Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Xenus]

I don't think they even care then. As long as they don't sound like a hairdryer and use something stupid like 500w and are more reliable then the X360 was at launch I think people will not care.

 

[Dave Glue]

I don't think they even care then. As long as they don't sound like a hairdryer and use something stupid like 500w and are more reliable then the X360 was at launch I think people will not care.

But those negative factors of the 360 at launch were at least partially, if not primarily related to the power draw. The only way around it is to make the console OMG XBOX HUGE, and I mean really big, which people won't want in their living rooms.

Plus if you have a 300wt console, chances are it's going to have a high price tag to match that power draw.

 

[Gubbi]

But those negative factors of the 360 at launch were at least partially, if not primarily related to the power draw.

The PS3 and 360 had (has?) similar power draw. Sony just spent more time, effort, - and above all, money, in making a solid CE product. The bean counters at Microsoft who thought they could shave a few bucks off the BOM by saving on the cooling solution as well as the mechanical engineering must have very red faces now. The money and mindshare lost thanks to RROD boggles the mind.

Cheers

 

[Squilliam]

Ideally I'd like to think (hope) that these boxes will draw less than 100w at the wall but I'm sure there's still some tech fetishist within these companies that will rally against that happening (evening if its better for their divisions long term health). Its difficult and mostly foolish to draw an arbitrary line here but I believe anything more than a 125W TDP (pre power supply) is stepping into the realms of the absurd and that the business suits (i.e. the people that are actually running both Sony and Microsoft's gaming divisions these days) would rightfully step in at that point.

That still leaves room for a ~90w single chip solution. A 2-3 billion transistor chip integrating an expanded CELL, ~20MB of eDRAM L3 cache and a 1-2 billion transistor DX11 GPU should still be possible at 28nm/22nm while operating within that sort of restraint and it should still present a huge leap over the current generation.

I believe strongly that the next generation consoles aren't going to be built in relation to the original 200W consoles released in 2005/6. The power use, bill of materials, noise, size, peripherals etc will all likely be relative to the current Xbox 360 revision and PS3 slim as each both represent a realistic console architecture which can deliver the performance and experience people want without either the console company or the end user having to make excessive sacrafices from the pursuit of an unrealistic performance tangent.

Its funny how this thread has been about throwing everything into the one pot. Pretty much any feature which sounds cool has been suggested or mulled over. Realistically however we are going to likely see consoles which are elegant and shoot above their weight in terms of performance/watt and performance/area silicon. You don't really get praised in the tech world for doing more with more, you get that praise for doing more with less, like for instance Barts (6870) performing within 10% of Cypress (5870) in spite of the fact that the latter is roughly 1/3rd bigger than the former on the same process node. ~255mm^2 vs ~330mm^2.

I am feeling pretty good about two things for the next generation.

1. There will be no standard mechanical HDD.

2. The cost of standard peripherals will likely to greater.

The higher cost of the latter will likely make the former a non-starter. Also once they include a standardised HDD theres absolutely no way they can remove it from their design, that $30 BOM cost for a laptop HDD will always be with the console whether it is put to significant use or not, thats especially bad when for most people $5-15 of flash would more than suffice.

 

[corduroygt]

1. There will be no standard mechanical HDD.
2. The cost of standard peripherals will likely to greater.

The higher cost of the latter will likely make the former a non-starter. Also once they include a standardised HDD theres absolutely no way they can remove it from their design, that $30 BOM cost for a laptop HDD will always be with the console whether it is put to significant use or not, thats especially bad when for most people $5-15 of flash would more than suffice.

If they're serious about getting DD of full games started, they'll put a mechanical hard drive in there. Also, there's nothing stopping sony from putting a 32GB SSD in a sata enclosure inside the PS3, except the still high costs of fast SSD's. Given that semiconductor process isn't advancing rapidly, I don't see SSD's being cheap enough to put in consoles in the next 3 years. So I feel the safe solution is to start with a mechanical drive and replace it with SSD in a "slim" model when and if the SSD becomes cheap enough.

