Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Shifty Geezer]

The future is nested cores. Each core has 2 cores. Those cores, being cores, also have two cores each, which of course have two cores each. The logical progression is an infinite amount of computing power. I don't think we'll be seeing this as early as next-gen though.

 

[Proelite]

The future is nested cores. Each core has 2 cores. Those cores, being cores, also have two cores each, which of course have two cores each. The logical progression is an infinite amount of computing power. I don't think we'll be seeing this as early as next-gen though.

Having infinite computing power doesn't do us any good when we're constrained by bandwidth and data. We simply can't feed the processors data fast enough to take advantage of them. We need to develop infinite capacity ram and storage, along with infinitely wide transports.

 

[steviep]

We need to develop infinite capacity ram and storage, along with infinitely wide transports.

I'm working on it! It just takes time

 

[lefizz]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6007/...cortexa5-processor-for-trustzone-capabilities

AMD´s press release from today about embedding a ARM cortex into there x86 cpus for security from 2013 onwards really seems to tie in well IMHO with them being used in the next gen consoles

 

[XpiderMX]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6007/...cortexa5-processor-for-trustzone-capabilities

AMD´s press release from today about embedding a ARM cortex into there x86 cpus for security from 2013 onwards really seems to tie in well IMHO with them being used in the next gen consoles

 

[3dilettante]

I wouldn't put the A5 core in the same block as the primary CPU cores. It exists as a coprocessor that interfaces with the security layer.
There are other small non-x86 CPU cores in APUs that don't get mentioned because they exist for certain specific functions.

 

[jonabbey]

The future is nested cores. Each core has 2 cores. Those cores, being cores, also have two cores each, which of course have two cores each. The logical progression is an infinite amount of computing power. I don't think we'll be seeing this as early as next-gen though.

Wow, they're finally going to out do The Cat In The Hat. Supra-linear topological recursion, nice!

 

[MrFox]

There's a lot of rumors mentioning 4 SMT per core. I think I understand why that's a great feature for server and network processors where there's concurrency of hundreds of threads, but how useful is SMT for a game machine? Do we need it?

 

[Acert93]

I think what happened is, MS saw they were in a ship full of leaks, so they cleverly drilled more holes to let the water leaking in flow out. And now there's so much information movement, no-one knows what's happening. The worry here is that their engineers are in the middle of all this and forget what they're making...

You cannot prevent leaks; miss-information and miss-direction are a totally different story.

Heck, you could even use dev kits this way. e.g. Lets say your target is 2TFLOPs and 1080p. Give developer 1TFLOPs GPUs in early builds and tell them to work at 720p with an eye toward possibly faster hardware down the road and higher frequency requirements. I am not saying that is happening by any means but if the goal was to obscure facts and confuse you could source multiple channels with conflicting data and use the "moving target" of dev kits to re-inforce false rumors. You could possibly even game developers into cooperating.

 

[steviep]

You cannot prevent leaks; miss-information and miss-direction are a totally different story.

Heck, you could even use dev kits this way. e.g. Lets say your target is 2TFLOPs and 1080p. Give developer 1TFLOPs GPUs in early builds and tell them to work at 720p with an eye toward possibly faster hardware down the road and higher frequency requirements. I am not saying that is happening by any means but if the goal was to obscure facts and confuse you could source multiple channels with conflicting data and use the "moving target" of dev kits to re-inforce false rumors. You could possibly even game developers into cooperating.

I highly doubt this theory would come into any kind of fruition, for a plethora of reasons

 

[Rangers]

lol yosp laying the smack down on twitter https://twitter.com/yosp/status/212393696979730432

That guy is cool

 

[torque]

You cannot prevent leaks; miss-information and miss-direction are a totally different story.

Heck, you could even use dev kits this way. e.g. Lets say your target is 2TFLOPs and 1080p. Give developer 1TFLOPs GPUs in early builds and tell them to work at 720p with an eye toward possibly faster hardware down the road and higher frequency requirements. I am not saying that is happening by any means but if the goal was to obscure facts and confuse you could source multiple channels with conflicting data and use the "moving target" of dev kits to re-inforce false rumors. You could possibly even game developers into cooperating.

Well this all makes sense. It was the exact thing that happened in generations past but it wasn't on purpose like the above example. Just the course of redefining the hardware up until final. But ya no doubt this happens all the time.

 

[steviep]

Well this all makes sense. It was the exact thing that happened in generations past but it wasn't on purpose like the above example. Just the course of redefining the hardware up until final. But ya no doubt this happens all the time.

Adjusting clock rates and frequencies? Extremely common.
Memory amounts? Less so. But it's happened.

Going from a 1TF GPU to a 2TF GPU? (or something to that nature)?
No.

 

[Rangers]

Adjusting clock rates and frequencies? Extremely common.
Memory amounts? Less so. But it's happened.

Going from a 1TF GPU to a 2TF GPU? (or something to that nature)?
No.

