Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Rangers]

That's all fine but the fact remains that going from "it's essentially a PC" to "it's an AMD fusion part with AMD GPU and x86 CPU" is a leap that defies all notion of temperance or reason.

Of course it'll most likely be a whole lot more complex than that. But my original point was that you cannot assume it'll be an AMD Fusion chip, nor even x86 simply from a quote stating "it's essentially a PC".

Oh I agree. Just kicking around things.

I guess people are just kicking around the combination of SOC rumors from way back, AMD GPU in PS4 and no Cell in PS4 rumors hitting back to back. Then throw in "like a PC". IF there was an X86 in PS4, it would seem unlikely to be discrete.

I was dead set against an SOC but as time goes on I've become a little more accepting, especially when you're contrasting it with horrible rumors of 6670 and the sort. It might actually be a nice little piece of kit, with surprising performance. In fact I'm almost beginning to think it could be a good idea, it seems like there would be attractive cost savings alone from just fabbing one chip, and it would probably be pretty interesting to see what massive intra-chip CPU-GPU bandwidth could do for you. IF you assume next gen specs will be modest (still MUCH better than a 6670 at the worst imo!) then it becomes more attractive. Say, 800 SP's on a fusion type chip? Maybe even 1280? as I say, it looks good compared to a 6670!

I will say Kotaku's next gen reporting 50X>IGN's.

 

[hoho]

I wonder why they put the RAM to top. I'd have it be the one at highest distance from heat sink and have the hottest one closest to it.

 

[babybumb]

I was dead set against an SOC but as time goes on I've become a little more accepting, especially when you're contrasting it with horrible rumors of 6670 and the sort.

Isnt 6670 pretty much what is in current AMD APUs? Wouldnt be a suprise if some current APU is the current devkit. If they are both using AMD CPU..

 

[tunafish]

If they go with APU I wonder what kind of memory will they attach to it and how. Soldering a metric ton of DDR3 chips to the board to properly feed the CPU+GPU doesn't seem all that good idea.

DDR4 should be out in quantity by any reasonable launch date. Pick some high-speed modules at launch and you have a decent, if not good, memory subsystem, that will benefit a lot from the cheaper chips the economies of scale of the consumer pc market will eventually provide.

That I would consider the "conventional, likely, and boring" option. The second option is some sort of on-die or on-package integration, which would probably be too early for 2013, but probably feasible sometime (late) 2014. It would bring considerably more bandwidth likely at the cost of capacity.

 

[Rangers]

Isnt 6670 pretty much what is in current AMD APUs? Wouldnt be a suprise if some current APU is the current devkit. If they are both using AMD CPU..

Yeah, but I maintain there is absolutely no way in 2013 or 14 MS or Sony is going to ship a 480 SP console and expect it to last until 2020 and call it next gen. I will bet anybody on that. It makes zero sense. The iPad will be trumping that in a couple years.

6670 is ~ 3X Xenos shading power, it's 1.6 the power at 1080P as current gen at 720P. you would have to stay at 720P to see much bump at all for starters.

Maybe if they plan to price it at 199 day one lol.

 

[babybumb]

X360 had huge upgrade to GPU for some reason. 6670 is just the best AMD can show at this time in a APU and they can't predict what it will get to in 12 months time before specs are locked..

 

[anexanhume]

I wonder why they put the RAM to top. I'd have it be the one at highest distance from heat sink and have the hottest one closest to it.

Pretty much have to. Imagine trying to get all the CPU's pins to the socket around the memory or GPU. The GPU or RAM have no such requirement now.

 

[east of eastside]

Yeah, but I maintain there is absolutely no way in 2013 or 14 MS or Sony is going to ship a 480 SP console and expect it to last until 2020 and call it next gen. I will bet anybody on that. It makes zero sense. The iPad will be trumping that in a couple years.

6670 is ~ 3X Xenos shading power, it's 1.6 the power at 1080P as current gen at 720P. you would have to stay at 720P to see much bump at all for starters.

Maybe if they plan to price it at 199 day one lol.

The point is not to have another 8 year cycle. Those are bad for the industry. They create franchise stagnation and consumer fatigue. These consoles are a return to the 5 year cycle.

Don't take that as a comment on any particular GPU, though.

 

[tunafish]

I wonder why they put the RAM to top. I'd have it be the one at highest distance from heat sink and have the hottest one closest to it.

Power distribution is (a lot) harder the higher you go, and DRAM likely requires the least current.

Anyway, some kind of silicon interposer design where the chips are side-by-side is probably more likely, at least initially.

The point is not to have another 8 year cycle. Those are bad for the industry. They create franchise stagnation and consumer fatigue. These consoles are a return to the 5 year cycle.