 

[Squilliam]

If they're serious about getting DD of full games started, they'll put a mechanical hard drive in there. Also, there's nothing stopping sony from putting a 32GB SSD in a sata enclosure inside the PS3, except the still high costs of fast SSD's. Given that semiconductor process isn't advancing rapidly, I don't see SSD's being cheap enough to put in consoles in the next 3 years. So I feel the safe solution is to start with a mechanical drive and replace it with SSD in a "slim" model when and if the SSD becomes cheap enough.

Not SSD because that requires flash + expensive controller. What I was talking about was a small quantity, likely between 8 and 32GB of flash soldered directly onto the motherboard or daughter board like for instance the current 4GB Xbox 360 Arcade.

 

[TheChefO]

Those machines are sold for $2k+ so they can afford to spare no expense when designing their cooling and housing. A cheap $400 box doesn't have this luxury and anyway, high end laptops definitely aren't "80% premium desktop tech" as you claim, try 50-60% at best. The highest end DTRs use dual "mobility 5870s" which are downclocked desktop 5770s, they definitely do not offer 80% of the performance of a 5970 or dual GTX 480s as your figures imply.

Honestly it's been a while since I tracked the high end laptop market (my Dell 9300 about 5 years ago) so I'll take your word on the performance differences.

Does anyone have any hard figures though on the cost of the cooling solutions used in high-end laptops?

 

[homerdog]

If they want to move toward digital distribution (surely they do?) then there will be a lot more than 32GB of storage. And for 2012-2013, that will mean a mechanical HDD. Later on they can move to SSDs, and they won't need really expensive flash or controllers since they will only have to match the performance of a HDD. Which is basically exactly what corduroygt said

 

[3dilettante]

Does anyone have any hard figures though on the cost of the cooling solutions used in high-end laptops?

Laptops tend lack general standards for their parts.
Does anyone have any data on the warranty rates for laptops?

I don't have segment-wide numbers, but some of what I've seen for some brands' RMA rates within 2 years were pretty horrific.

 

[corduroygt]

Not SSD because that requires flash + expensive controller. What I was talking about was a small quantity, likely between 8 and 32GB of flash soldered directly onto the motherboard or daughter board like for instance the current 4GB Xbox 360 Arcade.

Most of the cost in an SSD is the flash, not the controller. 32 GB usb flash drives are more expensive than a sata notebook hdd.

 

[upnorthsox]

Laptops tend lack general standards for their parts.
Does anyone have any data on the warranty rates for laptops?

I don't have segment-wide numbers, but some of what I've seen for some brands' RMA rates within 2 years were pretty horrific.

Yes, 2 yrs is actually pretty good for a heavy user. I think I'm on my 5th in the last 5yrs.

 

[brain_stew]

Do launch / first year buyers really care about power load ? As long as it can be cooled properly I don't really care how much power my console uses. I don't think i'd mind up to 200w or so

Buyers later in the product life cycle certainly do and with process shrinks a less sure thing than ever before can you really afford to produce a 200w+ box at 22nm/28nm? If you're going to be unable to produce a <100w box within a few years of launch then you're going to have some major problems, and that could be a very real scenario if these machines consumer >200w at launch. Better off reducing the initial power draw (and cost) so that you're not left up shit creek if the regularity and usefulness of process shrinks continues to slow as it already has during this generation.

 

[liolio]

Not SSD because that requires flash + expensive controller. What I was talking about was a small quantity, likely between 8 and 32GB of flash soldered directly onto the motherboard or daughter board like for instance the current 4GB Xbox 360 Arcade.

That's an interesting possibility I remember that we discussed it a while ago when D.Kanter released this article/POV. Actually 16GB as stated in the article cold be "good enough". Enough for Os/Os update/patches/saves and caching as well as some DLC/XBLA games.

------------

In regard to perfs I don't think one should be concerned about it, the gap(in time) between this gen and next gen launch will be the greater (greatest?) we've seen in a while, 7/8 years.
Those systems will be monster no matter what.
On top of it manufacturers could make some saving vs the standard parts we find in the PC realm now. For example RBE/ROP numbers could drastically lower than nowadays PC standards if manufacturers think solutions as MLAA DLAA are good enough. Think of the RSX vs the Geforce7800 the RSX already had only half the ROPs. They have room for saving.

