 core amd cpu

Dual gpus with 128 meg sram on die
32 gigs of ram. 12 gigs HBM per gpu and 8 gigs of ddr 4 .

Both designs will have a small 8 core arm set up with its own 4 gigs of ram or so to run the OS and apps
When HBM happens there is no reason to have esram.
Split RAM is also bad because you will need 2 interfaces for memory.
Dual chip consoles won't happen in future. APUs have many benefits.
 
I think you will still have a case for esram in the future even with HBM.

Split ram when it comes to HBM is also smart. You can put low cost ddr 4 for the cpu and hbm for the gpu.

I don't think we will see an APU console next generation from MS nor Sony. I also believe the APU will be the cause of a quick console generation this time around.
 
I think you will still have a case for esram in the future even with HBM.

Split ram when it comes to HBM is also smart. You can put low cost ddr 4 for the cpu and hbm for the gpu.

I don't think we will see an APU console next generation from MS nor Sony. I also believe the APU will be the cause of a quick console generation this time around.
Justify your reasoning.
Everything you said seems irrational to me.
 
I know I'll sound like one of those 16Kb is enough kind of guys from the 80's. But seeing this number thrown around a lot, what exactly do we need 128GB of RAM for, especially in a console, even three or four years from today?

Surely our past issues with limited amounts of RAM were driven by the actual size of the applications being run on a platform. On PS1/PS2/PS3 the size of the games discs was at least an order of magnitude larger than the available RAM. Nowadays I can download a game that fits entirely in a PS4 RAM, and the largest ones are, at most, 5-8 times larger than the available RAM.

More RAM is always better, but only until we get to a point where the program running on it can fit comfortably. 128GB is at least three times the total size of some of the largest game out today, so unless our new consoles (and even new PCs) will be asked to run multiple games and applications at once, I don't see how loading them with unnecessary RAM would be an efficient way to budget for a new platform.

I don't see game size increasing much over the capacity of a Bluray disc, and seeing how we're all going digital more and more, size will be even more important. Not many people will want to download a 100/200GB game any time soon.
 
needs 10gb to run, yes I am well aware a dev can create a game that needs less, but what if someone wrote a game that absolutely needed 10gb would the game just crash, would o/s realize memory was needed and start paging ram to disk, would the dev have to code his own virtual memory, or is that not possible ?
It's certainly possible because you can do whatever you want with the consoles, although I'm not sure how much working space on HDD you're allowed. But why (and how!) would someone with a closed box and 5 GBs RAM available build a game that absolutely needs 10 GBs resident at all times. The game would be designed differently and more efficiently.
 
It would be interesting if you could move the ROPs into the HBM's logic stack. It would be a similar setup to Xenos daughter die, but with all the memory and much higher bandwidth. Plus the benefit of more die space available for compute in the main APU.
 
It would be interesting if you could move the ROPs into the HBM's logic stack. It would be a similar setup to Xenos daughter die, but with all the memory and much higher bandwidth. Plus the benefit of more die space available for compute in the main APU.
The high bandwidth in HBM only exists in aggregate. You'd have to put a ROP or two on each of like 16 individual memory layers. Completely impractical and unneeded.
 
@shifty It was just a hypothetical question, I'm well aware of how bad it would be to create a game that needs 10gb

@londonboy ramdrive baby, I'm sure you'd like almost instant level loading ;)
ps: i agree i cant see the next console having 128gb ram (or it being out in 3 or 4 years)
 
Justify your reasoning.
Everything you said seems irrational to me.

For what , I said what I said in my post.

HMB will be more expensive than DDR 4 . DDR 4 will be more than fast enough for cpu tasks. Your going to want a lot of ram moving forward for next generation. Right now we have 8 gigs of ram shared between the CPU and GPU and further more some of that is taken away for games. So we have what 4 to 5 gigs of ram avalible for games between the CPU and GPU . Next gen you can up that quite easily to 8 gigs of HBM for just graphics and you can then have more ddr 4 for the cpu and whatever else you need. You then get an arm chip with ram to handle apps and os duty.

If VR is extremely popular they are going to target that and multi gpus is the best way to target it.

I doubt they will make the mistake they did this gen.
 
For what , I said what I said in my post.

HMB will be more expensive than DDR 4 . DDR 4 will be more than fast enough for cpu tasks. Your going to want a lot of ram moving forward for next generation. Right now we have 8 gigs of ram shared between the CPU and GPU and further more some of that is taken away for games. So we have what 4 to 5 gigs of ram avalible for games between the CPU and GPU . Next gen you can up that quite easily to 8 gigs of HBM for just graphics and you can then have more ddr 4 for the cpu and whatever else you need. You then get an arm chip with ram to handle apps and os duty.

If VR is extremely popular they are going to target that and multi gpus is the best way to target it.

I doubt they will make the mistake they did this gen.
I would think a multi GPU setup would be possible even with an APU though. Future GPUs will most likely contain CPU cores anyway. If like you say VR takes off and they want to go the multi GPU route they could just go with 2 APUs. I agree with you that ESRAM could still be quite useful for MS or even Sony next gen. Especially if it is true simultaneous read and write. It also wouldn't necessarily mean split memory either as they could use a setup similar to the X1 with faster main memory shared between the cpus and gpus and a decently large chunk of esram. Only this time maybe they could allow better esram access to the CPU as well.
 
I would think a multi GPU setup would be possible even with an APU though. Future GPUs will most likely contain CPU cores anyway. If like you say VR takes off and they want to go the multi GPU route they could just go with 2 APUs. I agree with you that ESRAM could still be quite useful for MS or even Sony next gen. Especially if it is true simultaneous read and write. It also wouldn't necessarily mean split memory either as they could use a setup similar to the X1 with faster main memory shared between the cpus and gpus and a decently large chunk of esram. Only this time maybe they could allow better esram access to the CPU as well.

I would think the Cpu cores on the second apu would be redundant and you'd have much more space for a better gpu if you remove the cpu portion. But we will see
 
Because two smaller chips are cheaper than a big one
Maybe next time if they spend money on an interposer for the memory they will split it again
 
Why would they make a multi gpu setup, when they can cram everything into one chip? Why make less efficient design?
esram is an expensive band aid for slow DDR3. No need with HBM.
Why do you think Sony did not go with 4GB of GDDR5 and cheap 4GB DDR3? Memory interfaces takes up die area, and complicates development.

Because a multi gpu setup will be faster than a single gpu esp for VR . Valve has stated they have seen an 80% improvement using amd's new tech for crossfire and VR.

Esram is fast today , faster tomorrow. Tommorow Esram will be faster than ddr 4 , it will be faster than gddr 5.

The cost for Esram shrinks as the chip shrinks.

Memory interfaces take up die area but everything takes up die area. We will have to see how HBM scales and price. But I would still wager for next gen a split ram pool would be cheaper than all HBM.
 
Don't know about 4K games but probably at least 4K movie playback, at least from streaming services and maybe from 4K Blu Ray discs.

If the companies are smart, they won't try to go all digital. People still like trading discs.

Maybe in the next year or two, HDR video content will catch on so the movie playback may have to include that.

As for VR, any company that tries to include it will get burned like MS did with Kinect 2. Put the BOM into the best performance you can get for a $399 intro price. Any fancy and costly controller just raises the cost. Make the VR available as an optional peripheral.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top