Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[LXFBN]

Arthur Gies of polygon pretty much confirmed today on NeoGAF that Durango and Orbis are using an APU + a discrete GPU.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=44885833&postcount=1229

 

[bkilian]

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

It is? Source? Since I happen to know there is no such thing as a Durango Beta dev kit in the wild, it will have to be a pretty impressive source. Nostradamus level, at least.

 

[Proelite]

Arthur Gies of polygon pretty much confirmed today on NeoGAF that Durango and Orbis are using an APU + a discrete GPU.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=44885833&postcount=1229

He is surmising that at least one will.

Frankly I don't think Durango will being using APU and discrete GPU. It's all about socks these days.

 

[XpiderMX]

It is? Source? Since I happen to know there is no such thing as a Durango Beta dev kit in the wild, it will have to be a pretty impressive source. Nostradamus level, at least.

Durango dev kit:

What's inside:
- 8 cores (x64 CPU)
- 12 GB RAM (8 + 4)
The Alpha kit has 12 GB of RAM, rather than the 8 GB in the final design. The extra 4 GB of RAM facilitates development of console system software.
- DirectX 11.x GPU
The Alpha kit uses a discrete graphics card similar in capability and speed to the GPU that will be included in the final design. The card does not have the ESRAM that the final design GPU will.
- 50GB Blu-ray Disk drive
- HDD, etc

And take a look to this:

Dual 1366-pin LGA Sockets
Supports up to two Intel® 64-bit Xeon® processor(s) of the same type below:
Intel®
Xeon®Processor 5600 Series (Westmere)
Intel®
Xeon®Processor 5500 Series (Nehalem-EP)

 

[Gipsel]

Arthur Gies of polygon pretty much confirmed today on NeoGAF that Durango and Orbis are using an APU + a discrete GPU.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=44885833&postcount=1229

IMO, that post is quite open for interpretations, especially if he is in the know but doesn't want to spill the beans so he adds a layer of convolution to his sentence. The obvious solution would be the dedicated GPGPU resources are on the same die as the CPU cores and not on a separate "dedicated" GPU (he obviously plays with the double use of "dedicated" and the pretended contradiction resulting from it). But it could still mean there is no separate GPU at all. In principle he only says that the GPGPU won't be done on a separate GPU.
Another conclusion would be, that we can expect plenty of CPU resources, as it won't be GPU centric according to him.

 

[SlickShoesRUCrazy]

Durango dev kit:

What's inside:
- 8 cores (x64 CPU)
- 12 GB RAM (8 + 4)
The Alpha kit has 12 GB of RAM, rather than the 8 GB in the final design. The extra 4 GB of RAM facilitates development of console system software.
- DirectX 11.x GPU
The Alpha kit uses a discrete graphics card similar in capability and speed to the GPU that will be included in the final design. The card does not have the ESRAM that the final design GPU will.
- 50GB Blu-ray Disk drive
- HDD, etc

And take a look to this:

Dual 1366-pin LGA Sockets
Supports up to two Intel® 64-bit Xeon® processor(s) of the same type below:
Intel®
Xeon®Processor 5600 Series (Westmere)
Intel®
Xeon®Processor 5500 Series (Nehalem-EP)

and confirmation that the dev kits are legit

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-curious-case-of-the-durango-devkit-leak

 

[McHuj]

IMO, that post is quite open for interpretations, especially if he is in the know but doesn't want to spill the beans so he adds a layer of convolution to his sentence. The obvious solution would be the dedicated GPGPU resources are on the same die as the CPU cores and not on a separate "dedicated" GPU (he obviously plays with the double use of "dedicated" and the pretended contradiction resulting from it). But it could still mean there is no separate GPU at all. In principle he only says that the GPGPU won't be done on a separate GPU.

I almost wonder if we'd see a very similar setup to the 360: CPU+Shaders on one die and ROPs with EDRAM on another (if we're lucky they're on an interposer). It would probably be a fairly easy system to transition development to if it looks like a 360, just every component was tweaked and vastly improved.

 

[cal_guy]

Durango dev kit:

What's inside:
- 8 cores (x64 CPU)
- 12 GB RAM (8 + 4)
The Alpha kit has 12 GB of RAM, rather than the 8 GB in the final design. The extra 4 GB of RAM facilitates development of console system software.
- DirectX 11.x GPU
The Alpha kit uses a discrete graphics card similar in capability and speed to the GPU that will be included in the final design. The card does not have the ESRAM that the final design GPU will.
- 50GB Blu-ray Disk drive
- HDD, etc

And take a look to this:

Dual 1366-pin LGA Sockets
Supports up to two Intel® 64-bit Xeon® processor(s) of the same type below:
Intel®
Xeon®Processor 5600 Series (Westmere)
Intel®
Xeon®Processor 5500 Series (Nehalem-EP)

Supermicro uses that chasis for a number of workstations including ones for AMD.

http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/system/Tower/4022/AS-4022G-6F.cfm

 

[XpiderMX]

Supermicro uses that chasis for a number of workstations including ones for AMD.

http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/system/Tower/4022/AS-4022G-6F.cfm

Ok, the Xeon part is not accurate, but the dev kit is a 8 cores cpu (vgleaks).

