Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[RobertR1]

Their toolset certainly seems to be better, but on this very forum we hear that one of the great advantages of the 360 is the Xenos, and the big advantage of the Xenos is the unified shader model. And this advantage seems mostly to come from Nvidia and ATI being in different stages of their design cycle when they were tapped for a chip. So I'm not sure how 'smart' MS was about that, other than picking ATI over Nvidia (if that was even a choice). There's nothing to say that MS' next console GPU will be superior technically to Sony's.

As I recall, MS had the spec on what they wanted from the GPU and ATI helped them fab i. Maybe Dave can give us more detail on this.

 

[RudeCurve]

I think for the next optical format, MS could go really cheap if they use a multilayer red laser format such as VMD. The current disc is 4 layers at 24GB.

 

[Cornsnake]

If the next Microsoft console is going to be an all in one entertainment system, wouldn't they want to offer users the ability to play blu-ray movies?

 

[Cheezdoodles]

I think for the next optical format, MS could go really cheap if they use a multilayer red laser format such as VMD. The current disc is 4 layers at 24GB.

Unless VMD offers some sort of substantial benefit over bluray, why not go with bluray which will have 400gb soon?

Its not like bluray will be expensive next console generation, it will be just as expensive as a dvd drive is today

 

[RobertR1]

Unless VMD offers some sort of substantial benefit over bluray, why not go with bluray which will have 400gb soon?

Let's not confuse lab samples with real production.

I'm sure they'll go with BR in a few years when the prices are around current DVD prices. Loyalties on DVD scaled down over time and it wouldn't shock me if BR was setup in a similar manner.

 

[joker454]

Unless VMD offers some sort of substantial benefit over bluray, why not go with bluray which will have 400gb soon?

It may make sense for them to just go with something totally non standard for piracy reasons. They can go with blue laser, but contract out Toshiba or whomever to make a custom format that has ~100gb or so of space but is incompatible with everything else out there (keep dvd playback support though). If no regular consumer can buy a drive that can read their custom discs, then pirating them will be a challenge. I'm sure they will run the numbers, if they deem blu-ray playback as not important then I think going custom makes sense. A side benefit to this is no royalty payments to Sony will be required, and they won't need to support Java.

So say goodbye to the days where you waited in line for the next ultra powerful console because the designers are willing to take an early profitability hit. Sound's like I'll be joining RobertR1 in the PC camp.

Not so fast! The upcoming console generation will likely step up the number of cpu cores dramatically. Given the lowest common denominator limitation of pc development, will it really be able to keep up? Also, this console generation was slightly hobbled by the resolution jump from SD to HD. So even though the gpu's are way better than previous gen, a lot of that extra juice is munched up just to make up the resolution gap. There won't be such a jump this time as I still expect there to be 1280x720 or 1280x1080 (with improved hardware scaling) games released, so all the extra gpu grunt will go to better shaders instead if just being eaten by fill.

 

[Megadrive1988]

I think looking at the direction that the three companies are currently taking their consoles can possibly shed more light on the specifications of their next gen line-up.

Microsoft would be trying to solidify their console as the central hub of digital entertainment via online, and so far, they're the best at that.
- It would be safe to say that their next console would have a base SKU that has at least 120 gb of HD space in order to promote DLC of games, movies, and other content.
- They would also implement motion sensing into their controllers. No brainer here.
- A similar architecture to the 360 that would allow full BC and maybe even BC with the 360 detachable HD.
- I would doubt that they need an extremely powerful console to achieve their goal of living room dominance, so I don't think it would be as big of the leap from XBOX to XBOX 360. It would probably be a refinement and enhancement of the XBOX 360 with DX 11/12 capabilities, with a heavy emphasis on image quality that was loosened during this generation.
- 1GB -2 GB of memory sounds reasonable.
- I seriously doubt they would use HD media such as Blu-ray. I am thinking they might still go with DVD since games need to be less than 8GB to be viable for download from the next gen marketplace.

Sony would be trying to do the same thing as Microsoft, but would be some years behind in the online space. They would be continuing their push of Blu-ray and Cell. They'll want to be profitable upon launch at the $299 price. They won't make the same mistake twice.

- The processor, without a doubt, would be cell or a successor to cell.
- DS4 controllers with 1:1 motion sensing, but DS3 is supported for their games.
- 1GB -2 GB of memory sounds reasonable.
- A minor GPU that's stripped of capabilities that the Cell can cover.
- Same hard drive system as the PS3.

Nintendo, ironically, would have the biggest upgrade in terms of raw power to their platform because they can, and have to. They would want to attract major 3rd party titles to their platforms, and would try to convince potential buyers that the Wii 2 is not just a repackaged Wii. I can just imagine the Nintendo PR: "Wii2, now with Hd cinematic graphics, and superior online experience!". Grandmothers and casuals would fall for it despite the fact that the Wii2 would be just a XBOX360+.

