Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

This thread ranges from the realistic to the obsurd...

A 8800/8900 series GPU will be an expensive part and unless Sony and Microsoft are willing to take a big loss or charge a small fourtune for a launch machine then such a GPU will be nothing more then a dream.

 

I think that if Sony are going off the shelf and are going down the APU + GPU route then using Richland makes sense. Final dev kits in the Summer would tie in pretty well with Richlands rumoured release date.

 

As it should be! We have everything here, from 3mm2 CPU cores to speculations of 500-600mm2 APUs.

 

This guy

 

My best case specs for the PS4, if I follow the A10+GPU rumor:

APU 4x Piledriver, 480 Sea Islands cores (wild guess 250mm2, 100W)
GPU 1536 Sea Islands cores (rumored 270mm2, 130W)
Stacked memory on interposer with GPU

My worst case, if APU-only rumor:

APU 4x Jaguar cores + 768 Sea Islands cores (guessing around 200mm2, 80W)
No stacked memory nor gddr5, since they went "nobody-cares-about-the-graphics" and cheap DDR3 instead. Performance will suck.
Also clocked low, but hey, why not since nobody cares.

Hopefully it's going to be something in-between.

 

130W for Radeon 8850 [wiki numbers] includes 1 gigs of highly clocked GDDR5 and other components that are placed on standard GPU board. Console version of that chip would use less power.

What are the chances of slamming every central component of console (APU, dedicated GPU and ram stacks) on one bigass interposer that has no logic inside of it? Lets say 700mm2?

 

How expensive is stacked memory? Is it going to be the next generation's 'Blu Ray' in that it starts ridiculously expensive and becomes reasonable within a couple of years?

 

8970 will have between 4 and 5 billion transistors.

Not sure how the rumors are any less monstrous.

 

I think the problem lies in testing the components before putting them on the interposer, any failures would require the whole thing to be thrown away, APU, GPU, interposer and memory... the whole console basically. There's also heat, it's very easy to cool two separate 100W chips silently, but one 200W is exponentially more difficult, so having at least a few inches between the two hot chips (like the 360 and PS3 motherboards) is much easier, and even then, the initial 360 was too noisy for a living room, and the PS3 was huge and heavy. I can't imagine a console with a single 250W APU, it would be impossibly hard to keep silent in such a small space.

No idea, I can only guess. It's using the same process and fabs as normal memory, and the die area is used very efficiently, so with volume I assume it should level with offer and demand. There's no reason for a lack of supply as it's the same fabs as mainstream ram, and all manufacturers are going to compete for these contracts. A price fixing scheme is still possible, but they all got a small slap on the wrist before, I'm sure they won't do it again

I'm very curious about the intermediate solution GDDR5M. It's supposed to be a low cost, lower speed version of GDDR5, 4Gbps and 8x/16x wide. That would allow 8GB or even 16GB on a 256bit bus. But it's for Q3 2013, so it's kind of too late.

Another idea is to use a cheap interposer as a "fan out" to put 512bit GDDR5 on a GPU that would be too small physically for that width.

 

Why you guys think we can't get 8900 class GPU? just cause it's expensive at retail? AMD is doing shit right now as a company. Sony and MS probably went with them cause they got great deals. Sure they probably would still lose money but I doubt that much. I'm more worried about fitting that kind of power in the constraints of a console. That's probably the biggest reason it won't happen.

As long as they can customize it enough where we're getting our money's worth...I like the recent rendering of the ps4 from DICE. Hope they make a break apart motion DS3 as the standard. Would be epic.

 

I don't think the rendering was done by DICE.

 

The reason most don't expect a top end gpu is power consumption. The 7970 is more than 200W, so unless you expect the 89xx to focus on reduced power consumption it's not going to fit in a < 300W box. My expectation is something under 150W for the GPU (maybe as high as 225 for an apu). Perhaps they are building a 400W behemoth, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

A lower clocked high end part with redundancy(disabled units to increase yields) might fit in that power profile.

 

I've always felt APU+GPU was unlikely but it could make sense in a way, if that GPU only has interposer memory. Let's say 1GB, not a huge lot in absolute terms but very generous for the tech.
The APU would hopefully have 8GB ddr3, on 128bit and up to ddr 2133 speed. Its integrated GPU would be quite toned down though, with disabled units or much less units physically present or both.

It serves two purposes : displaying the menus and web browsing, media playing etc. while the big GPU is totally shut down, and as a coprocessor that may be used in games (or be completely ignored by the dev team if so they wish!).
I don't see it being used for game graphics at all (except maybe to display a picture-in-picture thing)

A full A10 is a bit ruinous and hungry so I'd estimate the integrated GPU has 256SP, 192 of them enabled. When not gaming, it's underclocked so the whole console uses on the order of 40 watts.

 

Isn't 200W for the whole system the allowed maximum? It's too bad cause the industry is heading into more power efficient architecture but the consoles will be out in less then a year so I don't expect cutting edge hardware. Even so, if MS and SOny's goal is to squeeze as much as they can then they should easily achieve 3+TF performance, have a good amount of ram and bandwidth and call it a day. It all depends what their top priorities are, how fast AMD moves with their new designs and how good MS and Sony are at customizing the hardware to suit there needs and more importantly, the developer's needs.

 

I assume such a chip would have a TDP approaching 200W alone. It would be amazing but I think it just too unrealistic.

Xenos was probably around ~70W TDP @90nm at a guess to put thing's in perspective.

How big would Durango have to be to house the cooling system for a 200W GPU plus everything else?

 

The GCN cores in the APU would be super useful for GPGPU stuff, physics, AI, anything requiring brute force FP, ray casting, Kinect/Move decoding, encrypt/decrypt, anything that isn't for the graphics, it's much better to have it close to the CPU, because it needs to do a lot of back and forth with the main code, as opposed to Graphics stuff that is sent off the the GPU to be rendered and forgotten.

 

I'm suggesting you do the physics and some brute force stuff on 192 or 256SP or whatever lowish number makes sense. Maybe your 480 number isn't so far off (beside not being divisble by 64), we have the 384SP Mars at 76 sq. mm.
Some of the stuff you describe is better done on the crypto acceleration already included in the Piledriver or on a DSP.

 

Sadly i don't think i can know anything about Durango/PS4 details anymore from #1 AMD china,because i translated what he said and in here and neogaf(=popular game forum,yeah TGFC members notice us),he need to delete everything what he said(he already did it).

I hope he don't get fired.


About Durango and PS4,only #2 AMD guy said both are powerful and Durango will be little better,personally i like this case(similar power~one just little better than other one),because that means both will have good specs and come with good next-gen graphics.

 

Durango is 8 Excavators + 9970 1.5Ghz edition so no.

 

Ah yes, I thought it was 32
The way I was thinking about it is that there will never be enough gpu cores, it's always useful, the most usable resource after memory. So why not fill up the APU until the TDP allowed is reached, or the target die area is reached? I don't know what that would be. It could also be used for post-processing stuff too.