Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Rangers]

People are kidding themselves if they think Durango and PS4 will be in same "class" if one of them has twice the performance advantage on GPU side. Thats alot of performance. Big difference, even if there was some kind of next gen Cell like vector monster of CPU on the other side.

And what if the other has 4X the RAM as rumored? It's not so simple.

I definitely tend to agree with your overall argument RE 2X GPU power (all else equal, which in Durango vs Orbis it isn't). We pull out hairs over the difference between PS3 and 360 ports as it is, imagine if we halved the clock speed on either GPU. It'd be like Armageddon.

All that said, a counterargument is Xbox vs Ps2. Where Xbox I think was 2x as powerful, 2X GPU, yet a lot of the games were just multiplatform without huge differences.

But having put out the counterargument, I still agree with you.

 

[Acert93]

I just can't believe they would go separate pools after all the praise xb360's unified pool got, even though it would limit the possible max amount of memory quite a bit lower

As mentioned before bottlenecks and pressures change.

Let's use some rough figures: the Xbox 360 had 25GB/s of bandwidth to 512MB memory and all the framebuffer bandwidth was on the eDRAM. The PS3 had 256MB of VRAM with 25GB/s and 256MB of XDR with 25GB/s -- transfer between these was slow. PC's at the time were routinely requiring 512MB+ of system memory plus 128MB VRAM to just get a game to work and a bit more for optimal settings (getting performance/settings on par with the consoles or better often required 1GB system memory and 256MB GPU or better).

Out of these scenarios the PS3 was the odd man out. Compared to a PC with a split pool It lacked the VRAM bandwidth that ~7800 class GPUs had and was dwarfed in system memory space. Compared to the 360, all things being equal (they were not), having one 512MB pool is better than two 256MB pools. But it got worse as the 256MB of VRAM in the PS3 had the GPU being the primary client which saturated the bandwidth of the VRAM whereas the eDRAM helped the 360 significantly in this regard. It also didn't help that not all read/writes from Cell/RSX to/from XDR/VRAM were created equal (some were PITA slow, and that is being kind). The cherry on the top was the PS3 OS was quite a bit larger early on in the generation and virtual texturing had not yet come into its own.

Moving forward, into the future, the question isn't what worked 8 years ago but what are today's (and tomorrow's) problems and how can the hardware be designed to work with such.

If 8GB of DDR4 + eDRAM scratch buffer is the best way to isolate high bandwidth processes while leveraging the cost/space advantage of mainstream memory, then ok. Ditto stacked memory. Or... maybe a more PC approach will work. Instead of 4GB GDDR5 (e.g. PS4) maybe 6GB DDR3/4 and 2GB GDDR5 (e.g. Xbox3) come out in a similar pricing scheme but it is decided 4GB of extra system memory and isolating the high bandwidth client (GPU) to GDDR5 is a better design than a 4GB GDDR5 UMA that will have the constant pressure of GPU utilization?

Anyways continuing to repeat "But UMA was praised so much for the 360!" isn't really an argument WHY next gen consoles should have UMA.

The only place I see that as a static bullet point that would persist would be... forums, where people are too lazy to reconsider past design choices in light of new developments and design pressures \

Ps- 8GB of DDR3/4 + a robust eDRAM cache (scratch pad, read/write buffer, whatever you want to call it; just not a dumb simple ROP buffer) or a small pool of stacked memory that both the CPU or GPU could access seems like a great solution to (a) leverage the benefits of a large memory pool and the low costs of DDR technology and (b) provide a pool of exceptionally high bandwidth memory for intensive GPU tasks and various CPU/GPGPU tasks that would benefit from a high bandwidth memory model.

• 8GB DDR4 w/o a high bandwidth pool sounds crazy.
• 6GB DDR3 + 2GB GDDR5 sounds like the second best option but we already have a a growing selection of GPUs in 2012 with 3GB and cheapo PCs with 8GB of memory and depending on how the competition's memory is designed this could be a disadvantage.
• 2GB of very fast GDDR5 is too small and expensive and 8GB+eDRAM would be a lot better imo.
• 4GB of GDDR5 is really expensive and depending on how the 8GB+eDRAM system is designed it could still be a lot better than the expensive 4GB setup.

