So no one PMed you to look at this link?So, I open this thread for the first time in weeks if not months for no specific reasons and what do I see?The gods are making fun of me
Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech
- Thread starter Acert93
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Sorry, I got confused with the various cutting edge RAM technologies. Surely however if we don't see T-Ram by time they introduce their Bulldozer + Fusion chips, say 2012, then that too is likely to be a dead end? It always seemed like a promising technology for a console given the density, especially in scenarios where you have a CGPU architecture right from the start.
The last news about it was from May 2009.
The thread where I mentioned Z-RAM being discarded is one of the highest search results for AMD and T-RAM in Google, which shows how much this has set the world on fire.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=54709
There's no announcement that AMD has given up, but nothing indicating they are progressing.
The thread where I mentioned Z-RAM being discarded is one of the highest search results for AMD and T-RAM in Google, which shows how much this has set the world on fire.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=54709
There's no announcement that AMD has given up, but nothing indicating they are progressing.
They presented a research paper at IEDM in December.
Ahh thats quite an old thread. The last news on their website is around the same time they made news about Global Foundries entering into a joint development agreement. Before that they didn't update for around a year with news and since then no news to speak of. It is hard to say whether they are hard at work and about to announce something big like an aquisition or a new CPU using their tech or whether they are frantically trying to not go into recievership.
Given the fact that AMD cannot really seem to catch up to Intel on process or cache or architecture, perhaps something like this could give them a leg up if it actually works as advertised. I've seen enough products which look good on paper but not in practice to be skeptical here, however.
Given the fact that AMD cannot really seem to catch up to Intel on process or cache or architecture, perhaps something like this could give them a leg up if it actually works as advertised. I've seen enough products which look good on paper but not in practice to be skeptical here, however.
Just re-read the first page of this thread and the awesome first post by Joshua Luna.
Wow, so many of the educated guesses and idea's are pretty much bang on.
I don't think we will get 1.3GHz GPU's and maybe even die sizes will be slightly more conservative this time round... 4GB of RAM is seeming more and more reasonable as time passes and even with the passing of almost 5 years since the first post (seems like yesterday!) we still have very little idea of what the three main players are planning for the next generation.
Wild cards are different now:
ARM and with it - PowerVR/Tegra/Mali/Adreno
DMP and their PICA technology
Technologies that haven't changed in those 5 years:
We are still using silicon! OK that is a given but the pace of fabrication plants to churn out new process nodes has seriously slowed. Even though it seems Intel lives in its own bubble where they are heading fast for 22nm and others are struggling to get 32nm products out.
RAM is still plain old fashioned DDR in the PC space with RAMBUS still a viable option - no revolutionary products in the near term. Memristors, M, T, Z all too far down the alphabet it seems at the moment. The infamous eDRAM still has its pros and cons. Stacked memory is being experimented with by Intel but no product yet.
CPU technologies have not changed much in the status quo - x86 Intel leads, AMD follows. RISC based technologies have a new champion with ARM and now even MIPS are vowing to be back. IBM has its ever popular (and cheap?) POWER alternative. Gone are the megahertz days and welcome to multicore with turbo boosts.
Physical media vs direct downloads. Sony have stated it is too early to switch to pure online distribution as proved by the PSP Go but have not given up on the idea. Mobile phones have shown for small applications at least it is a viable, and preferred alternative for their customer needs.
So what do we know?
Clockspeeds have not gone up massively, we are still at around 900MHz for the top end PC GPU's. AMD and NVIDIA went "wider" rather than just quicker.
Power draw even at reasonable die sizes can be huge and prohibitive to a CE device such as a console.
New technologies have negated the need for remaining on the 5 year product cycles - Kinect proves that.
New technologies being pushed by Hollywood and TV manufacturers will need to be taken into account, e.g. HDTV 3D for the new consoles with Nintendo probably avoiding the costs involved in supporting full HD 3D 3DTV experiences.
Biggest unexpected surprise in my eyes was Apple's rise to dominance and what impact that has had on the gaming development world...
More random thoughts may follow... in 5 years or less!
Wow, so many of the educated guesses and idea's are pretty much bang on.
I don't think we will get 1.3GHz GPU's and maybe even die sizes will be slightly more conservative this time round... 4GB of RAM is seeming more and more reasonable as time passes and even with the passing of almost 5 years since the first post (seems like yesterday!) we still have very little idea of what the three main players are planning for the next generation.
