Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

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The developers may need to implement a solid streaming mechanism if they really need that much assets. The new BD drive, HDD and memory bandwidth are faster right ? ... because they have more to load and fill now, whether it's 4K video or full 1080p 3D.

I don't think people are jumping to any better/worst judgment yet. There are still a lot of unknown.

At the end of the day, the most exciting thing is whether it's raytracing or audio or physics or whatever, it should be doable once developers wrap their head around these subsystems.
 
Technical problems with textures and i supposse that using voxels would carry a lot of new ones.I dont know if it is really ditched?

intresting, man i seriously think ms will have a vte that does raytracking lol :D

would 68gb/s of bandwith be enough for raytracing? or will that not matter because of teh vte?
 
I guess this is more for the versus thread but, everybody is completely ignoring that the Durango has significantly more RAM in their rush to proclaim Orbis king.

I mean I see two main differing stats (assuming MS built in enough BW that Durango wont be crippled by lack of, and I'm betting they did).

1.8 TF vs 1.2TF, 50% difference
5GB vs 3.5 GB game usable RAM, 43% difference

But everybody seems to be ignoring the bottom one.

But how is having 43% more RAM going to help when you can only access 1-2 GB per frame?

And have 50% less FLOPs than the competition, and contrary to what we previously thought, no more CPU resources either (or even less, given MS is reserving 2 cores for the OS and Orbis has a compute unit helping out)

I think it's obvious that MS is going for a completely different strategy compared to 360; Kinect and tight integration with the rest of Windows ecosystem is it's focus, not power. They seem to be going for something they can profit or break even on at launch, no subsidies on hardware this gen.

It's a pity, since (given Sony's situation and their deep pockets) they could have taken a hit on the hardware and gone for a more powerful box to outdo the PS4, then they'd be positioned to capture both the casual and core markets, since as things are (and from reading GAF) it seems the core are leaning towards PS4, which is looking more like the traditional, powerful console.

However, I do think MS' business sense is sound (given Wii) despite how much us core gamers may not like it.
 
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I guess this is more for the versus thread but, everybody is completely ignoring that the Durango has significantly more RAM in their rush to proclaim Orbis king.

I mean I see two main differing stats (assuming MS built in enough BW that Durango wont be crippled by lack of, and I'm betting they did).

1.8 TF vs 1.2TF, 50% difference
5GB vs 3.5 GB game usable RAM, 43% difference

But everybody seems to be ignoring the bottom one.

Cause in the Grand scheme of things usable RAM is also detimined by bandwidth aka you could have a 1TB of ram but if only 1GB is usable per frame it's nothing more then a giant space for cache in which the transfer rates and seek times are much faster then a HDD. Bandwidth determins the amount of usable RAM at any given time within reason. aka 1TB/s of bandwidth for 10MB of ram will give you more usable RAM then any of these configs but can you generate enough but can you get the data to the RAM fast enough to use anywhere near that in unique data?
 
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Cause in the Grand scheme of things usable RAM is also detimined by bandwidth aka you could have a 1TB of ram but if only 1GB is usable per frame it's nothing more then a giant space for cache in which the transfer rates and seek times are much faster then a HDD. Bandwidth determins the amount of usable RAM at any given time within reason. aka 1TB/s of bandwidth for 10MB of ram will give you more usable RAM then any of these configs but can you generate enough but can you get the data to the RAM fast enough to use anywhere near that in unique data?

totally agree ...

again this is all speculation, and im only going off the several patents ive read from MS-AMD-IBM ...

Every one of them that discusses BTE/VTE and raytracing.. all require
1. coherent memory cache
2. low-latency high-bandwidth communications network..

I know these are very general goals but some of the rumors ive heard about the design of the 3 SOCs as well as things like blitters, large caches, and 3d vertically stacking ic for the oban, syncs well with the requirements..

I know all rumors... but interesting none the less
 
totally agree ...

again this is all speculation, and im only going off the several patents ive read from MS-AMD-IBM ...

Every one of them that discusses BTE/VTE and raytracing.. all require
1. coherent memory cache
2. low-latency high-bandwidth communications network..

I know these are very general goals but some of the rumors ive heard about the design of the 3 SOCs as well as things like blitters, large caches, and 3d vertically stacking ic for the oban, syncs well with the requirements..

I know all rumors... but interesting none the less

You keep saying 3 SOCs, but SOC means System On a Chip. There's no sense in having 3 systems-on-chips in one system, right?
 
You keep saying 3 SOCs, but SOC means System On a Chip. There's no sense in having 3 systems-on-chips in one system, right?


This is my current interpretation of the rumors .... RUMORS !!!

2 types of socs

a. Mars SoC - used primarily for low power work maybe even allways connected. Imagine the Xbox switched off BUT actually its always on but in very low power mode. It is this SoC that is on and wakes up performing background work. Has audio dsp apparently in it ..

b. Venus SoC - Powerhouse SoC that runs the games and intensive apps. Has the BTE/VTE as well as blitters , Oban and dsp's etc.

XBOX Will have 1xMars + 2xVenus
XBOX Surface may have 1xMars + 1xVenus
XBOX Lite may have 1xMars + 1xVenus

OEM1 Set-top boxes may have 1xMars (up to there business goals)
OEM2 Set-top box may have 1xMars 1xVenus (up to there business goals)

OEM TV may have 1xMars (depending on what it wants to achieve)
OEM2 TV may have 1xMars + 1xVenus (depending on business goals) etc


etc. The XBOX chip and silicon design is meant to move beyond just console.. Its meant to also fill OEM/Embedded needs as well.. Possibly even drive Phones/Tablets etc..

