Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Blazkowicz]

it sounds like the Sega 32x or Mega CD. It sounds fishy. And why not 4 strong cores rather than 6 "weak" ones? unless the cores are out-of-order but with the same amount of paper-flops.

it looks decent nonetheless. but the memory upgrade is not very strong. A console on a later schedule would have 2GB ram. Why not have 2GB of decent gddr5 on a 256bit bus and ditch the edram, even. Would X360 games run well that way?

backwards compatibility is nice (like from PS1 to PS2)
forward compatibility, that might be a good idea afterall, I'm thinking about downloadable games, party games etc. There was a precedent : game boy monochrome and game boy color, with titles that run on both and gbc exclusives. The gbc had the same CPU as the regular gb, but 2x faster, and 4x the ram.

 

[TheChefO]

it sounds like the Sega 32x or Mega CD. It sounds fishy. And why not 4 strong cores rather than 6 "weak" ones? unless the cores are out-of-order but with the same amount of paper-flops.

it looks decent nonetheless. but the memory upgrade is not very strong. A console on a later schedule would have 2GB ram. Why not have 2GB of decent gddr5 on a 256bit bus and ditch the edram, even. Would X360 games run well that way?

Taking out edram would kill the compatibility of all xb360 games.

Also the bandwidth needed would kill any performance gains.

Agreed on the Ram quantity though. 1gb is pretty weak considering today's ram prices.

I'd expect 2gb if it's out next year. If later, 4gb.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I'm considering using the gddr5 memory pool and pretending it's edram

It falls short though (we may get "only" 160GB/s). but I'm still wondering.

especially you wouldn't be able to run x360 games at 1080p ; the hypothetical upgrade would be able to. BUT, we may be making dangerous assumptions about game resolution there, or rather the X360 games might. you can run a PS1 or N64 game at any res you like, but that may not be the case with modern rendering with tons of shaders, post-processing etc.

another idea (expensive) : 10MB ondie edram only for the sake of b/c. (also as a "do wtf you want" scratch pad outside of X360 games). I don't know how much expensive is it compared to the PS2 integrating a whole PS1. (or the PS3 including a whole PS2)

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Hehe. And all that "targeting a sub $300 price point."

I think that says it all.

Regards,
SB

 

[Tahir2]

If backward compatibility is so important why the console manufacturers then seem intent on designing systems that are not forward compatible seems silly.

Or the actual task of forward compatiblility if fraught with problems of it own.

 

[RudeCurve]

Wii is basically GC 1.5. If Nintendo did it why can't MS do it too? Not only did Nintendo do it but they're making a buttload of profit. Last time I checked you can't play Wii games on your GC. With MS's system you'd still be able to play the new games on old systems but with lstandard performance instead of upgraded performance.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I would expect sub-$300 at such specs, with a 32nm CPU and a 40nm GPU (to be shrunk at 28nm).
Even if that xbox 2.5 probably is bullshit, $300 buys you quite a lot of muscle today. radeon 4850 and 4870 have gotten to insane low prices.

I can imagine a real 2012 console launching at $300. (it can't even have too high specs anyway because of heat concerns)

Even the 32GB SSD should get around the price of the lowest HDD. (Though, you would afford a 250GB 2.5" HDD at the same price maybe. The weakest point of SSD is, no matter how cheap or big they are, HDD keep making the exact same exponential progress in density)

 

[Heinrich4]

For 2011/12 im still thinking or believe* a 8GB RAM (VRAM/main RAM or UMA) at US$399 range for next consoles...

(*even financial crysis,wii fenomena etc...)

Edited: I see now Squilliam post...this next xbox propose ...to me its like more a "Wiibox360" unfornately.

 

[NRP]

If MS goes with an IBM CPU again, they can't just add more cores. First they have to redesign it to address the "load-hit-store" latency penalty. Otherwise, it will just be a 6 core piece of shit, instead of a 3 core piece of shit.

Also, the nextbox will surely have a DX11 style gpu to have some common ground with PC development.

 

[Blazkowicz]

that's what is meant by "shader model 5" in the rumour.

 

[liolio]

I think it may have been already posted but here are the MS halo team expectations in regard to next generation systemsb (most likely MS one):
(From "the zen of multi core rendering" GDC 2009)
Some explanations about the following figures, second generation is actually the 360 and all the improvements are based on the first xbox figures.