Looking at a recent examples, the HD68xx I read that AMD considered to configuration 16SIMD (? I can't find the link to check) arrays and S6 RBE vs the actual HD68xx. A console manufacturer may have favored the former configuration for example. Anyway why those damned manufacturers has to be so secretive, I'm already bored of waiting

Spoiler

most likely without any new in early 2011 I'll put together a gaming bare-bone PC

 

[Mobius1aic]

Yes, 2 yrs is actually pretty good for a heavy user. I think I'm on my 5th in the last 5yrs.

Same here, though it's only due to my quick adoption rate. Only one (my third lappy) died due to possible quality reasons (though probably brought on by my own doing as well). My last laptop would still be around had I not had my little incident with it and broke the monitor. However at that point in time I didn't have a high performance desktop, so I had bought a gaming Asus lappy (I needed the mobility). Now I just have a 14" Vaio, which is just fine for what it's intended as I have a couple desktops to get me my gaming fix and to suit my high performance needs.

On the power draw issues, I think laptops are a good place to look for design inspiration, but I don't see the next set of consoles being designed in such a constrained style. Bare minimum, I would design a machine that is 2 inches in height at least, so airflow has a real channel through and a real cooling system could be implemented. Basically not all that different from today's machines. The "waterwheel" style slot cooling + copper heatpipes and dissipaters used these days seems to work well without breaking the bank in cost. My old Asus had this and even my little Vaio does too. The exit vanes on the Asus became like an oven though lol. Of course these devices are much smaller than the ones on full size graphics cards and in the PS3, but still they do the job well enough. I'm pretty sure my Asus would've lasted a good 3 or 4 years had I not been so clumsy with it.

 

[Squilliam]

Most of the cost in an SSD is the flash, not the controller. 32 GB usb flash drives are more expensive than a sata notebook hdd.

That depends on the sophistication of the controller and whether you're looking at something akin to a modern SSD with 200MB/S transfer or something with 40-50MB/S transfer rate.

If they want to move toward digital distribution (surely they do?) then there will be a lot more than 32GB of storage. And for 2012-2013, that will mean a mechanical HDD. Later on they can move to SSDs, and they won't need really expensive flash or controllers since they will only have to match the performance of a HDD. Which is basically exactly what corduroygt said

Most of the content can really be divided into two categories.

1. Volatile for media streaming.

2. Involatile for game content which can be streamed to a lesser extent.

For the former you don't need much storage space at all. For the latter a small quantity of storage can meet over half of the markets needs. Therefore you can use one SKU with 16-32GB of storage to address >50% if not >66% of the needs of the market going by the ratio of sales between the 360 Arcade and 360 Elite of recent times. They could simply sell a HDD as an additional accessory and only sell the one SKU of hardware.

That's an interesting possibility I remember that we discussed it a while ago when D.Kanter released this article/POV. Actually 16GB as stated in the article cold be "good enough". Enough for Os/Os update/patches/saves and caching as well as some DLC/XBLA games.

------------

In regard to perfs I don't think one should be concerned about it, the gap(in time) between this gen and next gen launch will be the greater (greatest?) we've seen in a while, 7/8 years.
Those systems will be monster no matter what.
On top of it manufacturers could make some saving vs the standard parts we find in the PC realm now. For example RBE/ROP numbers could drastically lower than nowadays PC standards if manufacturers think solutions as MLAA DLAA are good enough. Think of the RSX vs the Geforce7800 the RSX already had only half the ROPs. They have room for saving.

Looking at a recent examples, the HD68xx I read that AMD considered to configuration 16SIMD (? I can't find the link to check) arrays and S6 RBE vs the actual HD68xx. A console manufacturer may have favored the former configuration for example. Anyway why those damned manufacturers has to be so secretive, I'm already bored of waiting

Spoiler

most likely without any new in early 2011 I'll put together a gaming bare-bone PC

I read that before, very interesting.

