Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Shifty Geezer]

so after all vgleaks has a genuine source . Therefore the ps4 alpha dev kit leaks also seems to be true

Higher probability, rather than true. If VGLeaks source for Durango and Orbis data is different to their source for Wii U data, then it may be inaccurate. Not that I particularly think it is, because the alpha kit talk was suitably vague and distanced from the final hardware. We just shouldn't take any rumour at face value. Form an opinion, but it flexible and open to change in light of new information.

 

[McHuj]

In a roundabout way the WiiU gives me pretty good hope for next gen. It's on the same manufacturing process 45/40nm (at least I hope the GPU isn't 55nm) as the current gen consoles, but it consumes more than 50% less power. Even with the smaller main memory bandwidth, this early on, it achieves games that are on par with the current gen.

So I think a next gen console on the 28nm node and consuming 100-150 Watts is capable of delivering drastic improvements over the current gen consoles.

Since Nintendo is using main memory with only 12.8 GB/sec bandwidth, I'm wondering if something only around 50 GB/sec in next gen (about 2X that of 360) should be sufficient, provided we get even more EDRAM. If Nintendo can squeeze in 32MB of EDRAM @ 45nm, I'm sure Sony/MS could ask for 64MB at 28nm.

 

[arijoytunir]

How much powerful is jaguar than intel atom ?
If the next gen consoles are going for 8 or more CPU cores then they might get these low power CPUs !
If so then why not an arm a15 or the upcoming 64bit arm CPUs of similar or more core count at the same power envelope ?
http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/29/samsung-exynos-5-linux-benchmarks/

By this above benchmark it clearly shows that arm a15 CPU is much powerful than atom CPU ! Also it is not much behind the intel core i3 which performs better at much higher power envelope . So it's logical to assume that upcoming a53 and a57 64bit arm cores will be much powerful or similar to that of intel core i3 ! Then why not will the next gen systems include arm as the main CPU ?

 

[liolio]

How much powerful is jaguar than intel atom ?

We can't tell as it hasn't been released. You can search for Atom vs bobcat zacate review.
The bobcat is more performant than Atom in most cases.
AMD promised a 10/15% increase in perf per cycle and there should be a more significant jump in SIMD performances.

If the next gen consoles are going for 8 or more CPU cores then they might get these low power CPUs !
If so then why not an arm a15 or the upcoming 64bit arm CPUs of similar or more core count at the same power envelope ?
http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/29/samsung-exynos-5-linux-benchmarks/

By this above benchmark it clearly shows that arm a15 CPU is much powerful than atom CPU ! Also it is not much behind the intel core i3 which performs better at much higher power envelope . So it's logical to assume that upcoming a53 and a57 64bit arm cores will be much powerful or similar to that of intel core i3 ! Then why not will the next gen systems include arm as the main CPU ?

A15 seems like good CPUs, still there doesn't seem to be much difference between A15 and A53, it won't come close to core i3 performances, looking at the sad state of AMD nothing will. And that is letting Haswel out of the picture.
A15 provides really nice perfs per watts, has sane SIMD. It is definitely better than what Nintendo chose for the WiiU for example. I think that Apple last CPU seems to be a pretty bright design, less powerful than the A15 but I suspect that overall perfs per transistors and watts are better.

 

[3dilettante]

By this above benchmark it clearly shows that arm a15 CPU is much powerful than atom CPU ! Also it is not much behind the intel core i3 which performs better at much higher power envelope . So it's logical to assume that upcoming a53 and a57 64bit arm cores will be much powerful or similar to that of intel core i3 ! Then why not will the next gen systems include arm as the main CPU ?

An AMD APU has the advantages of a provider with a known history of having good cores, good memory architecture, good graphics, good physical implementation, and good tools and possible software compability with a broader ecosystem. It may not be the best at any one thing compared to desktop competition, but for what the console world gets it's superior.

While Jaguar is not released, it seems possible that it will have an absolute per-core lead in performance versus an A57, though power consumption could be higher.
In this case, AMD has better timing even if the ARM turned out to be superior, which is something to be debated since ARM has no history pushing to this performance and power level. Who is going to design a console with a CPU core that won't be on the market until 2014, with no existing CPUs that use its ISA?

 

[arijoytunir]

An AMD APU has the advantages of a provider with a known history of having good cores, good memory architecture, good graphics, good physical implementation, and good tools and possible software compability with a broader ecosystem. It may not be the best at any one thing compared to desktop competition, but for what the console world gets it's superior.