Second generation
4.27x triangle throughput
4.29x pixel fill rate
4.29x texel rate
40x bandwidth
8x video memory

Multicore generation:

70x triangle throughput
450x pixel fill rate
390x texel rate
110x bandwidth
16x video memory

So setting the 360 as base figures for MS next gen system could be:
~16x triangle throughput
~100x pixel fill rate
~90x texel rate
2.75x bandwidth
2x video memory
EDIT
Some extra thinking about their expectations.
They hint at a BIG jump in computing power , I wonder how this is achievable even using 32/28nm part.
They also hint that MS could continue to use EDRAM+RBE packed together, something like 20MB offering more than 500GB/s worse of bandwidth.

 

[pjbliverpool]

100x the Pixel Fill rate? What were they smoking when they thought up that figure!

 

[archangelmorph]

If MS goes with an IBM CPU again, they can't just add more cores. First they have to redesign it to address the "load-hit-store" latency penalty. Otherwise, it will just be a 6 core piece of shit, instead of a 3 core piece of shit.

Also, the nextbox will surely have a DX11 style gpu to have some common ground with PC development.

Or you write your code to avoid incurring load-hit-store penalties in the first place.. It's just good practice..

(why waste silicon to make bad code run well when you can spend it making good code run even better..)

 

[FirewalkR]

This would be quite different from a WiiBox360. If the rumours (not necessarily the supposed specs) are true, seems like the "new" console would not actually represent a new generation, and developers would have to target both the 360 and the 360+. It's not necessarily a lot more work, since they could just use the extra power to up the resolution and framerate using the same assets, but they might want to improve those assets (or do them at a higher quality level and downscale for the current 360). Still, it's something that never happened before in consoles, I think.

I'd say the probability of this (improved specs, not a "360 natal") happening is low, but the reason I don't disregard it completely is the more credible (to me) rumour of a Wii HD next year. If both rumours came true Microsoft and Nintendo would be at the same technological standpoint, having gotten there through different but complementary paths.

One question arising from all this speculation is: what would Sony do? PS4 in 2011?

 

[groper]

100x the Pixel Fill rate? What were they smoking when they thought up that figure!

Maybe they wanted to say 10x the PF and 9x the TF cause this is a lot more realistic scenario (competitive to R900 and G400)

 

[liolio]

Actually the figures for the "second generation" hardware are a bit missleading...

500 million triangles per second
4 gigapixels per second
8 giga texels per second
256 gigabytes of bandwidth per second
512 megabytes of video memory

Actually comes with a note I missed in slideshow mode...

Tail end of GeForce 7 and the full spectrum of GeForce 8 and beyond.

So some figures are confusing as they look close to what a 360 offers but by looking twice actually they are not related to an actual GPU/system.
It's the same for this part

Multicore generation:

70x triangle throughput
450x pixel fill rate
390x texel rate
110x bandwidth
16x video memory

Comes with this note:

The theoretical maximum of the multi core generation of hardware is huge.
100x the theoretical processing power is likely.

Actually it can make sense if the memory where pixel are written is on board and there are no specific hardware for RBE/ROP operations and thus all chip resources are working on the task (and they have enough bandwidth to cache/on-board memory).
Anyway
<400 Giga Pixels per second
>400 Giga Texels per second
This looks like impressive figures But anyway even if possible that would mean that the chip is not doing anything else.
EDIT
I made an ugly calculation if a chip GPU/massively multicore VPU has a fillrate around 400Gpixels/s the on chip bandwidth should be around 1.2TB/s (3B per pixel)
Say you have 32 cores if core should have a bandwidth 37.5MB/s to its cache/work memory, 64 cores 19MB/s.
From the figure I found for the INtel core architecture it's sound possible for a L1 cache( the latter option more likely).

 

[pjbliverpool]

Actually it can make sense if the memory where pixel are written is on board and there are no specific hardware for RBE/ROP operations and thus all chip resources are working on the task (and they have enough bandwidth to cache/on-board memory).

Good point, its like how peak vertex processing capabilities ballooned with unified shaders.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

100x the Pixel Fill rate? What were they smoking when they thought up that figure!

Well, if Bungie were privy to MS's internal X360 lifespan. And if MS was always targetting a 10 year cycle. Then I'd imagine they were trying to envision what would be available in 2015.

Suddenly that 100x pixel fill rate doesn't seem so outrageous.

Regards,
SB

 

[liolio]

Good point, its like how peak vertex processing capabilities ballooned with unified shaders.

Interestingly too their estimations pretty much imply that next GPU/VPU should be using some form of tile based rendering.
Actually they still want a beefy amount of bandwidth to the VRAM (+512MB/s) I wonder if they may know off larrabee like but with higher computational resources / cache size ratio (thus data have to be moved more often).
(Between I know I'm reading way too much into it ).

 

[Tahir2]

Just double the VRAM?