Wild cards are different now:
ARM and with it - PowerVR/Tegra/Mali/Adreno
DMP and their PICA technology
Technologies that haven't changed in those 5 years:
We are still using silicon! OK that is a given but the pace of fabrication plants to churn out new process nodes has seriously slowed. Even though it seems Intel lives in its own bubble where they are heading fast for 22nm and others are struggling to get 32nm products out.
RAM is still plain old fashioned DDR in the PC space with RAMBUS still a viable option - no revolutionary products in the near term. Memristors, M, T, Z all too far down the alphabet it seems at the moment. The infamous eDRAM still has its pros and cons. Stacked memory is being experimented with by Intel but no product yet.
CPU technologies have not changed much in the status quo - x86 Intel leads, AMD follows. RISC based technologies have a new champion with ARM and now even MIPS are vowing to be back. IBM has its ever popular (and cheap?) POWER alternative. Gone are the megahertz days and welcome to multicore with turbo boosts.
Physical media vs direct downloads. Sony have stated it is too early to switch to pure online distribution as proved by the PSP Go but have not given up on the idea. Mobile phones have shown for small applications at least it is a viable, and preferred alternative for their customer needs.
So what do we know?
Clockspeeds have not gone up massively, we are still at around 900MHz for the top end PC GPU's. AMD and NVIDIA went "wider" rather than just quicker.
Power draw even at reasonable die sizes can be huge and prohibitive to a CE device such as a console.
New technologies have negated the need for remaining on the 5 year product cycles - Kinect proves that.
New technologies being pushed by Hollywood and TV manufacturers will need to be taken into account, e.g. HDTV 3D for the new consoles with Nintendo probably avoiding the costs involved in supporting full HD 3D 3DTV experiences.
Biggest unexpected surprise in my eyes was Apple's rise to dominance and what impact that has had on the gaming development world...
More random thoughts may follow... in 5 years or less!
corduroygt
Banned
Curious how much this would cost and what performance would it get compared to current consoles without the windows OS layer...maybe enough for the next wii?
http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/art...-platform-based-on-AMD-Fusion-technology.aspx
http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/art...-platform-based-on-AMD-Fusion-technology.aspx
Dual core Bobcat cores with 80SP integrated DX11 GPU and DDR3 1066 64bit.
Not really that powerful and designed for "low power designs in embedded applications such as Digital Signage, x86 Set-Top-Box (xSTB), IP-TV, Thin Client, Information Kiosk, Point-of-Sale, and Casino Gaming."
No HDMI out either on the Quixant model, not designed for home use really.
Not really that powerful and designed for "low power designs in embedded applications such as Digital Signage, x86 Set-Top-Box (xSTB), IP-TV, Thin Client, Information Kiosk, Point-of-Sale, and Casino Gaming."
No HDMI out either on the Quixant model, not designed for home use really.
Blazkowicz
Legend
it's fit for arcade gaming.
native inputs for the arcade switches, built-in amplifier.
it's also geared for mobile use (truck, cycles etc.) and is pure 12V geek porn. (lots of serial and more general IO, dual lan, etc.)
well done!
native inputs for the arcade switches, built-in amplifier.
it's also geared for mobile use (truck, cycles etc.) and is pure 12V geek porn. (lots of serial and more general IO, dual lan, etc.)
well done!
Z-RAM is no longer being targeted as a SRAM replacement.
”our focus is stand-alone DRAM only.”
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/memory/hynix-makes-nocapacitor-dram
”our focus is stand-alone DRAM only.”
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/memory/hynix-makes-nocapacitor-dram
Well I guess that scuppers that idea.
New idea: How about 8GB of RAM in consoles because of the increased density of ZRAM-DRAM!
might be possible. Just bought 8 gigs of ddr 3 1866 for $65 bucks last week.
I'm not sure what ram they will use in future consoles , but i'm guessing ram will be pretty cheap next gen. I believe they are pushing for 42nm ddr 3 this year. Mabye by the time next gen consoles come out they will be down to 32nm for ddr 3.
TheWretched
Regular
I doubt this'll happen... just look at the RAM usage of current PC games... NONE come even close to using 2GB of RAM, even at highest settings. Crysis can easily go beyond 1.5GB, but not by much.
Well, we have to keep in mind that many games (that I played, that is) are console ports, thus they won't use as much RAM anyways.