 

[antwan]

I am thinking of a new design and technology: 4D stacking. Allow me to explain:
The console built like a gamecube; it is a cube so it has 6 sides.
The actual logic boards are on each of the sides, in a smaller 'virtual cube', with 3D connections between them and the memory in the middle. Cooling through heat pipes will be done on the backs of the logic boards, the chips are also on the backs, only the interconnects are on the inside of the virtual cube.
Also on the inside is a 3D heatpipe system allowing for cooling the inside of the virtual cube. The consoles can be stacked as well: the left and right sides have extra ports, and they can be daisy chained in theory: This would allow for 240fps GT6 or quad HD GT6 for example.
People can upgrade their systems to allow for better graphics.
the BD drive and HDD will be on the bottom. power supply and input / HDMI ports on the back. the front will be made of black glass, but with an OLED display inside. The black glass will be touch screen, and with the OLED behind it can be reconfigured. Or even password protected.
It doesn't need to be a cube (same dimension sides) it can and would look better being rectangular in design, but it needs to have a certain height or else the 4D stacking will be less efficient.

Also the black glass hides an NFC interface; you can carry your gaming profile on your cellphone and login on every device using your own profile/account, just by holding your phone next to it and possibly also entering a passcode on the black OLED glass screen.

That's how I imagine the PS4

edit: of course, it would be backed by an improved PSN, so you could resume your game from any PS4 in the world. Even if it doesn't have the blu ray inside; it will just stream the current location/ assets / level from a cloud.
This would mean that every game you buy is tied to your account but so be it, it would be convenient as a motherf-

edit2: the bottom would be 'modular'; you could buy a PS4 without the BD drive if you already have one and are daisy chaining, or don't plan on buying disc based games.

 

[Brimstone]

Square Enix used CGI assets they could make that a lot smaller which would be the best thing for them to do in these times where DD is going to be a big part of the new consoles. The PS4 rumored specs even has a hardware zlib decompressor which to me says they are preparing for some heavily compressed data & should also help with the smaller amount of Ram.

(Just my thoughts on it could be wrong)

It seems to me accomodating DD is a one way ticket to the hell of diminishing returns. Artists are capable of generating all this hand crafted inspired content (mega geometry + mega texture) but you start to loose fidelity with ultra high levels of compression. Years ago with MP3 music files you had high compression and people could hear the difference of the low bit rates. Something like 3% of the neurons in the human cortex are dedicated to hearing. For visual processing it's 30% of the neurons in the brains cortex. It seems pretty obvious to me if you want to "shock & awe the eyeballs" of people with game console graphics you want to try to combat compressing the artistic content created.

Holographic disc seems clearly the way to go to fight against diminishing returns. It doesn't add to the thermal budget of the console and the cost should be similar to standard blu-ray because the bulk of the parts are virtually the same.

And while I'm on the subject of neurons, 8% of the neurons are dedicated to Touch. So it also makes total sense to me to improve haptic feedback in the gamepad if possible.

 

[ultragpu]

And what if the other has 4X the RAM as rumored? It's not so simple.

I definitely tend to agree with your overall argument RE 2X GPU power (all else equal, which in Durango vs Orbis it isn't). We pull out hairs over the difference between PS3 and 360 ports as it is, imagine if we halved the clock speed on either GPU. It'd be like Armageddon.

All that said, a counterargument is Xbox vs Ps2. Where Xbox I think was 2x as powerful, 2X GPU, yet a lot of the games were just multiplatform without huge differences.

But having put out the counterargument, I still agree with you.

Not exactly 4X the RAM though, it's definitely not 8g GDDR5 so if it's 8g ddr4 then either would have pros and cons, though what I've read so far GDDR5 tend to give better graphics on the spot especially when modern game engines are coded with streaming in mind. So yeah, you would want a 2x more powerful gpu in this case.

 

[Rangers]

Not exactly 4X the RAM though, it's definitely not 8g GDDR5 so if it's 8g ddr4 then either would have pros and cons, though what I've read so far GDDR5 tend to give better graphics on the spot especially when modern game engines are coded with streaming in mind. So yeah, you would want a 2x more powerful gpu in this case.

I am not so sure, depending on the specifics of the setups (which we dont know and wont for a while).

 

[function]

sorry but that could be done within a single megabyte (edit) for 100 enemies;

10 if body is > 100m away goto 20
20 round body orientation to 1 of 32 directions (example) goto 30
30 round body location to 1mm2 goto 40
40 set body damage to one of the presets
50 goto 10

of course the body interacts with the environment, but the physics only get calculated 1 time, unless there is interaction going on.

so yeah you save on both memory and cpu time.

