Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[anexanhume]

RAM is very cheap nowadays.

Making use of available RAM is usually not a problem for developers.

When you're trying to make a BOM for a box total less than 300-400, RAM isn't cheap. Especially if you're using high speed GDDR variants.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

When you're trying to make a BOM for a box total less than 300-400, RAM isn't cheap. Especially if you're using high speed GDDR variants.

8 gigs of GDDR isn't happening. That's either going to be 8 GBs slow, cheap RAM, bandwidth bolstered with eDRAM, or split pools along the lines of 2+6 GBs, same as a PC.

 

[anexanhume]

8 gigs of GDDR isn't happening. That's either going to be 8 GBs slow, cheap RAM, bandwidth bolstered with eDRAM, or split pools along the lines of 2+6 GBs, same as a PC.

Never said it was. I'm saying RAM isn't cheap, no matter what types you choose to go into a $300-$400 box.

 

[kagemaru]

8 gigs of GDDR isn't happening. That's either going to be 8 GBs slow, cheap RAM, bandwidth bolstered with eDRAM, or split pools along the lines of 2+6 GBs, same as a PC.

IMO the latter option would be more optimal than the former. eDRAM is relatively expensive, you never know if you have enough, and it looks like process shrinks have stalled seeing how the eDRAM in the 360 is still 65mn (while the CPU and GPU are 45nm).

 

[onQ]

IMO the latter option would be more optimal than the former. eDRAM is relatively expensive, you never know if you have enough, and it looks like process shrinks have stalled seeing how the eDRAM in the 360 is still 65mn (while the CPU and GPU are 45nm).

Am I having Deja vu? I thought I read this post one time today.

 

[kagemaru]

Am I having Deja vu? I thought I read this post one time today.

You probably did since I said pretty much the same thing on GAF.

Different forum though, so I'm allowed to repeat myself.

 

[AlNom]

it looks like process shrinks have stalled seeing how the eDRAM in the 360 is still 65mn (while the CPU and GPU are 45nm).

28nm eDRAM is in the works. 32nm should be ramping up this year.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/36465.wss


They probably couldn't go lower for 360 Slim because of pad limits (the HSIO is pretty much the entire perimeter of the daughter die) and they would need a fully integrated design at < 32nm for it to be viable and economical.

 

[anexanhume]

28nm eDRAM is in the works. 32nm should be ramping up this year.

They probably couldn't go lower for 360 Slim because of pad limits (the HSIO is pretty much the entire perimeter of the daughter die) and they would need a fully unified design at < 32nm for it to be viable.

I figured the unified Valhalla in the slim would pretty much be the last iteration anyway.

 

[SKYSONY]

I agree lherre and bg are the only legit sources. lherre claimed in a Spanish forum, as an answuer to another forumer, that he had seen the specs of one of the new consoles and he was shocked.

We already know 10 months ago PS4 was 10x PS3, maybe now is even more. I remember reading somewhere the new Xbox 3 was gonna be like two PCs. That might make sense with the rumor I read about thar claimed the final Durango specs would include 2 AMD APUs with 8 cores and a Radeon 8000 each APU.

I still think both consoles are going to surprise us, but all we have now is dev kits rumored specs, and the insider info.

 

[bkilian]

Recording a video stream just needs a small buffer between the source and the HDD writes. Playing a stream just needs a buffer for the reverse and a framebuffer for the output. That's about 2 megabytes for a 1080p display. You could stream several HD video streams in a matter of megabytes of working space.

Um, no. Depends on what you're doing. You're correct whan you don't have to do magic decoding things and can decode just a frame or two at a time, but if you have to do anything special (like use the GPU to accelerate decoding) then you often have to have multiple frames in flight at the same time. The 360 had sometimes upwards of 12 frames in flight simultaneously when decoding 1080p H.264 for HD DVD. This was so we could keep all the shader pipelines doing the inverse DCT busy (At the start of and end of a frame you can only do a few IDCT simultaneously). Then also the bandwidth could be up to 36Mb, which is 4.5 megabytes per second. I don't know what the buffer size was on the 360, but probably a couple fo seconds at least. For netflix style streaming stuff, they tend to buffer quite a bit more, upwards of 15 seconds of video, which is around 12MB of ram.

We routinely ran out of memory while writing the XBox HD DVD player and had to go back and re-engineer some things to save memory.

The Apple TV can get away with less memory because it has hardware decoding for all it's supported codecs.

 

[kagemaru]

28nm eDRAM is in the works. 32nm should be ramping up this year.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/36465.wss


They probably couldn't go lower for 360 Slim because of pad limits (the HSIO is pretty much the entire perimeter of the daughter die) and they would need a fully integrated design at < 32nm for it to be viable and economical.

Ah thank you sir, that makes sense.

My two other points still stand though and I don't think using eDRAM next gen is the best choice. However I'm not an engineer, so I can be entirely wrong here.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The Apple TV can get away with less memory because it has hardware decoding for all it's supported codecs.

Well 1), I imagine XB3 will have hardware support for whatever codec they want to use for broadcasting media around the home , and 2) 30 frames of 1080p is 30 x 6 megabytes per frame is 180 MBs. I'm still not seeing how many hundreds of MBs can be consumed by media streaming such that the machine needs 4 GBs of RAM or something to serve content. Maybe I'm missing something?

 

[onQ]

You probably did since I said pretty much the same thing on GAF.

Different forum though, so I'm allowed to repeat myself.

Oh lol thought I was going crazy for a second or was caught up in a Groundhog's Day loop.