 

[AzBat]

Ok, the Xeon part is not accurate, but the dev kit is a 8 cores cpu (vgleaks).

bkilian surmised it wasn't a _BETA_ kit, which I don't think it is either. It's definitely an _ALPHA_ kit.

Tommy McClain

 

[arijoytunir]

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

Recently microsoft's Harrison revealed that Xbox is now a brand and they have to compete with apple and google ! So they are setting up a studio to built multiplatform Xbox games that can be played from win 8 to win 8 phones ! And since the developer kits feature 2 Xeon 4 core CPUs - it will be expensive to include that kind of CPUs in a console price and power envelope . Arm a15 or a57 seems to fit perfectly with the same core count ! A15 exists today. the yields problem of the Xbox 720 chips may involve the yet to be manufactured a53 or a57 arm cores ! As the x86 market is declining and intel is confirmed to stop socketing CPUs and selling them as SOCs ! Arm seems to be most future proof . Arm is now also a part of HSA FOUNDATION. So by including arm as the CPU they don't have to give up the HSA improvements ! If they include arm instead of x86 - they easily develope the multiplatform win8 , surface and win phone 8 games ! Thus just like apple Microsoft can fully build its Xbox ecosystem !

http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=44885833&postcount=1229

The above link confirms that the next consoles from Sony and Microsoft are not using off the shelf hardware . Thus jaguar is off the shelf hardware . This also helps my assumption of a57or a53 arm cores somewhat plausible !

 

[LXFBN]

He is surmising that at least one will.

Frankly I don't think Durango will being using APU and discrete GPU. It's all about socks these days.

He specifically mentioned that Durango will. I'm assuming the Orbis will as well since its heavily been rumored and Sweetvar mentioned that it would.

 

[Proelite]

He specifically mentioned that Durango will. I'm assuming the Orbis will as well since its heavily been rumored and Sweetvar mentioned that it would.

I am assuming it's a conjecture because if not, he and his sources might get into trouble for that post.

 

[XpiderMX]

Some new rumors posted in NeoGAF but Idont know if is safe to be posted because some gafers have said that Dual Pixel site is BS.

 

[ERP]

Some new rumors posted in NeoGAF but Idont know if is safe to be posted because some gafers have said that Dual Pixel site is BS.

Looks like utter drivel to me.

 

[onQ]

It's also daft. It'd be Cell all over again, creating unnecessary problems for developers. If the peak flops come from the GPU, it's all good and devs can use cross-platform skills and knowhow.

I place the possibility of a 1TF CPU at half as likely as seeing a new, unannounced Cell2 as PS4's CPUs. Any 1 TF CPU rumour is either complete crock or someone calling an APU a CPU and counting GPU flops.

I think that is the case & I have a feeling that the Xbox Next & PS4 is going to be using a full APU as the CPUs in the new consoles.

 

[bkilian]

I think that is the case & I have a feeling that the Xbox Next & PS4 is going to be using a full APU as the CPUs in the new consoles.

Probably best not to get your hopes up, it is not particularly cost effective to ship a box with two GPUs. If they're basing these ideas on alpha kits, it's a bad premise, because alpha kits tend to be a hodgepodge of hardware that can give a broad-strokes idea of the architecture of the final hardware. They often have extra CPUs, extra GPUs and other bits and pieces that will not make it into the final product.

Think of it this way: If they were thinking of using a APU with 10 compute units, and a GPU with 20, it would be a lot cheaper in terms of design, OS work, fabricating et al to just use a GPU with 30 compute units to start with. Same overall power, no multi-GPU integration headaches. (and fewer transistors, since you wouldn't need to duplicate the common sections)

 

[RedVi]

Agreed, and with a single SOC, you can easily scale the amount of CU's used for GPGPU operations and those used for graphics. Sure, having two seperate GPU's in the form of a dedicated one and one in an APU would give multiple front ends. This would help when doing both GPGPU and graphics, but the advantages in simplicity far outweigh that - not to mention the fact that a wider front end can be used on a larger SOC. The main upside as I see it is an easily unified memory architecture. You have a big chip which can support a fairly wide bus even after quite a few shrinks, and memory controllers are all unified and on-die.

There's no real advantage to having a separate GPU with regards to power use either. Disabling the main GPU for general OS functions is really no different to what can be achieved with modern power gating. Cooling and circuitry will also be simplified, further reducing costs.

IMHO, dev kits have an APU mated with a GPU simply because there are no APU's currently available with the same GPU performance as what these consoles will deliver. The final product and probably even dev kits released mid-2013 will more than likely have a one chip APU, possibly with a separate eDRAM/ROP die for the xbox.

 

[arijoytunir]

Can arm CPU be the main CPU in an APU ?

 

[RedVi]

It could, but probably won't. Especially since AMD would be designing the APU due to their experience and easier integration between the CPU and GPU. If we were talking about a late 2014 launch, possibly. By then AMD could even be developing a consumer APU using ARM cores.

Here's some possible CPU solutions and how I'd rate their general gaming code performance potential:

6xPiledriver/steamroller > 8xJaguar > 4xPiledriver/steamroller > 8xA15 ≥ 4xJaguar

Anything less would be underpowered. A53/57 won't be ready in time, and would likely still suffer a slight performance deficit compared to jaguar per core. Sure, you could have more cores for the same power, but after a certain point the performance scaling drops off very sharply (at least with current development).