Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Shifty Geezer]

I remember early discussion on Cell design and real figures for cache showed misses weren't too common and die size not that large.

 

[corduroygt]

I think that post can actually make you stupid. Its hard to get so much so wrong in so short a number of words.

You know what, It's actually hard to come off more like an arrogant highbrow prick with less words than in that post.

A Macbook pro costs about $500 yet it sells for over $1000
A Bugatti Veyron costs about $4M to make yet it sells for $1.5M
An inkjet cartridge costs pennies, yet it's sold for >$10.
And we all know how much the PS3 cost to make and what price it could fetch in the free market...

Due to low volumes, the GTX480's likely cost more than what the market will pay for them, but NV makes the money on supercomputer (Tesla) cards with insane margins on them.

Thus, the price is dictated by demand, not production cost.

 

[aaronspink]

You know what, It's actually hard to come off more like an arrogant highbrow prick with less words than in that post.

What you think its reasonable or intelligent to compares a core with a SIMD lane? To not even know how the hardware works and put up a post on it? the filmicgames post was beyond stupid. It has literally no redeeming value except negative value. Some people will read it and think hey that guy works in the industry, what he says must be true when he has absolutely no clue what he's talking about.

 

[Entropy]

Due to low volumes, the GTX480's likely cost more than what the market will pay for them, but NV makes the money on supercomputer (Tesla) cards

Um, no.

 

[ct03]

It simply isn't 10 times as fast in ANY real world application. It won't play a game that runs at 30fps on a RSX equivalent at 300fps (with an equally souped up CPU, that is). It doesn't matter if it is in theory 10000 times as fast, if the games that are run on it don't run that much faster.

Real world speed difference may not be 10x, but it's certainly incorrect to say that the games "don't run that much faster."

Take Resident Evil 5:
It's 1280x720 No AA and 30 fps on the RSX.
Looking at the 480 GTX review from legitreviews, it pulls 151 fps @ 1280x1024 with 8xAA

That's a 5x improvement despite 8xAA and 42% more pixels.

 

[Xenus]

Oh I have a question. As we know Sony has a thing for RAMBUS so are we still expecting them to be the only major consumer of XDR2 or has RAMBUS lost their last foothold in any market?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think that depends on the success of their terabyte initiative. If they can achieve very fast (500+ GB/s) bandwidth, that simplifies other aspects of system design and would be worth going for, one hulking great pool of shared RAM. If they fail to get significant advances over GDDR, GDDR will be the more affordable option.

 

[Xenus]

Yeah RAMBUS suing everyone under the sun didn't exactly make them friends and allow them anywhere near the volume to be price competitive if the techs are near equal.

 

[Heinrich4]

Good point here and I bet sony will go with Rambus again...

It's a shame that Rambus can not bring a refresh to this market(pcs,videogames,3d cards etc) because in theory they have a better relation watts / power and much faster in general(500GB/sec !).

http://www.rambus.com/us/technology/solutions/xdr2/index.html

 

[Panajev2001a]

Yeah RAMBUS suing everyone under the sun didn't exactly make them friends and allow them anywhere near the volume to be price competitive if the techs are near equal.

DRAM makers kinda went the "cartel" route against RAMBUS and then enjoyed some nice years of price-fixing... so they played it quite dirty too...

 

[Heinrich4]

Another of topic ...every day i'm more convinced the RSX is a big problem for the ps3 even more for multiplatform developers who are not making a greater effort(as we see in first/seconds) to off load gpu to cell for at least match X360 results.

I have hopes for the next gen gpu sony follow the path of more psone like (GTE gpu-> enough powerfull and flexible at this time-> 1994 days) tham ps2 (GS only rasterizer with massive bw eDRAM and low link with main RAM) and ps3 (RSX -> weak at all aspects ...only on the shelf PC gpu) ...

(praying here for PowerVR 6 /customized gpu ps4 does not repeat ps2 and ps3 mystakes...)

 

[Heinrich4]

Of course I was talking about smth similar from 2013, but at that cost, so probably 50-60% faster than this GTX 465. We know that Sony likes to go beyond in terms of technology, but dont really think they can and that investors let them in next generation. They were very close to bankruptcy this gen.
I dont expect ps2-ps3 leap in terms of performance, but rather 10x better with great support from the beginning.

And for going beyond I cant really think about smth usefull. They already are 3D proof, they already has motion controller. TVs evolve rather to 1080p + no glasses 3D in terms of technology [1080p is sufficent enought for <50' TVs and most of us dont have place for greater panels], so they dont need so much more power in GPU to render beyond 1080p [that gtx 465 is efficent enought even on Windows in this resolution].
And we wont see real time ray-tracing in next gen for sure, maybe except next gen Polyphony's Gran Turismo - they were always ahead of others in terms of software magic ;] [we know they are making some tests with it right now]..

So it's quite likely Sony comes with GTX480 *(GTX465+50/60%->GTX480) levels for PS4? I expected something at least 50% more to hold 5 / 6 years a fierce competition that will likely see some evidence (Larrabee?) change paradign rendering for ray-tracing who knows.

If so, as a gamer and praying here for non "wii way of life" adopted by sony and microsoft,and if GTX480 are confirmed overall im disappointed and still have a hope for next gen gpu fully customized and beyond, because this "gpu GTX480 level for ps4" honestly does not seen have gain in performance which spends 10x higher in transistors count [3.2Billions for CUDA ,APIs and others pc tweaks...] and have something like 6 times more performance (GTA4 ~=> 30fps 640/720P "mediun"on ps3/x360 and 1050P/60/70fps "in high'' on pcs)** than what we see in the RSX (another waste of transistors compared to Xenos GPU ...)