 

[bkilian]

Well 1), I imagine XB3 will have hardware support for whatever codec they want to use for broadcasting media around the home , and 2) 30 frames of 1080p is 30 x 6 megabytes per frame is 180 MBs. I'm still not seeing how many hundreds of MBs can be consumed by media streaming such that the machine needs 4 GBs of RAM or something to serve content. Maybe I'm missing something?

Oh, absolutely, with decoding hardware so cheap now, there's no need for a ton of memory to stream video. I was talking about the 360, and specifically refuting the idea that you can get away with just a few MB for streaming. But it's in the order of tens of MB, not gigabytes,

 

[onQ]

Um, no. Depends on what you're doing. You're correct whan you don't have to do magic decoding things and can decode just a frame or two at a time, but if you have to do anything special (like use the GPU to accelerate decoding) then you often have to have multiple frames in flight at the same time. The 360 had sometimes upwards of 12 frames in flight simultaneously when decoding 1080p H.264 for HD DVD. This was so we could keep all the shader pipelines doing the inverse DCT busy (At the start of and end of a frame you can only do a few IDCT simultaneously). Then also the bandwidth could be up to 36Mb, which is 4.5 megabytes per second. I don't know what the buffer size was on the 360, but probably a couple fo seconds at least. For netflix style streaming stuff, they tend to buffer quite a bit more, upwards of 15 seconds of video, which is around 12MB of ram.

We routinely ran out of memory while writing the XBox HD DVD player and had to go back and re-engineer some things to save memory.

The Apple TV can get away with less memory because it has hardware decoding for all it's supported codecs.

I notice the hardware Video decoding in the early PS4 specs & Remote Play & Media Streaming was the 1st thing I thought of because it will take the work off of the CPU/GPU hopefully the Xbox Next will have hardware decoding also. or are they going to let the 2nd CPU handle all the media stuff?

Well 1), I imagine XB3 will have hardware support for whatever codec they want to use for broadcasting media around the home , and 2) 30 frames of 1080p is 30 x 6 megabytes per frame is 180 MBs. I'm still not seeing how many hundreds of MBs can be consumed by media streaming such that the machine needs 4 GBs of RAM or something to serve content. Maybe I'm missing something?

I don't think it will be using that much ram but maybe they have big plans & don't want to be held back by the amount of Ram that they chose to set aside in the beginning of the console life cycle.

Like if it's going to be a Whole Home DVR they wouldn't want the recording of TV shows to get in the way of Game OS features like gameplay recording & uploading while playing a Kinect Game & someone else just so happens to be watching IPTV on a tablet using the Xbox Next streaming feature.



Edit:

I agree lherre and bg are the only legit sources. lherre claimed in a Spanish forum, as an answuer to another forumer, that he had seen the specs of one of the new consoles and he was shocked.

We already know 10 months ago PS4 was 10x PS3, maybe now is even more. I remember reading somewhere the new Xbox 3 was gonna be like two PCs. That might make sense with the rumor I read about thar claimed the final Durango specs would include 2 AMD APUs with 8 cores and a Radeon 8000 each APU.

I still think both consoles are going to surprise us, but all we have now is dev kits rumored specs, and the insider info.

Do you have a link to these posts & are they recent?

& the way I read the older spec sheet the specs wasn't 10X the PS3 but had a CPU that was 10X the PPU in the PS3 & had a GPU 10X the RSX leaving out the SPEs but said that the final specs would be 10X The PS3 like there is going to be something more to make up for the SPEs.

 

[Brimstone]

Yes but you have to get it in there in the first place you'd be looking at almost 2 minutes to fill 8GB @ optical disk speeds even with average compression ratios.
It's one of the reasons lots of memory isn't just an obvious win.
I still think it's useful to games, but I don't think you get much benefit if you just use it as a RAM cache.

If Microsoft goes with GE Holographic Micro-Hologram discs data rates will be much higher.


I have a hard time imagining Blu-Ray for 4 gigs let alone 8 gigs.

 

[Ruskie]

Do you have a link to these posts & are they recent?

& the way I read the older spec sheet the specs wasn't 10X the PS3 but had a CPU that was 10X the PPU in the PS3 & had a GPU 10X the RSX leaving out the SPEs but said that the final specs would be 10X The PS3 like there is going to be something more to make up for the SPEs.

They are from December last year I think (translated)

The "target" specs I've seen from ps4 (the pc's that are the first kits so to speak) are about 10x ps3 in terms of raw power cpu and gpu ... And this is always less powerful than the hardware end with the final models. And Xbox next is even more beast so I have commented. So as I say surprise in that regard when all predict "little jump" technology.

 

[onQ]

They are from December last year I think (translated)

No not that I've read that I'm talking about what SkySony was saying about him being shocked when he seen the specs, that's what I'm asking about because he make it seem like something might have changed.


edit: or was you replying to the part about the spec sheet not being 10X the PS3?

 

[ERP]

If Microsoft goes with GE Holographic Micro-Hologram discs data rates will be much higher.


I have a hard time imagining Blu-Ray for 4 gigs let alone 8 gigs.

I don't see MS using anything but BluRay as optical media.
Anything MS choose would have to have sufficient production capacity to produce 5M+ discs in < 30 days, and be price competitive with BluRay.
That pretty much rules out any alternative.

Of course there is the MCV rumor that it won't have an optical drive, and be download only, but I find that equally hard to believe.

 

[Ruskie]

No not that I've read that I'm talking about what SkySony was saying about him being surprised when he seen the specs, that's what I'm asking about because he make it seem like something might have changed.

This is probably what he thought since I haven't seen anything other than this.