- Like many in this thread hinted, the CPU might be a Core 2 Duo derivative running at a low frequency.
- They'll make, FINALLY!, a step toward HD resolutions, so ram might be increased to 512mb.
- GPU might be a customized ATI gpu like the ones in the Wii and Gamecube but vastly more powerful.
- Harddrive support is a given, since Nintendo right now is trying to correct the issue of storage with the Wii.
- It would have the same disc based media as Wii.

In my opinion, the next generation of consoles would not have the traditional massive leap of computing power between generations, but more of a refinement as all 3 parties would want profitability upon or closely after launch. Coupled with the issue of diminishing returns in games and success of the Wii, I really don't see any of console manufacturers attempting to best each other in terms of graphical prowess. In other words, Nintendo is the cause of the downfall of console gaming.

1-2 GB RAM is not reasonable for next-gen Microsoft & Sony consoles. 4-8 GB RAM is more reasonable, and 4 GB would only be 8x the RAM of todays HD consoles, and like going from Xbox to Xbox 360.

PS1 to PS2 was like 16x increase in RAM
N64 (without RAM expansion) to Xbox was also a 16x increase in RAM.

Also, Sony would not (should not) be using a "minor" Nvidia GPU i.e. a lowend to midrange Direct3D 11 (next-gen) or low to mid end Direct3D 12 (next-next gen) GPU. That would repeat the same mistake of PS3 which used a Direct3D 9 GPU that could be concidered between lowend & midrange by late 2006 standards.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Let's not confuse lab samples with real production.

I'm sure they'll go with BR in a few years when the prices are around current DVD prices. Loyalties on DVD scaled down over time and it wouldn't shock me if BR was setup in a similar manner.

What do you mean by loyalities?

 

[RobertR1]

What do you mean by loyalities?

oops royalties.

 

[JPT]

To me it seems quite logical that what ever hardware they come up with in the next generation, Microsofts success with Xbox 360 shows that good tools/software is very very important.
This might include, at least for Sony I would think, avoiding that developers having to start from scratch ie drop all their old tools and custom libraries. Like Naugtydog and Insomniac did with the jump from PS2-PS3. Which probably would mean better utilization of the hardware earlier in the life cycle and also faster to market with the 1st gen games.

For Sony maybe the PS4 with its big brother CELL might be able to leverage the old PS3 code base to some degree, ie not backwards compatibility for binaries, but at least some API coherence or something similar. I mean if the next CELL mainly got more SPU's and a better PPU then hopefully a lot of things written for PS3, should be possible to used again and then later in the lifecycle updated/optimzed if needed.

As for the next Xbox, if MS drops PPC architecture (I believe Xenon is PPC atleast) and goes Intel, would they be able to leverage older code base as easy? Or is MS dev tools just so good that it might not be an issue for them?

I would assume after all the talk about how much it costs to develop games this gen, a priority should be possible to make it cheaper for the devs.
Or is it artists/assets that is the "bottleneck" and not the programmers/code?

 

[Proelite]

1-2 GB RAM is not reasonable for next-gen Microsoft & Sony consoles. 4-8 GB RAM is more reasonable, and 4 GB would only be 8x the RAM of todays HD consoles, and like going from Xbox to Xbox 360.

PS1 to PS2 was like 16x increase in RAM
N64 (without RAM expansion) to Xbox was also a 16x increase in RAM.

Also, Sony would not (should not) be using a "minor" Nvidia GPU i.e. a lowend to midrange Direct3D 11 (next-gen) or low to mid end Direct3D 12 (next-next gen) GPU. That would repeat the same mistake of PS3 which used a Direct3D 9 GPU that could be concidered between lowend & midrange by late 2006 standards.

*sigh*

I wish all the console manufacturers would think in such a linear progressive way as you do.

 

[Acert93]

I wish all the console manufacturers would think in such a linear progressive way as you do.

Bottlenecks aren't always linear though. Ditto best practices.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

1-2 GB RAM is not reasonable for next-gen Microsoft & Sony consoles.

I doubt that 1gb RAM sticks will still be produced in 2011, i havent seen a 512mb stick in quite a while. Totally agree on the 4-8gb ram.

Memory goes down in price pretty much in line with that, im sure that the memory budgets for X360 and PS3 is enough to cover 4-8gb ram in 2010-11

 

[AlNom]

I doubt that 1gb RAM sticks will still be produced in 2011, i havent seen a 512mb stick in quite a while. Totally agree on the 4-8gb ram.