What about the PD ... RT on these tests and assuming they are thinking about the PS4 ... do we have any indication of what this new gpu? (Or cpu / gpu integrated)?

*
http://www.geeks3d.com/20100329/gef...70-have-limited-double-precision-performance/

**
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...Fermi-performance-benchmarks/Reviews/?page=11

 

[Cyan]

Agree...


No way,X86 will dominate desktop and notebook market unless Intel abandon it.Apple has proved PPC can't compete with X86 in these markets.


They don't need a ”windows 7 mobile“ on PC,they just need develop such features in GFW.

I think MS "plan" could be like this:
Windows 7-----desktop,notebook and X86 netbook,no one can threaten MS
Windows Embedded Compact 7----ARM netbook and large hand-held devices like iPad,there is a big opportunity in a fast-growing market.
Windows phone 7-----smart phones,it will be a exceptionally hard battle against Apple and Google
Xbox------entertainment center in living room
All platforms will feature XBLA and Zune marketplace,GFW on PC and Xbox retail games will focus on hardcore gamers.

http://www.itproportal.com/portal/n...soft-already-planning-xbox-720-arm-based-cpu/

Not only a notebook, there are new rumours circulating around that say the next Xbox will have an ARM processor while MS is working on the CPU of the new console.

Microsoft may already be planning for the next generation Xbox 720 (or Xbox 3) gaming console based on separate news nuggets that have emerged over the last four weeks and lead us to believe that the next CPU powering the console will be ARM-based.

First, there's this statement by Chris Lewis, the head of Microsoft's gaming division in Europe, who said that the current Xbox 360 gaming console is likely to be around for another five years, meaning that the next Xbox would come out around 2015, a decade after the release of the Xbox 360 which itself came four years after the original Xbox.

Then, there's the announcement that Microsoft has licensed the architecture IP of ARM, one month ago and the presentation made a few days ago at Hot Chips by Microsoft's Xbox team where they detailed the innards of the new Xbox 360 gaming console.

It turned out as Ars Technica points out, that the guys at Microsoft did a lot of the layout (and possibly all of it) and that's a very good omen for the future.

Ironically, Microsoft has had to hold back on increasing the current Xbox 360 performance because it is not allowed; this helps Microsoft to extend the longevity of the gaming platform as a whole and maintain some homogeneity.

The new Xbox 360 still contains those three 3.2GHz Power PC cores with 1MB L2 cache, a 500MHz ATI-based GPU and 512MB unified memory.

The next obvious step would be for Microsoft to use something like the next generation of ARM processor core, the one that comes AFTER the Eagle, in its next generation Xbox 720.

Next generation ARM processor technology will be natively multicore, capable of reaching multi-Ghz speeds and powerful enough to match the decade old performance of the Xbox 360 cores while keeping power consumption, costs and die-size at an absolute low.

It will also be interesting to see how Microsoft plays up with Mali, ARM's graphics technology.

Back in March 2009, Remi Pedersen, graphics product manager at ARM, already promised that users would be able to Xbox-like games later that year thanks to the Mali-400MP which can scale to four cores and with ARM planning 1080p60 full HD support for 2013, it's not hard to imagine how Microsoft may use the technology by 2015. (PS : check the ARM Mali "Canvas" Demo for more).

The final reason why Microsoft would adopt ARM lies in the fact that mobile gaming is going to be huge over the next few years and since most handsets will still be running ARM-based derivatives by then, coding for only one integrated platform makes sense, especially when it comes to scaling across various resolutions (and screen sizes).

 

[Rangers]

ARM processor in a desktop console? Extremely unlikely.

Next generation ARM processor technology will be natively multicore, capable of reaching multi-Ghz speeds and powerful enough to match the decade old performance of the Xbox 360 cores while keeping power consumption, costs and die-size at an absolute low.

I dont think "matching X360 performance" is exactly what MS has in mind for it's next gen console.

 

[Kaotik]

No to mention that saying "XB360 will be around 'till 2015" doesn't mean next gen XB360 will be released 2015, it'll be most likely released notably earlier, I'd put my money on late 2012

 

[dragonelite]

ARM processor in a desktop console? Extremely unlikely.



I dont think "matching X360 performance" is exactly what MS has in mind for it's next gen console.

I think those Arm processor license have more to do with win7mobile then the next xbox. Wiki said that like 98% of mobiles have a form of ARM processor in them.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

there is absolutely nothing convincing on that article. Bunch of illogical assumptions based on shady data...

 

[Squilliam]

Theres no point in limiting a console in single threaded performance like that. They would want both more cores and more single threaded performance because they'll need to scale their architecture in both directions if they want it to scale properly at all.

 

[TheWretched]

Well... they could use a ARM derivate for a handheld console, could they not?

 

[Farid]

My 2 euro cents on that ARM rumour

Well... they could use a ARM derivate for a handheld console, could they not?

You have a point here. But we have to take into account the fact that Microsoft already has a competent handheld platform in Windows Mobile and that it's wiser for the company to let the hardware hassles to IHVs on that market.

And seeing how PSP requires a lot of attention from Sony (for little positive returns in the western markets), and thus divides Sony's marketing and development forces between two hardware platform, putting aside PS2. Adding to that the way the Kin phone project went for MS, I think it's better for MS folks to hold a major OS platform for the mobiles than waste ressources on their own handheld.

Now a deal between MS and ARM could be targeted at many things, but a home or a handheld console don't seem to be the likely candidates. If you ask me, that is.