While Jaguar is not released, it seems possible that it will have an absolute per-core lead in performance versus an A57, though power consumption could be higher.
In this case, AMD has better timing even if the ARM turned out to be superior, which is something to be debated since ARM has no history pushing to this performance and power level. Who is going to design a console with a CPU core that won't be on the market until 2014, with no existing CPUs that use its ISA?

Consoles do come with future technologies like the tech used in Xenos gpu in Xbox 360 !
And also the rumour of stacked memory which is a 2014+ design !

 

[3dilettante]

Consoles do come with future technologies like the tech used in Xenos gpu in Xbox 360 !

A57 does not physically exist and won't be able to start a real production run until late 2013 or 2014, assuming all goes as planned for the new process it goes on.
Jaguar is sampling already, and its ISA can run on existing chips.

It helps to have hardware that exists before a console's release date.

 

[Blazkowicz]

ATI was developing a unified GPU for the PC, the R400, but cancelled it and released a R420 instead, effectively a refresh of the R300 architecture. R400 was deemed too complex and doing it on 130nm was probably too early, then that design that existed only on paper got carried over to the R500, a.k.a. Xenos.

For whatever reason they made another architecture for R520 and RV530/R580, but in effect the Xenos wasn't really future tech. It's tech that they didn't dare release on PC because the silicon overhead may have been embarassing - remember how geforce 8600GT and radeon 2600 relatively sucked. ATI would have been in a bad position when nvidia had 6600GT and 7600GT, small and very powerful.

 

[almighty]

ATI was developing a unified GPU for the PC, the R400, but cancelled it and released a R420 instead, effectively a refresh of the R300 architecture. R400 was deemed too complex and doing it on 130nm was probably too early, then that design that existed only on paper got carried over to the R500, a.k.a. Xenos.

For whatever reason they made another architecture for R520 and RV530/R580, but in effect the Xenos wasn't really future tech. It's tech that they didn't dare release on PC because the silicon overhead may have been embarassing - remember how geforce 8600GT and radeon 2600 relatively sucked. ATI would have been in a bad position when nvidia had 6600GT and 7600GT, small and very powerful.

Xenos is not R500 nor has it ever been called or referred to R500 by AMD, it's always been referred to by AMD both publically and internally as C1

 

[Gipsel]

Xenos is not R500 nor has it ever been called or referred to R500 by AMD, it's always been referred to by AMD both publically and internally as C1

How it was named internally, we simply don't know for sure. All we heard from Dave Baumann to that topic is that while C1 is the official developement name and Xenos the PR friendly codename, "ATI are probably fairly keen not to use the R500 name as this draws parallels with their upcoming series of PC graphics processors starting with R520". The reasoning is a purely from a PR perspective.
Considering R400 and R500 are missing in the line of the PC GPUs (R420 and R520 are evolutions of the R300 design which where done as a hedge or because the alternative designs proved to be to aggressive for the time being) and R600 reportedly bases on the Xenos/C1 design, it's a quite safe bet the R500 moniker relates to Xenos/C1 even while nobody wanted to admit it publicly (for the reasons Dave mentioned). Hell, we were told the successor to R700 series doesn't have any Rxxx name anymore and the codename was Evergreen, after that Northern Islands and now Southern Islands for the GCN GPUs. But internally (at least in some places) these GPU families are of course still named R800, R900, and now R1000.

 

[almighty]

How it was named internally, we simply don't know for sure. All we heard from Dave Baumann to that topic is that while C1 is the official developement name and Xenos the PR friendly codename, "ATI are probably fairly keen not to use the R500 name as this draws parallels with their upcoming series of PC graphics processors starting with R520". The reasoning is a purely from a PR perspective.
Considering R400 and R500 are missing in the line of the PC GPUs (R420 and R520 are evolutions of the R300 design which where done as a hedge or because the alternative designs proved to be to aggressive for the time being) and R600 reportedly bases on the Xenos/C1 design, it's a quite safe bet the R500 moniker relates to Xenos/C1 even while nobody wanted to admit it publicly (for the reasons Dave mentioned). Hell, we were told the successor to R700 series doesn't have any Rxxx name anymore and the codename was Evergreen, after that Northern Islands and now Southern Islands for the GCN GPUs. But internally (at least in some places) these GPU families are of course still named R800, R900, and now R1000.

