Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[tongue_of_colicab]

I have nothing to add to this conversation except for the fact I have always been hoping that Microsoft and Sony would join forces and have one platform instead of two. A lot of Sony fans gave me grief when I mentioned that both companies should save money and resources and combine their efforts into one machine.

It's too late for that now, but that is what I always wanted. So we can just play games and not platforms.

Great. Just think about what would happen if there was just one company for each product. All you end up with is less quality (no competition) and a higher price (again, no competition).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Great. Just think about what would happen if there was just one company for each product. All you end up with is less quality (no competition) and a higher price (again, no competition).

That's a discussion for the RSCPA forum (pros/cons of competition).

 

[AlNom]

http://cens.com/cens/html/en/news/news_inner_42228.html

TSMC began volume production of 28nm chips in October, 2010, with initial output of around 1,000 wafers a month.

TSMC is estimated to begin pilot production of chips at 20nm nodes in the second half of 2013 and volume production of the chips in 2014.

The whole 20nm theory needs to die.

 

[upnorthsox]

I think the "same power" argument can´t be true. I believe is something some Sony fans have been toying with since the company´s financials are weak and hence a strong investment in hard wouldn´t make much sense.

If the MS proyect is on a higher priority for AMD, I asume at least Durango won´t be weaker than Orbis.

Or maybe it's a higher priority because MS was late to switch over to an all AMD solution and so to keep up with a schedule to stay in step with a 2013 release they needed to go with an accelerated effort.

The question I have in all this is what was the background reaction by Sony? Certainly it couldn't have been good. I mean, you contract out to have something designed that you're assured will differentiate you from your competitor and then after you have already progressed beyond a reasonable point of switching, you find out that AMD has given your competitor basicly the same design that you paid for. If I'm Sony, I'm beyond pissed and looking for legal recourse.

Maybe this is why Nvidia thought they had a chance to get back in the console mix, IDK.

 

[Ruskie]

Or maybe it's a higher priority because MS was late to switch over to an all AMD solution and so to keep up with a schedule to stay in step with a 2013 release they needed to go with an accelerated effort.

The question I have in all this is what was the background reaction by Sony? Certainly it couldn't have been good. I mean, you contract out to have something designed that you're assured will differentiate you from your competitor and then after you have already progressed beyond a reasonable point of switching, you find out that AMD has given your competitor basicly the same design that you paid for. If I'm Sony, I'm beyond pissed and looking for legal recourse.

Maybe this is why Nvidia thought they had a chance to get back in the console mix, IDK.

Design is owned by Sony and they can't give it to MS. On top of that, MS had contract with AMD for Durango GPU long time ago.

 

[SKYSONY]

Or maybe it's a higher priority because MS was late to switch over to an all AMD solution and so to keep up with a schedule to stay in step with a 2013 release they needed to go with an accelerated effort.

The question I have in all this is what was the background reaction by Sony? Certainly it couldn't have been good. I mean, you contract out to have something designed that you're assured will differentiate you from your competitor and then after you have already progressed beyond a reasonable point of switching, you find out that AMD has given your competitor basicly the same design that you paid for. If I'm Sony, I'm beyond pissed and looking for legal recourse.

Maybe this is why Nvidia thought they had a chance to get back in the console mix, IDK.

MS was going to have AMD for the GPU since day one. It is Sony the one that has changed from the current gen and they changed from a new Cell arquitecture to the APU AMD. The fact is that some people seem to have inside info and think the Xbox is going to be at least as powerful as the Sony system. Then there is the forum croud, who prefers to believe both machines will be on par or the PS will be more powerful. I don´t care who is right, but this seems to be the trend.

 

[arijoytunir]

if the nxt gen consoles are really going for 4-8 cores of jaguar cpu then will the upcoming games require less ipc per core ?

 

[AlNom]

Less than what?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

if the nxt gen consoles are really going for 4-8 cores of jaguar cpu then will the upcoming games require less ipc per core ?

You don't require an IPC level. Devs will work with whatever processing resources they have available, whether high IPC or low IPC parts. All they care about is total instructions per second and how easy it is to access the CPU's potential.

 

[upnorthsox]

Design is owned by Sony and they can't give it to MS. On top of that, MS had contract with AMD for Durango GPU long time ago.

That's a GPU, not an APU.

 

[Hornet]

Interesting fact: when the Xbox 360 launched, Xenon had a theoretical peak floating point throughput of 115.2 gflops, while a contemporary state-of-the-art desktop CPU, like the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ had a peak of about 19.2 gflops. If the new consoles really have 8 unmodified Jaguar cores running at 1.6 GHz, the peak floating point throughput would be 102.4 gflops, while contemporary 4 cores Haswell processor will peak at about twice that number (204.8 gflops at 3.2 GHz). I guess that one of the following statement must be true:

• the designers of the Xbox 360 and PS3 greatly overstimated the need for high peak floating throughput
• the requirements of game engines changed throughout the generation, hinting at different priorities for the next generation;
• Microsoft and possibly Sony are really expecting game developers to move several tasks from the CPU to GPU
• the budget for R&D was not high enough to get a custom CPU this time around and no CPU with the target specifications was available, so they went with Jaguar cores

The first option is quite possible, since the average efficiency of Xbox 360 code is so low at 0.2 instructions per cycle that the usefulness of such a high peak floating point throughput is quite hard to judge. A wider, out-of-order CPU design could probably achieve a much higher IPC and achieve the same actual performance even with 64-bit vector units. The third option would be the most interesting one, since it implies that we might see either a relatively big APU, which probably doesn't make sense on the PC due to lack of main memory bandwidth, or a really fast interconnect between the CPU and the GPU.

