Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[function]

AMD landed in the shit where?

Fusion was supposed to arrive on 45nm but got pushed back to 32nm, then even on 32 nm should have been out before Bobcat but got delayed till summer, and yields are still poor now and AMD can't make enough. Bulldozer was supposed to be out in 1945 on 20 cm glass valves but got pushed back to 32nm, yields are really bad and clocks are struggling. Consumer Bulldozer products are pushed back month after month after month after month after month.

They pushed all their promising technologies like Fusion and Bulldozer back so they could compete with Intel best by using the same process (Global Foundries "closing the gap") and ended up with nothing to sell except k10. Even when Intel messed up with Sandybridge sata AMD had nothing but blanks to fire back with.

I don't think a console vendor should bet the farm on a new process that's supposed to be appearing several years down the line. Nintendo are launching on 45 nm next year and that's got to say something about the importance of predictability and the guarantee of actually having a product to sell come launch day.

Who the hell would want to bet on Global Foundries 22 nm process for a console launching in 2013?

 

[liolio]

Fusion was supposed to arrive on 45nm but got pushed back to 32nm, then even on 32 nm should have been out before Bobcat but got delayed till summer, and yields are still poor now and AMD can't make enough. Bulldozer was supposed to be out in 1945 on 20 cm glass valves but got pushed back to 32nm, yields are really bad and clocks are struggling. Consumer Bulldozer products are pushed back month after month after month after month after month.

They pushed all their promising technologies like Fusion and Bulldozer back so they could compete with Intel best by using the same process (Global Foundries "closing the gap") and ended up with nothing to sell except k10. Even when Intel messed up with Sandybridge sata AMD had nothing but blanks to fire back with.

I don't think a console vendor should bet the farm on a new process that's supposed to be appearing several years down the line. Nintendo are launching on 45 nm next year and that's got to say something about the importance of predictability and the guarantee of actually having a product to sell come launch day.

Who the hell would want to bet on Global Foundries 22 nm process for a console launching in 2013?

Indeed I would not be surprised if 22nm only become a valid option for mass production of a console as late as 2015. There is no point producing a tinier chips (on more costly wafer and lithography) so more chip per wafer if yields are terrific.
I expect Intel lead in lithography to reach a historic high level. Not speaking of console, with 22nm really likely to be there in time and the prospect for 14nm looking good, Intel will a more of a chance than most think to destroy ARM "high end" (not really) chip. Damned the 35Watts for a IB core i7 is damned impressive and say a lot on how well 22nm turned out.

 

[rekator]

It seem that AMD would be use XDR2 on the high range of HD7900.
http://www.presence-pc.com/actualite/Radeon-XDR2-7900-44994/#xtor=RSS-11

 

[Rolf N]

Why future consoles shouldnt use more watts then the previous ones?
They also could build bigger boxer for the next gen.
Just remember:

The 90nm Xbox 360 already needed to be in an Xbox 1-sized case to function properly. There is no headroom left to scale the wattage further up, unless you up-size the case even further than original Xbox levels.

I still have vibrant memories of the "Foreman grill" branded ridicule certain large consoles have received this gen. I'm not sure console makers want to push in that direction again so soon.

 

[liolio]

The 90nm Xbox 360 already needed to be in an Xbox 1-sized case to function properly. There is no headroom left to scale the wattage further up, unless you up-size the case even further than original Xbox levels.

I still have vibrant memories of the "Foreman grill" branded ridicule certain large consoles have received this gen. I'm not sure console makers want to push in that direction again so soon.

Who know they may got a deal with Ikea instead of ISP or Tv broadcasters and sell the thing as a functional TV furniture...

 

[Rangers]

Some next gen comments from Crytek http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-09-14-state-of-play-crytek-editorial

Talk of the future inevitably turns to talk of next generation hardware. Crytek was rumoured to be working with the new Xbox console something that has since been strenuously denied. But at the mention of next generation Yerli shoots the PR manager a nervous look.

"If they come, and I think they will be more powerful, this will not necessarily be... I have to be careful..." he says.

"We have a pretty good understanding of what we expect from next generation," he finally admits.

"One thing that will be certainly supported, or that we will ask for, is when you look to the free-to-play models, the time it takes to get content out to the gamers, that must be much shorter. It's a small thing but it's an important thing to enable more business models"

Jones also has demands when it comes to hardware, but he's not asking for super powered processors or graphics that will make your eyes pop out, he just wants the consoles to be easier to develop for.

"We hope that everything starts getting a little bit architecturally more similar, he says.