Anyway with regards to RBE/ROPs etc I would suspect that data locality would be a high priority and the ED-RAM concept or similar would mean they wouldn't need as wide a memory bus whilst being able to take better advantage of techniques like MLAA to render an alias free simulation. In any case brute force AA tecnniques are quite likely to fall by the wayside as more elegant and cheaper solutions become possible. Just as SSAA gave way to MSAA, MSAA will give way to techniques which are more flexible and which give developers more control in that they can design their games to work within the contraints of the consoles technologies. In this respect the way that PS3 exclusive developers have operated may very well be the model all AAA developers use moving forwards.

 

[Tahir2]

My thoughts thus far:

1. Perhaps by 2012/13 flash memory can replace the traditional hard drive altogether. However unsure about this currently as we will need very large hard drives to enable content download.
2. Whilst broadband speeds have increased in many countries unfortunately it will still not enable machines without optical media (at least as a backup and for markets where broadband speeds are low/inconsistent or market penetration makes them less viable to completely replace optical media. New markets are opening up as well in the developing world which will have limited broadband speeds even in 2013 (India etc).
3. However do expect "app stores" a la iPhone and Android to be very popular and idea's from their success incorporated to the next gen consoles.
4. Some of the biggest lessons learned by Sony and Microsoft are going to influence their next gen console design decisions. MS lost a lot of money on reliability issues. Sony lost a lot of money on BOM costs (not just cooling but the infamous blue laser availability at the beginning).
5. Standards that were being introduced in 2005/6 are now prevalent, e.g. HD televisions, new standards will have some significant market penetration by 2012/13 (3DTV).
6. Process technology is taking a lot longer to mature and the chip fabrication industry has to spend ever more money on the next node and half nodes. This issue is getting worse until the point where current materials and processes will need a revolutionary, rather than evolutionary change.
7. Costs to develop games has increased, tools that can help design games are getting more complex and expensive.
8. The target market has widened to such a degree that it is not as obsessed about visual fidelity as once believed (ask Nintendo).
9. Processing speed needs to be matched by memory bandwidth and programming flexibility to offer significantly higher visual experiences.
10. Dumping money into hardware for a loss may not be a workable business model, both MS and Sony may want to make a profit on all hardware sold from launch.

 

[eastmen]

Tahir market reports are saying that 3DTV purchases are disapointing and the lack of head sets sold in ratio to tvs sugests that the 3DTVs are purchased because they can't get the 2d features in other lower models.

3D will be a non issue for next gen consoles. It will be like hdtv back in 2002.

 

[Gubbi]

Tahir market reports are saying that 3DTV purchases are disapointing and the lack of head sets sold in ratio to tvs sugests that the 3DTVs are purchased because they can't get the 2d features in other lower models.

3D will be a non issue for next gen consoles. It will be like hdtv back in 2002.

Sony will use 3D capability to push sales of their 3DTVs the same way they used PS3 to push BluRay playback this gen. Microsoft will have to support 3DTV gaming as well.

Personally I hope 3D gaming becomes ubiquitous, that means that I can play all those 30 fps 3D titles at 60fps in 2D mode

Cheers

 

[Rangers]

Sony will use 3D capability to push sales of their 3DTVs the same way they used PS3 to push BluRay playback this gen. Microsoft will have to support 3DTV gaming as well.

Personally I hope 3D gaming becomes ubiquitous, that means that I can play all those 30 fps 3D titles at 60fps in 2D mode

Cheers

At 640X720?

 

[eastmen]

Sony will use 3D capability to push sales of their 3DTVs the same way they used PS3 to push BluRay playback this gen. Microsoft will have to support 3DTV gaming as well.

Personally I hope 3D gaming becomes ubiquitous, that means that I can play all those 30 fps 3D titles at 60fps in 2D mode

Cheers

not if people aren't buying into 3d.

You have to understand. These consoles came out in 2005/6 and hd tvs were avalible from 2000. Thats 5 years of steady install base building. If new consoles start coming in 2012 it wouldn't even be 3 years. Not only that but reports are showing that people don't care for 3D.

Two things have to happen for 3D to take off. The cost has to drop down greatly and the glasses need to go.