 

[upnorthsox]

MS was going to have AMD for the GPU since day one. It is Sony the one that has changed from the current gen and they changed from a new Cell arquitecture to the APU AMD. The fact is that some people seem to have inside info and think the Xbox is going to be at least as powerful as the Sony system. Then there is the forum croud, who prefers to believe both machines will be on par or the PS will be more powerful. I don´t care who is right, but this seems to be the trend.

Again GPU, not APU. Sony and MS were contracting out different things. Then MS changes (from insider knowledge?) and now has the same basic design as Sony?

Maybe AMD could legally defend that, but as a custom chip designer they would be done. Who would contract with someone who turns around and sells your solution to your competitor?

This is mostly predicated on both ending up with the same basic solution. This may not be the case and what we will end up with are distinctly different designs.

 

[fehu]

• Raw peak flops and different architectures don't mix well

 

[Hornet]

• Raw peak flops and different architectures don't mix well

Hence the question: why did the go with narrow cores and wide vector units last time around, while this time around they are doing the opposite thing?

 

[fehu]

Who would contract with someone who turns around and sells your solution to your competitor?

I don't know if it's a leggend, but ibm used some cell r&d for the xbox cpu

 

[fehu]

Hence the question: why did the go with narrow cores and wide vector units last time around, while this time around they are doing the opposite thing?

You expect that someone in this forum with no insider info can make an educated guess about an unconfirmed rumor?

 

[Helmore]

Hence the question: why did the go with narrow cores and wide vector units last time around, while this time around they are doing the opposite thing?

If the nextBox will indeed use Jaguar cores then wouldn't it be more reasonable to say that they're using a more balanced architecture. They wouldn't be going from a narrow core with wide vector units to a wide core with narrow vector units. They'd be going to an average core with average vector units.

Another thing, to what extent does game code consist of floating point code and how much integer code? I thought that most game engines had more integer code than floating point code, but I've no clue either way to be honest.

@AlStrong: What part of the 20 nm rumor needs to die? I'm not familiar with any rumors regarding 20 nm for the next gen consoles.

 

[upnorthsox]

I don't know if it's a leggend, but ibm used some cell r&d for the xbox cpu

And did IBM end up with a Sony design contract this time? It may not be the main reason they didn't but these things do matter.

Would Apple contract a design with AMD if there was even a hint of a possibilty that AMD would turn around and sell the same thing to Samsung?

AMD needs to be totally scrupulous is these kind of situations or pay a fatal price.

 

[Helmore]

And did IBM end up with a Sony design contract this time? It may not be the main reason they didn't but these things do matter.

Would Apple contract a design with AMD if there was even a hint of a possibilty that AMD would turn around and sell the same thing to Samsung?

AMD needs to be totally scrupulous is these kind of situations or pay a fatal price.

Wouldn't the main reason that Sony isn't going with IBM (if that's the case) be that IBM just doesn't have what Sony needs and it's too expensive for Sony to order a fully custom core? Seems much more plausible to me.

 

[Gipsel]

Again GPU, not APU. Sony and MS were contracting out different things. Then MS changes (from insider knowledge?) and now has the same basic design as Sony?

Maybe AMD could legally defend that, but as a custom chip designer they would be done. Who would contract with someone who turns around and sells your solution to your competitor?

This is mostly predicated on both ending up with the same basic solution. This may not be the case and what we will end up with are distinctly different designs.

Would Apple contract a design with AMD if there was even a hint of a possibilty that AMD would turn around and sell the same thing to Samsung?

AMD needs to be totally scrupulous is these kind of situations or pay a fatal price.

I don't think that's how it works in this case. AMD doesn't do a fully custom design for Sony (or MS) and sells it then to the competitor. Sony (or MS) don't own the design, they license it from AMD (just as you can license ARM designs).
AMD offers some basic building blocks (CPU cores, coherency interconnect, memory controllers, southbridge functionality, GPU cores and so on) which a customer can mix'n match according to his needs. They offer some limited customization.or integration of customer IP on top of that. Sony (or MS) can never obtain exclusive rights to the basic building blocks (it's genuinely AMD's IP), they just obtain a licence for a certain combination of AMD designed components. AMD cannot give some of Sony's IP they may have integrated to MS, of course. But they can still use the same basic building blocks (they are owned by AMD) and design a semi-custom APU according to MS wishes (which may call for different customizations). I am very sure everyone is aware of this when signing such a contract.
There is no reason to be angry for anybody. It only shows that both MS as well as Sony probably judged AMD as offering the best overall solution this time around.

Edit:
Part of the reason is probably that AMD can offer such semi-custom designs a lot cheaper than fully custom ones. The non-exclusiveness of the design components lowers the price tremendeously, just as Helmore mentioned.