I would think it would still be possible at this stage. Not forever though.

Probably getting close even now though, 1yr 5 months out...

Anyways it was you WiiU boys telling us Wii U was getting an overhaul practically right up to E3, 5 months from release right? Now that was unrealistic.

 

[torque]

Adjusting clock rates and frequencies? Extremely common.
Memory amounts? Less so. But it's happened.

Going from a 1TF GPU to a 2TF GPU? (or something to that nature)?
No.

Like I said. Happens all the time. No but seriously. We know for instance that the 360 did when it went from the webteam back to the 360 team and their specs were possibly even more of a jump, we know about systems that have got extra processors completely ALA the failed Saturn. From what was written about the DC the Blackbelt Rev and the Katana rev were pretty massive, could be just the way the report was written on that one. Basically changes happen and nothings unheard of in the current timeframe we are in. Obviously, as the poster above indicated, at some point you have true burn in for the devs and they need something close. But we aren't there yet.
Then again that's if you believe that one solo rumor about the 6670 and not the duel GPU rumor(S) that were connected to the same gpu.

 

[torque]

Anyways it was you WiiU boys telling us Wii U was getting an overhaul practically right up to E3, 5 months from release right? Now that was unrealistic.

Maybe they should have rethought the button placement during that 5 months

 

[ERP]

You cannot prevent leaks; miss-information and miss-direction are a totally different story.

Heck, you could even use dev kits this way. e.g. Lets say your target is 2TFLOPs and 1080p. Give developer 1TFLOPs GPUs in early builds and tell them to work at 720p with an eye toward possibly faster hardware down the road and higher frequency requirements. I am not saying that is happening by any means but if the goal was to obscure facts and confuse you could source multiple channels with conflicting data and use the "moving target" of dev kits to re-inforce false rumors. You could possibly even game developers into cooperating.

No one is going to lie to developers about what they are going to deliver.
Even when you ship them devkits with radically different performance than the final design, You still convey the final design to devs.
Sometimes specs change, occasionally significantly, rarely do they improve.

I don't know how MS has clamped down on leaks this time, the 360 leak came the day after a briefing with EA, there were probably 100 people in the room, maybe they encouraged companies like EA to reduce the number of people disclosed.
Few things stay secret after significant numbers of 3rd parties have access to devkits and start development in earnest. Too many people have to be involved including poorly paid ones like testers. My guess is that has to happen soon if they are targeting 2013.

 

[torque]

No one is going to lie to developers about what they are going to deliver.
Even when you ship them devkits with radically different performance than the final design, You still convey the final design to devs.
Sometimes specs change, occasionally significantly, rarely do they improve.

I don't know how MS has clamped down on leaks this time, the 360 leak came the day after a briefing with EA, there were probably 100 people in the room, maybe they encouraged companies like EA to reduce the number of people disclosed.
Few things stay secret after significant numbers of 3rd parties have access to devkits and start development in earnest. Too many people have to be involved including poorly paid ones like testers. My guess is that has to happen soon if they are targeting 2013.

True enough. It does seem really odd. It will be great when one of these rumors is confirmed a leak and we can go on forward.

 

[Rangers]

No one is going to lie to developers about what they are going to deliver.
Even when you ship them devkits with radically different performance than the final design, You still convey the final design to devs.
Sometimes specs change, occasionally significantly, rarely do they improve.

I don't know how MS has clamped down on leaks this time, the 360 leak came the day after a briefing with EA, there were probably 100 people in the room, maybe they encouraged companies like EA to reduce the number of people disclosed.
Few things stay secret after significant numbers of 3rd parties have access to devkits and start development in earnest. Too many people have to be involved including poorly paid ones like testers. My guess is that has to happen soon if they are targeting 2013.

But, Wii U has been like pulling teeth to get much specifics of, 5 months from retail...that scares me. I mean, do we even now know the CPU and GPU details?

I hope PS4/XB720 are nothing like that. So far so good.

The thing is though we'll have lots of conflicting rumors, some will likely be true, but we wont know which...

As of now the info I/We have on PS4/720 seems solid though, but still a lot of question marks and possibly old, if accurate for the time, info.

We seem to know the PS3 GPU, and RAM, CPU could be steamroller or switched to Jaguar.

360 we seem to know there is a "lot" of some type of RAM, likely DDR3, and a "1-1.5 TF GPU", hinted at Cape Verde. Dont know 360 CPU, some rumors say it's powerful. Some say it's IBM 6 core+, some say it's AMD X86.

BG feel free to correct

 

[Strange]

Having infinite computing power doesn't do us any good when we're constrained by bandwidth and data. We simply can't feed the processors data fast enough to take advantage of them. We need to develop infinite capacity ram and storage, along with infinitely wide transports.

You can have a bus that has two buses, and those buses, being buses can have two buses for infinite bandwidth.

You can also have ram chips that have 2 ram chips in them, and them being ram chips also have two ram chips for infinite ram.

I suppose that's the next logical step.