I expect the opposite. Nintendo is the only manufacturer making money selling consoles. Sony and MS both want to stretch the cycle as long as they possibly can, and the next-gen will likely last longer than this gen.

 

[east of eastside]

I expect the opposite. Nintendo is the only manufacturer making money selling consoles.

Per console unit? That's not accurate. PS3 and 360 consoles are profitable. Sony said they made less revenue because of the PS3 price drop, but not that they were taking a loss on PS3:

http://www.shacknews.com/article/69770/ps3-still-profitable-after-price-cut#

Sony and MS both want to stretch the cycle as long as they possibly can, and the next-gen will likely last longer than this gen.

Why would they want a repeat of this gen? Is MS going to come up with an all new gimmick like Kinect to extend 720's life midway?

The whole point of using these more standardized and conventional consoles is to keep launch prices as low as possible (while maintaining the desire performance level) and facilitate future price drops from there.. If the upgrade 5 years later is more conventional architecture than it should be a smooth and easy transition.

A new console will be necessary when 8K become reality anyway. Maybe even 4K?

 

[patsu]

The prospect of having 10x power over a PS3 is diminishing day by day if this keeps going . I hope the GPU inside the PS4 is somewhat decent.

Spoiler

Don't you dare shovel in a 6670 Sony!

Heh heh, it's too early to say. That rumor hardly confirms anything specific.

I am interested to see if they will really share technologies between Vaio and Playstation, similar to how Vita taps on cellphones/tablets knowhow. The whole package will be more than just CPU and GPU anyway. The bus and memory architecture, plus how everything is put together will also make a tangible difference. I am praying for LightPeak integration, with a small PS3 backward compatibility module. ^_^

They will have an easier time porting software to the Playstations. Their recent PS Suite effort seems to adopt the same approach.

They will still need to steal a few gems from Cell computing. Data locality, heavy threading, tight CPU + GPU cooperation will not go away.

 

[pjbliverpool]

The Bad:
-Performance > will be very limited (assuming Sony isn't getting a custom part)

I fail to see the reasoning behind this. Why would a PC, even one heavily power constrained struggle to achieve 10x the PS3's performance or more? We're talking at least 1 process reduction between now and when the PS3 launches. How much power would say a 6870 pull down if it were 2 nodes smaller than it is at present? I'm guessing nowhere near enough to make it non-viable for a console.

 

[hoho]

Would the hypothetical SoC be anywhere near the 500mm^2 size that many people seem to expect from discrete CPU+GPU solution? I don't think so. That's why people also don't think a SoC would be as big step up from current gen than a custom solution would be.

 

[pjbliverpool]

If SoC is confirmed then I see your point. I was taking essentially a PC to mean two separate chips though.

 

[kagemaru]

Heh heh, it's too early to say. That rumor hardly confirms anything specific.

You really think it's possible for any next gen system to have 10x performance?

 

[MrFox]

I fail to see how an unmodified x86 chip can be even considered. Xbox360 did 100 gflops, Ps3 did 200 gflops, last I heard a $500 intel CPU does about 100 gflops, needs a lot more power to do so, and has 50GB/s which is about equal to the PS3. I'm over simplifying things because I'm not that bright, but games are using that available arithmetic performance right now.

 

[anexanhume]

You really think it's possible for any next gen system to have 10x performance?

Moore's law states transistors double every 24 months. If you assume (horribly simplistically) that performance scales with transistor count, after 8 years you are at 16x performance, which is about the length we're expecting between these two generations.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I fail to see how an unmodified x86 chip can be even considered. Xbox360 did 100 gflops, Ps3 did 200 gflops, last I heard a $500 intel CPU does about 100 gflops, needs a lot more power to do so, and has 50GB/s which is about equal to the PS3. I'm over simplifying things because I'm not that bright, but games are using that available arithmetic performance right now.

Probably because measuring CPU performance in GFLOPS is almost completely meaningless.

But for the record it's more like 200 GFLOPS from a $250 CPU and the 50GB/s of the PS3 is for the CPU and GPU combined, not the CPU alone.

 

[MrFox]

Moore's law states transistors double every 24 months. If you assume (horribly simplistically) that performance scales with transistor count, after 8 years you are at 16x performance, which is about the length we're expecting between these two generations.

Power consumption doesn't fall at the same rate, so we're looking at an 800W console if we want 16x the performance.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Moore's law states transistors double every 24 months. If you assume (horribly simplistically) that performance scales with transistor count, after 8 years you are at 16x performance, which is about the length we're expecting between these two generations.

Top end PC GPU's are already 20-25x more powerful than what's in the PS3 7 years after it launched. If they don't use SoC there's no reason why a similar GPU couldn't go into PS4 a year or so from now. I'm not saying it's going to happen but with a modest down clock and a node reduction it'd be possible.