They could have 'next gen' right now with 200MB of ram

Setting a rather low bar there aren't you? Objects can be marked, damaged, deformed, dismembered etc in all kinds of ways. If you use a low accuracy approximation of position and rotation for all the bricks in a wall that you've just smashed into a pile of bricks it'll look funny and behave incorrectly if you run further simulation on them.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

sorry but that could be done within a single megabyte (edit) for 100 enemies;

They could have 'next gen' right now with 200MB of ram

Blowing arbitrary holes into walls can generates several smaller, unique models. Blowing a town to rubble can generate hundreds or thousands of objects, all with their own textures. Footprints in a displacement map will need to be recorded. Foliage could get bent and snapped, requiring tracking skills to observe them. Cars and trucks could get thrown around, each getting their own deformations. There's plenty that can be done requiring lots of storage (flash/SSD might be suitable with enough working RAM to store local data).

 

[cteam]

some new info , legit or not decided by yourself

MS constantly give devkits for allready many years for their partners. Our studio developer got the first one 3 years ago. That was 6xxxxSLI GPU and they been told to fully load them and be sure it will be much better.

Durango PPC CPU allready sampled 2 iterations. The last one was in December'11 - Jan 2012. So they are in closing stages.

But the new big question about PPC to AMDx86 possible change inside ALU.

Anyway IBM is respobsable for packing all chips and energy effectiveness with their PPC or without.

AMD is responsible for APU design and GPU part.

MS make this design for allready 6 years and tryed many many desisions.

I even say this: MS money allowed AMD already design their 2015++ PC architecture. And that is all started with the idea of APU = CPU + GPU runs the same code without bottlenecks and high level of parralelism. That idea comes straight from MS's game developers i think who need to create huge worlds without pain in one place.

So AMD have two architectures now - their current and console. Console is much more effective and will not be available some time because there is no need for that and PC market isn't ready.

Nvidia will push current CPU+GPU design. But game developers will demand more easy to use AMD design and i think will win. Nvidia need to became a CPU maker to have that effective and integrated CPU+GPU design AMD is cooking now.

 

[McHuj]

some new info , legit or not decided by yourself

Where did this come from? That russian insider?

Seems like it's awfully late in the game for a CPU switch. Unless, it hasn't been determined which architecture they were planning on and MS wanted both IBM and AMD to deliver an actual working CPU/APU before making a decision. I guess that's possible, but seems really late in the game.

A Durango CPU being on a second stepping isn't that far fetched at this point, in fact probably on schedule.

I can't understand what the 2015++ PC stuff means. I'm guessing, if true, MS wants a fully HSA solution.

Then again these rumors sound like a respin of the current rumors with some embellishments.

 

[Acert93]

I am not so sure, depending on the specifics of the setups (which we dont know and wont for a while).

I don't think this is hard to test at all: There is a long history of GPUs with 2x memory footprint on the same model and it offers only modest improvements to visuals (namely textures) and framebuffer size (and performance related bottlenecks to the buffer getting too big with high levels of AA and resolution). The industry also has a long history of slower GPUs "jacked up" with a lot of extra memory for marketing purposes and, again, the half speed GPU with more memory is still a clunker. There is a long historical precedent here in these regards.

Visually a 2TFLOPs GPU system w/ 4GB is going to have *substantially* better visuals than a 1TFLOPs GPU system w/ 8GB of similar design.

Do you have any technical data that contradicts this? The only "silver lining" I can think of is essentially some memory-hungry techniques may be more feasible but that is a corner case. 4GB, or even 2GB, is a quite substantial frame buffer (especially with virtual texturing) for a 1080p or smaller resolution target. A hit in normal map, texture resolution, etc is going to trend toward the diminish returns area and the 2x performance is going to open up all sorts of visual features -- just go look at gaming benchmarks comparing such disparate GPUs where all the extra power can offer better IQ, better framerates, and a slew of extra visual features. It could be the difference between having quality AO, GI, interactive particles, AA, etc at a silky smooth 30fps and the competitor losing those, going for a lower resolution, and having issues with framerate.

 

[pjbliverpool]

some new info , legit or not decided by yourself

That rumor is complete BS. 2x 6970's would pull down maybe half a kilowatt on their own and we're to believe Durango will be even more powerful? Its nothing but a fanbous wet dream. The curreny rumors are talking about 8-10x the performance of the current generation. 2x 6970's would be easily 30x the performance of the 360 and yet Durango will supposedly be much more powerful than that? Lets wake up shall we.

 

[cteam]

Post deleted due to violation of FAQ's formatting requirements regards simple capitalisation of sentences, even after a polite reminder.