You may also want to consider RAM density and availability of the required number of chips for total system memory rather than thinking in terms of PC RAM sticks. This is a major influence in future cost reduction.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

I doubt that 1gb RAM sticks will still be produced in 2011, i havent seen a 512mb stick in quite a while. Totally agree on the 4-8gb ram.

Memory goes down in price pretty much in line with that, im sure that the memory budgets for X360 and PS3 is enough to cover 4-8gb ram in 2010-11

Who said anything about sticks of RAM? I've never seen a console utilize any sticks of RAM. The individual chips are soldered onto the motherboard.

 

[AlNom]

I doubt that 1gb RAM sticks will still be produced in 2011, i havent seen a 512mb stick in quite a while. Totally agree on the 4-8gb ram.

You may also want to consider RAM density and the required number of chips for total system memory rather than thinking in terms of PC RAM sticks. This is a major influence in future cost reduction - e.g. # of chips produced per wafer and motherboard design.

According to Samsung's current product line-up, none of the GDDR chips exceed 1Gbit density. Assuming that this does not change, you'd be looking at least 8 chips just for 2GiB of memory. For reference, there are 4 XDR and 4 GDDR3 chips in PS3 and 8 GDDR3 chips in X360. There has been no indication of a shift to 1Gbit GDDR3 to cut the number of chips as yet.

On the other hand, DDR3 can go up to 4Gb (512MiB) density - but at what current cost, supply, and memory clock? If it's low in production right now, how quickly can they ramp up production and speed to meet the demands for a hypothetical console launch and beyond* ? Such a high density is not so trivial So at current highest density, they would require 8 chips for 4GB with a bit of a shady future with regards to even higher densities. It would be possible that the companies be stuck with that same amount of chips throughout the entire console life span.

*Note: I'm not saying they will or will not choose DDR3, but I'm using it as a starting point for memory density vs number of chips vs memory clock.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Next-gen Xbox and next-gen PlayStation will both be using next-gen memory technologies. Rambus aims to have 1 TeraByte/sec memory by 2010. Perhaps Rambus will also increase memory density. I doubt that GDDR5 will be new enough for the next Xbox so Microsoft will either use GDDR6 or something else. I don't think today's memory chip densities are any indication of what things will be like in 2011-2012.

In any case, 4 GB (low-end) to 8 GB (high-end) is what should be expected for next Xbox and next PlayStation. Nintendo will probably be behind everyone with 1GB maybe 2GB at most, and PCs will have 16 GB or more.

I don't expect any of the next consoles to launch in 2010, only the next-gen handhelds.

With next-gen consoles being 3+ or 4+ years away (maybe even 5+ years if Sony goes 7 years from 2006 before releasing PS4) we shouldn't be thinking how RAM is currently sold.

 

[AlNom]

How nice of you to trivialize memory density and the laws of physics. :| As I noted, I didn't mean to suggest that they'd be using GDDR5 etc. Why should there be an automagically high density of RAM cells that is not even fairly common in the first place?

Sure you can ask for 4-8GiB of RAM, but unless the memory manufacturers can ramp up production of high density chips, it's going to be extremely expensive somewhere. Remember, it's not much different from processor manufacturing with respect to yields.

Regardless of what you desire, you're basically asking for next gen memory with ultra high densities with ultra high speeds. That costs dollars, and if memory densities are already being pushed, there will not be any room for cost reduction by moving to fewer chips and smaller motherboard/material designs etc.

They are similar reasons why MS and Sony chose not to go with your own desired 256-bit+ memory buses you may see on the PC side. It just leaves little room for cost reduction once the processors reduce in size. Tracing and routing many many more memory chips with a relatively small processor is a nightmare.

At any rate, I am only trying to raise issues that you are taking for granted.

 

[Gubbi]

How nice of you to trivialize memory density and the laws of physics. :| As I noted, I didn't mean to suggest that they'd be using GDDR5 etc. Why should there be an automagically high density of RAM cells that is not even fairly common in the first place?

The internal structure of regular DDR2, GDDR3 and GDDR5 is similar. The difference is in the interface.

The reason we haven't seen higher density GDDR5 is because it is only used on GPUs (unlike GDDR3) where the minimum chip count is dictated by buswidth not capacity. Each GDDR5 chip is 32bits wide so you need 8 chips to form a 256bit bus. Since there would be *very* limited demand for a 4GB graphics card small (or low density) DRAM arrays are used.

There is no techical obstacle to slapping a GDDR5 interface on a high density DRAM array.

Cheers

 

[N00b]

I think it's extremely unreasonable to expect 8 GB ram, probably even 4 GB, for next-gen consoles. That money for this excessive amount of memory really is spent better elsewhere (or not at all). Especially when there are technologies (streaming, pixel shader and procedural textures, compression, tesselation) that let you work around memory limitations.