I can't see the next consoles getting more than 4GB overall.
Consoles ALWAYS get MUCH too small memory space... I mean 32MB for the PS2, when PCs already had about 256MB? Ok, it's faster RAM coupled with eDRAM, but... it's still very small. Looking at most PS2 games, you can see how they did it, since nearly all PS2 games had the ugliest textures, ever.
Well, we have to keep in mind that many games (that I played, that is) are console ports, thus they won't use as much RAM anyways.
I can't see the next consoles getting more than 4GB overall.
Consoles ALWAYS get MUCH too small memory space... I mean 32MB for the PS2, when PCs already had about 256MB? Ok, it's faster RAM coupled with eDRAM, but... it's still very small. Looking at most PS2 games, you can see how they did it, since nearly all PS2 games had the ugliest textures, ever.
The consoles are have different design philosophy.
If you divide the bandwidth of the memory with the FPS,then you will get the amount of memory in MB that you can install-more memory will not make difference.
So,even with more memory the PS2 textures would be not so different from the current ones.(mainly because the bottleneck been the size of the integrated graphics memory)
If you divide the bandwidth of the memory with the FPS,then you will get the amount of memory in MB that you can install-more memory will not make difference.
So,even with more memory the PS2 textures would be not so different from the current ones.(mainly because the bottleneck been the size of the integrated graphics memory)
Blazkowicz
Legend
256MB was very uncommon in 1999 and games targeted 32MB system ram..
but I nonetheless agree with your point.
in particular console makers are cheap and just won't want to put sixteen memory chips in, even though big dram sticks haven't gotten awfully inexpensive.
also bandwith will be a problem especially if you have many-core or GPU fantasies. your ddr3 pair of sticks gives out the same order of magnitude as what the PS3's GPU get (which was back then a contempory high end GPU with half the bandwith)
but I nonetheless agree with your point.
in particular console makers are cheap and just won't want to put sixteen memory chips in, even though big dram sticks haven't gotten awfully inexpensive.
also bandwith will be a problem especially if you have many-core or GPU fantasies. your ddr3 pair of sticks gives out the same order of magnitude as what the PS3's GPU get (which was back then a contempory high end GPU with half the bandwith)
Its more likely windows xp being 32bit thats to blame than anything else. As more systems switch over to 64bit we will see more ram usage in games.
Most likely over night once 64bit machines hit the magic number for installed base we will see memory usage go sky high.
TheWretched
Regular
XP 32bit can use more than that, though. But there is no need, yet. As I said, there are games, that can use more than 1.5GB of RAM, but none see the need. Resolutions won't rise much anymore, as humans simply won't be able to see any difference... textures will reach the nyquist frequency before long... there'll be no need to raise texture resolution anymore, as there's no visual difference in doing so. And several games already have "perfect" textures, too.
I guess, the need rather goes to faster RAM, than bigger. 2 to 4GB will be more than enough, next generation, to server all needs. But beyond that, there'll be a need to address the other things... more and higher quality models on screen without heavy LOD, world physics, nothing baked, realtime GI... all those things won't need much RAM, at least compared to textures, unless you ramp up your GTA4 with several hundreds of car types creating traffic jams and crashing into buildings, destroying them and their car along with it, simultaneously.
The way PS2 and to a degree the 360 handle it, are good. A big pool of cheap general purpose RAM plus expensive additional fast RAM for other stuff. I am still quite in love how PS2 handled framebuffer operations like it did... made for some cool surreal games.
I guess, the need rather goes to faster RAM, than bigger. 2 to 4GB will be more than enough, next generation, to server all needs. But beyond that, there'll be a need to address the other things... more and higher quality models on screen without heavy LOD, world physics, nothing baked, realtime GI... all those things won't need much RAM, at least compared to textures, unless you ramp up your GTA4 with several hundreds of car types creating traffic jams and crashing into buildings, destroying them and their car along with it, simultaneously.
The way PS2 and to a degree the 360 handle it, are good. A big pool of cheap general purpose RAM plus expensive additional fast RAM for other stuff. I am still quite in love how PS2 handled framebuffer operations like it did... made for some cool surreal games.
Blazkowicz
Legend
I remember seeing motion blur on a fighter aircraft game on PS2, this simple example looked cool, that was better than vaporware motion blur on the 3dfx voodoo5 for one thing.
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