 

[TurnDragoZeroV2G]

It's the kind of fantasy that's so absolutely ridiculous as to be thrown out before you've finished reading it. It's not real.

Edit: and.... meh....

 

[pjbliverpool]

So we dream in 7970 ps4 too ?

Yes. The 7970 is not 10x the current generations performance as the more reliable rumours suggest, it is more like 25x. And it draws far too much power for a console.

targetting 8970 performance with dual GPU design not 2x8970, please read .

Yes a single 8970 is going to be a lot more power efficient than two 6970's at similar or greater performance but it's still going to drag down something like 250-300w on 28nm. Compare that to the ~70w Xenos and RSX were using when they launched and you realise how ridiculous it is.

targetting 12-14x xbox360 vs PS4 targettng 10x PS3

But 12-14x Xbox 360 performance is not >2x 6970's. It's a single 6850.

remember there is some neogaf insider said XBOX next will be like 2xhigh performance PC

Yes and it's nothing more than a fantasy or a severe misinterpretation. I've seen the rumour that mentions something along the lines of "it being like 2 PC's" but that could simply refer to the existence of an APU plus discrete GPU.

 

[cteam]

From GAF: lherre :

Ps4 (with the target specs in hand) will be ~10x ps3 (in cpu and gpu) and xbox next will be more impressive ... so big jump over Wii U.

At the moment no one has the new AMD APU, but this is only pre-devkits, can be changed in the future.

Sorry for not to be more specific, but I think both will be good machines. Besides, Ps4 appears to be a balanced system like Vita, totally opossed to ps3.

Again from GAF

They asked publishers and developers what they need in a next-gen system

EA, Activision, DICE, and Epic all insisted on raising the ceiling by what we would traditionally consider a generational leap.


Microsoft listened because they were told this would increase game sales and hardware adoption.


-ShockingAlberto

 

[N2O]

Where did this come from? That russian insider?

Seems like it's awfully late in the game for a CPU switch. Unless, it hasn't been determined which architecture they were planning on and MS wanted both IBM and AMD to deliver an actual working CPU/APU before making a decision. I guess that's possible, but seems really late in the game.

A Durango CPU being on a second stepping isn't that far fetched at this point, in fact probably on schedule.

I can't understand what the 2015++ PC stuff means. I'm guessing, if true, MS wants a fully HSA solution.

Then again these rumors sound like a respin of the current rumors with some embellishments.

late or not,it doesn't matter,because MS is testing the prototype right now<--not from russia insider

That rumor is complete BS. 2x 6970's would pull down maybe half a kilowatt on their own and we're to believe Durango will be even more powerful? Its nothing but a fanbous wet dream. The curreny rumors are talking about 8-10x the performance of the current generation. 2x 6970's would be easily 30x the performance of the 360 and yet Durango will supposedly be much more powerful than that? Lets wake up shall we.

wait,wasn't the rumor said it's 2x 6xxx,i remember 64/65/66/67/68/69xx all support crossfire

 

[pjbliverpool]

@cteam: None of those comments make any suggestion of 8970 like performance out of Durango. In fact it's quite the opposite. PS4 being 10x more powerful than RSX put's it more like 5850 level and Durango being even more impressive could easily refer to the CPU and RAM as other rumours suggest and not containing a GPU that's 2-3 x faster than that in PS4.

 

[Acert93]

As the rumor thread shows I would NOT put any emphasis on any specific rumor at this point. Calling any rumor "reliable rumours" is a joke at this point due to the blatant discrepancies about BASIC facts. I am waiting for a reliable source to come up with something confirmable before latching onto something. The best we have is the 2 year old design pitch which may or may not have been the design chosen (and is pretty crazy with all the parts, e.g. HW BC, etc) I have been told by someone to expect over 2TFLOPs (but has nothing firm to validate right now) and we have all heard of HW that is well sub-1TFLOPs--all these rumors should be taken with a grain of salt until we get something substantial. As it stands picking a rumor because it aligns with expectations is no more than self fulfilling prophecy.

The argument about power is a valid one although the appeal to last gen design specs has its limits -- e.g. Last gen specs, compared to previous generous, would also "break the mold" in terms of power.

 

[pjbliverpool]

wait,wasn't the rumor said it's 2x 6xxx,i remember 64/65/66/67/68/69xx all support crossfire

True, but if the intention is to simulate something even more powerful than these 2 6xxx GPU's in crossfire then it would make sense for them to be using the fastest 6xxx series GPU's available.