A few snippets...

Back in 2003, ATI Technologies and Microsoft announced a technology development agreement under which ATI would develop custom, leading-edge graphics technologies for use in the Xbox successor.

We had the chance to interview Bob Feldstein, Vice President of Engineering, ATI Technologies, Inc., to learn more about the development and power of the Xenos GPU.

Before we continue, we never had the chance to clarify the correct name of the Xbox 360 GPU. Some call it Xenos, others C1. Sometimes it was known as R500. But the rumor was that ATI wanted to avoid that codename because it could make the Xbox 360 GPU look less powerful than ATI’s R520 PC part. So, what is the Xbox 360 GPU codename?

Bob Feldstein: The Xbox GPU had nothing whatsoever to do with the PC products. R500 was never an internal name for the Xbox. Internally we called the GPU, interchangeably, C1 and Xenos. C1 was a code name defined before we had the contract, Xenos was the project name after the contract was won – but C1 stuck in everyone’s minds. Once we started calling it C1, it was hard to change.

Seems pretty clear cut to me that it had/has nothing to do with R500 or any other desktop PC part.

Link


Edit : I should add that Xenos was not AMD/ATI's first attempt at unified shaders, they had working designs that were simply called R400 but scraped the idea and went with the more traditional split shaders that ultimately ended up becoming R420.

 

[faizanali]

I think it is pretty obvious that the X720/PS4 will have 4 Core CPU's beyond that will only increase the pricing of the Consoles.

 

[XpiderMX]

I think it is pretty obvious that the X720/PS4 will have 4 Core CPU's beyond that will only increase the pricing of the Consoles.

The Durango Beta dev kit is a 2 CPU Xeon with 4 cores each.

 

[Proelite]

I think it is pretty obvious that the X720/PS4 will have 4 Core CPU's beyond that will only increase the pricing of the Consoles.

No it isn't.

 

[faizanali]

No it isn't.

How is that?

 

[Proelite]

How is that?

It's not obvious. Explain to me how something that doesn't have concrete evidence is obvious.

 

[almighty]

No it isn't.

So can you explain how adding more cores would not add to the cost of a CPU?

And pretty much every leak has mentioned AMD APU's.... AMD don't make APU's with more then 4 cores and with more GPU's with DX11 and OpenCL support you don't really need more then 4 cores.

 

[XpiderMX]

So can you explain how adding more cores would not add to the cost of a CPU?

And pretty much every leak has mentioned AMD APU's.... AMD don't make APU's with more then 4 cores and with more GPU's with DX11 and OpenCL support you don't really need more then 4 cores.

Durango leaks has not mentioned AMD APUs, at least not all leaks.

 

[Gipsel]

I don't want to continue too much OT, but just some short remarks:

Seems pretty clear cut to me that it had/has nothing to do with R500 or any other desktop PC part.

There was no R500 desktop part. That was part of my reasoning.
And that Xenos has nothing to do with any desktop part is simply not true. Or how do you explain the similarities to R600? R600 quite clearly used some of the same ideas.

I should add that Xenos was not AMD/ATI's first attempt at unified shaders, they had working designs that were simply called R400 but scraped the idea and went with the more traditional split shaders that ultimately ended up becoming R420.

Which they further developed to R520 which marked the end of the split vertex/pixel shader GPUs just as I said already. R420/R520 where successors to the R300 line. The different numbering kind of suggests they were the safe bet backup projects.

So to summarize your point of view:
ATI developed the R400 as the first try of an unified shader design. Then they used some of the gained knowledge to create C1/Xenos which can be in no way identified with R500 but it's successor is then again named R600. It makes complete sense, yes.
What was the "missing" R500 then?

Anyway, it doesn't really matter how the ATI guys named the project internally back then. So no need for a fight. I just think that the R400 and R500 "gaps" in the PC line are telling.

 

[Gipsel]

So can you explain how adding more cores would not add to the cost of a CPU?

That's easy. You take smaller ones.

And pretty much every leak has mentioned AMD APU's.... AMD don't make APU's with more then 4 cores and with more GPU's with DX11 and OpenCL support you don't really need more then 4 cores.

The most prominent guy flatly claimed Jaguar cores + GCN are sure. In that case you can easily afford to put quite a few cores in, they are really tiny and don't consume too much power. And you want and need quite a few of them as they are not the fastest ones in absolute terms, especially if you look forward to games in 2018 or so.