Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech
- Thread starter Acert93
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I guess it happened in a NeoGAF post.
If that's true (in a sense that it's production ready not marketing bs) and assuming MS uses DDR4, you're looking at minimal of 4 GB (8 chips) with 38.2 GB/s on (128-bit bus at 2.4Gbps) (very unlikely) to 8 GB (16 chips) with 102.4 GB/s (256-bit bus a 3.2Gbps).
The Pitcrain boards have a BW of 153 GB/s. Cape Verde has a BW of 72 GB/s. I don't think either of these boards is really bottlenecked by their BW (I'm not completely sure), but anything above Cape Verde class will need eDRAM to help out with the BW issues.
Will it? Or like PS3 will it be able to work around the issues?
Interesting point on Cape Verdes bandwidth, I hadnt even considered that. DDR4's max is thus more BW than 7770 anyway.
Depending on the setup they might not need EDRAM at all (though the leaked doc obviously posits EDRAM for what it's worth).
french toast
Veteran
Yea that does look ominousSee the bottom text? It's ominous
Edit: I re watched this part of the actual sweeney presentation though, and that bottom text isnt on the slide nor is it mentioned. All this time I thought it had come from epic when maybe it never did, somebody else added it.
definitely if you want a real clue as to the performance of next gen systems, then look at next gen game engines and the hardware requirement to run them.2-2.5 flops is what we have coming and at least 4gb ram. Not too shabby
bgassassin
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Going back to the talk on the memory. I haven't heard what type it is. DDR4 was one of the thoughts I had when I first heard the amount. I've also speculated on 6GB of DDRx with a 2GB GDDR5 framebuffer. If that document is a true indication of MS' direction then I can see my speculated 8GB of DDR4 with a large eDRAM FB being the most likely case so far.
Could be that the info given to me only focused on the GPU used for games, while there is a second GPU like in the document dedicated to other functions.
Could be that the info given to me only focused on the GPU used for games, while there is a second GPU like in the document dedicated to other functions.
I do wonder when they'll hit x32 I/O chips, otherwise they'll be stuck on the lower density for awhile just trying to maintain the bus-width.
To be clear:
8GB = 8Gbit density x 8 Chips= 4Gbit density x 16 chips
8 chips x (x16 I/O) = 128-bit
etc...
Oh well.
hm... don't know if there are any review articles investigating the change in bandwidth & performance...
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On a side note, it'd be nice to see the full RBE* and TMU configuration from the desktop side. Jumping from Xenos@500MHz*8pix/clk to Cape Verde@1GHz*16pix/clk ought to provide quite a lot of fillrate for transparencies (let alone any jump in resolution since the Xbox1 days).
The much higher filtering rates would be really nice too (especially if they design it for full speed FP16, but that's a bit wishful).
If they do happen to gimp the RBE/ROPs again, it'd be nice if the Z/Stencil rates were much higher - on par with nVidia parts, which can do 8Z per clock per ROP as opposed to 4Z on current architecture. :|
* 4 ROPs per RBE
aaronspink
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I made the same comment about surprisingly low memory back then, and it was true then too. The consoles came out underspec'd and on the wrong side of a transition in every regard. 360 and ps3 hardware wise are so far the least competitive consoles that have been because they came out on the wrong side of a transition.
You can get all the DDR3 chips you need for either 128b or 256b 8 GB for roughly $40 retail. In g-spec, DDR3 can run around 2.6-3ish.
DDR4 won't be expensive. It will initially have a slight premium compared to DDR3 but will still be significantly cheaper than GDDR5.
aaronspink
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Ships this year, ramps next year, cross over point in 2014.
Regarding the rumored PS4 spec, does the 1.8TF account for the whole thing like one big APU or only the discreet Tahti gpu? If the latter, then how much flops do you estimate the apu counterpart could add to? I always wanted to make sure of this.
Charlie at semiaccurate also said something to that effect
"WideIO is to slow, it is ~10Gbps or so. WideIO2 is not finalized yet, so I doubt it is close enough to show up in this console generation, those chips are really close to done, or closer as far as Xbox next is concerned.
-Charlie
"
so it look like the Next Xbox Chip is pretty close to being finalized.
aaronspink
Veteran
In a console architecture you don't need a large vram split and in general, the benefits are large vrams are outweighed by the downsides. You are designing a custom device that will have a 5-8 year marketed lifetime with a fixed design. Really for VRAM you should be worried about the frame buffer and little else. The vast majority of the memory should be in a moderate performance large shared pool that can be used for whatever the programmer wants. A 32MB embedded DRAM provides 2x 1080P HDR framebuffers. If either go for a stacked wide dram interface (2Gb/256MB 256/512b bus interface at 2-4 Gb/s aka 128-196 GB/s) with a shared pool of 4-8 GB of dram at 80-100 GB/s, they'll have all the performance they need and a whole lot more flexibility.
The only reason that PC vga cards use large VRAMs is because they communicate over a standard PCI-E bus.
aaronspink, you mentioned that we were underestimating what a 8GB platform could produce visually compared to a system with a faster GPU but less memory. Putting aside potentially large OS reserves, what specifically do you have in mind? It seems a lot of developers have been moving to virtual texturing which in theory should decrease the pressure. Just thinking out loud it seems the extra large memory would be great for asset variety, pre-caching content to reduce load times, having a host of standard features and services always on in the background, etc but what do you have in mind visually? It seems having more compute resources would be a big win visually. Can you be more specific?
Ps. 8GB UMA with some stacked memory for very fast bandwidth would be awesome! It would be so awesome it is NOT gonna happen
Ps. 8GB UMA with some stacked memory for very fast bandwidth would be awesome! It would be so awesome it is NOT gonna happen
bgassassin
Regular
Only for the GPU in the APU. There won't be a discrete CPU or GPU in PS4 from how I understand it. Just "one big APU". And that APU will have 18 CUs clocked at 800Mhz, but that is not recent info. As for total FLOPs, I don't know since they supposedly switched to Jaguar cores.
something that I noticed in the PS4 specs from the 2nd DevKits (?) it says 10X PPU & 10X RSX but left out the SPUs but said that the final system will be 10X the PS3 which has me wondering what's going to be added to make up for the SPUs?
Thanks, well that sounds like one big and hot APU then. I wonder if they would up the spec in the most recent dev kit.
anexanhume
Veteran
Sea Islands has taped out.
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120615PD210.html
Surely Ps4/720 would be a hybrid of GCN/Sea Islands at least? Especially with HSA emphasis. HSA key to low power set top mode with ARM for 720? RSX was hybrid. Xenos was hybrid. Xbox GPU was hybrid.
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120615PD210.html
Surely Ps4/720 would be a hybrid of GCN/Sea Islands at least? Especially with HSA emphasis. HSA key to low power set top mode with ARM for 720? RSX was hybrid. Xenos was hybrid. Xbox GPU was hybrid.
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bgassassin
Regular
^ I might be acting overly paranoid, but people get fired over stuff like that. You might want to remove that.
Those are the early target specs. And more than likely nothing will "make up" for the SPUs. I think the fact they were left out of the comparison should be telling.
I'm guessing Sony is dead set on keeping the cost at a certain point and what they are targeting is probably pushing it and why the memory has been left as the only possible thing that could change.
Those are the early target specs. And more than likely nothing will "make up" for the SPUs. I think the fact they were left out of the comparison should be telling.
I'm guessing Sony is dead set on keeping the cost at a certain point and what they are targeting is probably pushing it and why the memory has been left as the only possible thing that could change.
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