Anyway total rumor ...
 
You keep saying 3 SOCs, but SOC means System On a Chip. There's no sense in having 3 systems-on-chips in one system, right?

oh and to answer your question .. they are SoC's , they're full systems I guess.. both mars and venus would have cpu + gpu + other specialized components on them..

RUMOR...
 
I was taking it for granted that's not the case because it was bolded. If they took the time to modify that, would they add AVX2, which AMD has yet to announce a compliant core for.

oh and because the XBOX next may have 3 SoCs (1 x mars , 2 x venus) ... That's why some people are rumouring the next xbox to be 3 computers in 1 (3 SoCs)..

Rumor....
 
Has somebody speak with Bkillian of late? I feel weird looking at his attitude throughout the years that it would get out of his way and confirm anything (even in an elusive manner) as in the quote in that Eurogamer article (I hope they ask for his agreement...), I feel like he could be trolling the web and laughting at the bar with his (previous) workmates... :LOL:

EDIT 1 WRT to BKillian statement migh t be my English but the wording definitely excites my sarcasm detector.

EDIT 2 Wrt to SPUs
I think it is highly unlikely, highly like 0.x%
Simply what would be the point to go with AMD if what they want is a massive revision of the cell broadband engine? Sticking SPUs in Jaguar doesn't seem trivial at all to me, like "not at all" :LOL:. The massive broadway revision cost Nintendo 1 billion $, for that price Sony could have get something quiet decent (especially if IBM had already lost MSFT as a client).
At this point better stick with IBM and Nvidia an go for easy BC. Actually I would have like to see how that turns.
Say a custom RSX tweaked to fill mostly the G-buffer, remove the bulk of the head ache (covering texture latencies and what not) with the bulk of the graphic work done by a bunch of widen SPUs (widen like 8 wide).

EDIT 3 wrt to late PS3, I think they are right because one Sony exec stated (prehentive strike to reassure investors when the information is out?) that they had a lot of "design wins" in their SoC as far as production cost are concerned (or something among that line). They may have "design wins" but what I see is a pretty massive core on a expansive lithography, even if yields are good now they won't be as good as with lesser chips and those wafer are expansive..
Then there are the 4GB of GDDR5 which may amount to a bunch of money.
Sounds expansive to me with no easy price reduction as far as memory and the SoC it-self. I also wonder about public reception (but also investors) about a quiet possible complete lack of BC which is pretty much unprecedented in the console realm, even MSFT could run a few xbox titles on the 360.

Let pray for the best, I don't trust SOny execs for a dime and that still sound like a cocky/we are the best design, disregarding costs (and so possibly affordability at launch) and their overall financial situation. I think they (execs) have no clue as pointed out by a (fired) member of their marketing team on twitter and as they have no clue about where to go or a strong concept so they go for a cock contest hoping that it works, if it works they can claim to be genius if it goes slightly bad Sony is broke... Looking at the PSV it makes me let say anxious...
 
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I think in jaguar each core has its fpu attached, not like in bobcat.

Bobcat was the same, just with 64-bit SIMDs instead of the 128-bit in Jaguar. Only Bulldozer based CPU/APU's from amd have the shared FPU. So this is nothing unique to consoles. Bkillian did seem to hint a while back that MS may customise the Jaguar used in the next xbox to have one 256-bit FPU in each core, however.
 
I'm glad these APU + GPU rumours have (hopefully) been put to rest all together. I guess the less tech savvy didn't understand that they had to just use what was available in the early dev kits, and that the only reason we don't see larger APU's on PC is that the current supporting socket, memory system and demand just aren't there yet. As the advantages of HSA become apparent and stacked memory a reality, I think we will see APU's similar to those that will feature in these next consoles on PC. It will still be a while before discreet GPU's become less necessary, but that is the future I see PC moving towards.

I don't know enough about these things, but I would hope that having PC games designed around APU's could eliminate this draw call bottleneck? Anyhow, it's nice to see people accepting that Sony don't need to use a completely off the shelf APU + GPU as the only possible option any more. The whole "A10 + 7660" thing getting spouted all over the web was getting annoying. The MS followers seemed to come to terms with this quite a while ago.
 
So both consoles will feature an AMD CPU ?
do we know the GPU for the Xbox ?

All we have heard is 12CU's at around 800MHz. It could be based on a stripped down pitcairn(or sucessor) or a beefed up Cape Verde (or successor). Even though the CU's are a static, starting from a larger chip and removing CU's would give the better outcome due to more ROPs, cache, etc.
 
All we have heard is 12CU's at around 800MHz. It could be based on a stripped down pitcairn(or sucessor) or a beefed up Cape Verde (or successor). Even though the CU's are a static, starting from a larger chip and removing CU's would give the better outcome due to more ROPs, cache, etc.
So it will be probably less powerful than PS4's GPU then.
What about the CPU ? AMD's X86 or IBM's PowerPC ?
 
AlStrong, are you still helping out in Eurogamer ? (I thought you did). If so, how did Leadbetter confirm the additional GPU-like compute unit in Orbis.

Back in September 2012, the alpha kit had hardware video, audio and zlib units. Eurogamer's article focuses only on CPU and GPU. Has Sony replaced these h/w units with the new compute unit, or is it on top of these media and compression units ? It would seem excessive. ^_^

Did he really see the extra compute units ? Or is it via second hand sources ?
 
So it will be probably less powerful than PS4's GPU then.
What about the CPU ? AMD's X86 or IBM's PowerPC ?

CPU's are looking to be the exact same AMD 8 core Jaguar. Unless either one (or both) of them modify it in some significant way, there is certainly room for that given the small die size.
 
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