"Obviously the whole industry had a great deal of difficulty in the current generation dealing with very different platforms and having to build very different technology for each one. That's a pain that we need to be doing without, because the next generation of gaming at the high end will allow to put so much content onto those machines."

As for the latest round of tech that we do know about, Yerli may not be particularly taken with the PlayStation Vita (Jones is more diplomatic, and says Crytek will work with the machine when the timing is right and the interest from licensees is significant) but he's excited about the Nintedo Wii U.

The specs are very good," Yerli enthuses.

"It's a challenge for designers, but once thought through it can add value, and that's what ultimately important. Our guys in Nottingham they are very happy with their tests on the dev kits and they're excited about it."

 

[function]

Indeed I would not be surprised if 22nm only become a valid option for mass production of a console as late as 2015. There is no point producing a tinier chips (on more costly wafer and lithography) so more chip per wafer if yields are terrific.
I expect Intel lead in lithography to reach a historic high level. Not speaking of console, with 22nm really likely to be there in time and the prospect for 14nm looking good, Intel will a more of a chance than most think to destroy ARM "high end" (not really) chip. Damned the 35Watts for a IB core i7 is damned impressive and say a lot on how well 22nm turned out.

Are IBM actually producing anything on their 32nm process yet?

Intel are unstoppable. If AMD had access to Intel's 22nm process, next year's Fusion processors would be incredible.

 

[liolio]

Are IBM actually producing anything on their 32nm process yet?

Something that would have been confirmed? No. Still I expect them to develop MS SoC (if Charlie's mole right) and to use that process. I believe that IBM passed on 32nm for now because I believe that in the markets they are addressing 45nm + Edram must do better. So they must not rush anything into production using this process.

Intel are unstoppable. If AMD had access to Intel's 22nm process, next year's Fusion processors would be incredible.

Indeed, they are claiming twice the perf per Watt or the other way around. It's incredible I wonder if I ever see such a jump from one lithography to another. AMD APU would greatly benefit from it that's for sure but at this point I wonder about what Intel could do if they were to allocate more silicon to there GPU. They are claiming neat improvements with Ivy bridge GPU. As far as CPU performance in game are concerned a core i3 performs almost as well as an AMD quad or triple core, llano are +220mm² chip if Intel were to come close in die size they could pack too quiet some GPU power within their chip.

To some extend assuming MS will use a SoC with some POWERPC CPUs and GCN GPU, ceteris paribus (die size, tdp, etc.) I wonder about how an Intel solution would fare. My growing feeling is favorably, I don't expect any next generation CPU to touch (or come close) IB CPU perf. For the GPU well Intel Gen6 are actually a pretty impressive, they are lacking on the some aspects but further ahead on other aspects than waht AMD offers. I'm willing to see how Gen7 will fare. There will still be lacking I don't expect good tessellation perfs for example nor texture quality to really catch up with AMD/Nvidia offering. But if you consider the mix of both and the crazy advantage their process offers I believe it would be a worthy contender.
If we consider Haswell and Gen8, my belief if that Intel would land an hand down victory.

Anyway sweet dreaming Intel has no reason to let anyone use its tech at the kind of price console manufacturers are willing to pay.

 

[Arwin]

It seem that AMD would be use XDR2 on the high range of HD7900.
http://www.presence-pc.com/actualite/Radeon-XDR2-7900-44994/#xtor=RSS-11

If those figures are real then those are quite impressive numbers. Look at the performance per watt ratio:

2Go XDR2	2Go XDR2	2Go GDDR5
8000 MHz	7200 MHz	5500 MHz
256 bit	256 bit	256 bit
256 Go/s	230 Go/s	176 Go/s
190 watts	150 watts	250 watts

 

[Shifty Geezer]

For a minute there those power figures tripped me up, before I followed the link and saw they were for the graphics card complete with GPU, and not just 200 watts for the RAM alone!

 

[DuckThor Evil]

If those figures are real then those are quite impressive numbers. Look at the performance per watt ratio:

The source is some random forum poster and it doesn't seem to be true, atleat that's what they are saying in the PC-section thread. your cut from the chart doesn't really show performance per watt, instead it shows power consumption for the card and memory bandwith. The actual chart behind the link has specified Radeon core numbers, which with clock speeds could be used as a base for performance though. I don't know about XDR2 in these cards... Sounds unlikely, but the performance and power figures don't seem to be that unlikely, after all they are going to be at 28nm and somewhat modest logic increase (amount of radeon cores), but the whole thing seems to be fake anyway...

 

[Ninjaprime]

Those 7900 specs have been debunked as false, not that they were even remotely realistic in the first place.

 

[TheWretched]

Rage3D forumers also doubt these rumors. And they have some... pretty knowledgable people there.

