I wonder if the PS4 chip was to get Piledriver from the beginning, with Steamroller going slow anyway.
By doing this, AMD also had its crash plan for the PC, which results in the A10 6800K.
This thread ranges from the realistic to the obsurd...
Durango is 8 jaguars + 8970 ghz edition so no.
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
I seriously doubt such a monster chip will be in a console. Rumours say it will be 5+ billion transistors and >400mm^2.
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.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? :smile: Lets say 700mm2?
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 againHow 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?
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.
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
8970 will have between 4 and 5 billion transistors.
Not sure how the rumors are any less monstrous.
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'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.
Durango is 8 jaguars + 8970 ghz edition so no.
Ah yes, I thought it was 32I'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.