 

[torbor]

I still have vibrant memories of the "Foreman grill" branded ridicule certain large consoles have received this gen. I'm not sure console makers want to push in that direction again so soon.

If consumers accept something really huge like Av-Receivers, a game console in the size of a media pc(properly designed) wouldnt be the problem. All others would wait after the thing got shrinked. But people who value the form factor/size higher then computational power arent early adopters anyway...

 

[Urian]

I know a person who is an investor of MoSys and other technological companies, we talked about Wii U a few days ago and I became surprised with a comment from him about the new console:

"Wii U uses 28nm manufacturing process from NEC and 1T-SRAM from MoSys"

I asked him how he could know it and he told me that this information have been shared to the investors of MoSys because Nintendo partnership is the more important one for them and any signal of losing the deal can be very dangerous for the health of MoSys business. Since he isn´t a technical person I didn´t ask him about technical specs, but the 28nm comment was very interesting.

 

[Ninjaprime]

I know a person who is an investor of MoSys and other technological companies, we talked about Wii U a few days ago and I became surprised with a comment from him about the new console:

"Wii U uses 28nm manufacturing process from NEC and 1T-SRAM from MoSys"

I asked him how he could know it and he told me that this information have been shared to the investors of MoSys because Nintendo partnership is the more important one for them and any signal of losing the deal can be very dangerous for the health of MoSys business. Since he isn´t a technical person I didn´t ask him about technical specs, but the 28nm comment was very interesting.

That would be very interesting if true. Mosys does have 28nm 1T-SRAM product listed, and they do seem to go up to DDR3 bandwidth levels... Roughly scaled from the Gamecube chips, they could probably have 512MB 1T-SRAM chips and ~128MB on-die, assuming a Gamecube-size die on 28nm. I'd take it with a large grain of salt though.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Those 7900 specs have been debunked as false, not that they were even remotely realistic in the first place.

Other than the XDR2, what is so unrealistic about the specs?

The claimed 7970 has 33% more radeon cores than the 6970, and the die size of the 7970 should or atleast could be smaller than the 6970 die, as identical die on a 28nm process with linear scaling is 49% of a 40nm die, so even with the increased transistor count, it wouldn't be surprising if the power consumption was lower for the newer and smaller chip.

I personally would be surprised if the upcoming 7970 chip has lesser jump compared to the 6970 than that rumour indicates. You have to remember that the jump from 5870 to 6970 was quite small, because there wasn't a change in the manufacturing process. This time the situation should be closer to the 4870-5870 jump. I do expect them to leave just a little bit of performance on the table though, so that they can bring out a little bit better refresh product one year after the 7k series.

 

[stiftl]

I know a person who is an investor of MoSys and other technological companies, we talked about Wii U a few days ago and I became surprised with a comment from him about the new console:

"Wii U uses 28nm manufacturing process from NEC and 1T-SRAM from MoSys"

I asked him how he could know it and he told me that this information have been shared to the investors of MoSys because Nintendo partnership is the more important one for them and any signal of losing the deal can be very dangerous for the health of MoSys business. Since he isn´t a technical person I didn´t ask him about technical specs, but the 28nm comment was very interesting.

Wow, thx for info, really wasn't expecting this! So the SOC rumor is off the table probably, but could it still sit on the same package with the CPU? Some user posted something about SOP (System on a package) technology in the WiiU thread, does this allow different manufacturing processes?

 

[hoho]

Technically it's possible to combine anything you want in a multi-chip module.

 

[Heinrich4]

Other than the XDR2, what is so unrealistic about the specs?

The claimed 7970 has 33% more radeon cores than the 6970, and the die size of the 7970 should or atleast could be smaller than the 6970 die, as identical die on a 28nm process with linear scaling is 49% of a 40nm die, so even with the increased transistor count, it wouldn't be surprising if the power consumption was lower for the newer and smaller chip.

I personally would be surprised if the upcoming 7970 chip has lesser jump compared to the 6970 than that rumour indicates. You have to remember that the jump from 5870 to 6970 was quite small, because there wasn't a change in the manufacturing process. This time the situation should be closer to the 4870-5870 jump. I do expect them to leave just a little bit of performance on the table though, so that they can bring out a little bit better refresh product one year after the 7k series.

Totally agree here, cause the change of the manufacturing process of 40nm to 28nm probably can reach this 33% gain stream processors/SIMD core.

About XDR2, and if this second tests manufacturer shows there are reductions of 30% of watts and even speeds up comparing with the GDDR5,wy not 3D manufacturer doesn't use it ( GDDR5 lob? Marketing name of GDDR5?)?