Revolution Tech Details Emerge ( Xbox1+ performance, 128 MB RAM )

[Teasy]

I think Revolutions CPU will almost definitely be a 750 derivitive considering what I've heard from other sources outside the IGN article. But of course it won't simply be a Gekko CPU at twice the speed as IGN suggest. It will be a significantly upgraded CPU using the same basic architecture. It could still be a very powerful CPU as well with the right features and clock speed. Especially with its support of out of order processing, which as we know can give large increases in speed over in order cores like the PPE in certain tasks (AI) and generally makes programming easier as well.

 

[Fox5]

I think Revolutions CPU will almost definitely be a 750 derivitive considering what I've heard from other sources outside the IGN article. But of course it won't simply be a Gekko CPU at twice the speed as IGN suggest. It will be a significantly upgraded CPU using the same basic architecture. It could still be a very powerful CPU as well with the right features and clock speed. Especially with its support of out of order processing, which as we know can give large increases in speed over in order cores like the PPE in certain tasks (AI) and generally makes programming easier as well.

What Apple cpu does a 750 compare to? If it's a G3/G4, I seem to recall that those had very minimal OOE because the pipeline was so short.

 

[Greg_Nearfield]

Yes is that I am talking about the PPE is the main core of Cell or Xenon, there is also the PPU which fall in the "vertex array" from what I have read (in B3D), anyway, if true, I am particulary interested I knowing why IBM had showed the Rev CPU to Apple (and why they refused it if it isnt a 750 based or if it is only becaused they are going to Intel anyways and it as too late, or just not good for desktop like eg Cell yet IBM had tried to cell it anyway), because it only make sense if it is a big revision from one of their modern cores (or they would show somethingh from the family, eg 970fx/mp, and not the Rev CPU itself ,or from is family) or it is a new core that is also suitable to desktop (with eg OoO...) and by new core you may let yor imadination run wild because it could or a PPE with OoO, or a (750->970->)1190 or whatever you can think.

Indeed there is the change of very interesting thread about rev spec in the future,IMO.

I dont think they are lying too but just talking about different things, they took the dev kits and assumed (or didnt saw the difference, or wanted publicity to their new site as you say) the final specs from it, after all dev need to start working in something but if tools are close why not give them updated GC kits?It make sense to me.I think if they had posted the all the talk they had we all would think diferent than what most of people are thinking now.

precisely.


I think nintendo talking about they are waiting for final hardware means they are waiting to fabb Broadway on the the 65nm process when its reading.Probably IBM showed Apple a blueprint of a low heat 65nm 970FX or 970MP ( IBM probably thought lower wattage PPC CPU could be used in thier quad macs or maybe a mobile PPC 970MP? IBM probably said:hey look we did it we solved the overheating problems hey PPC 970FX/970MP can be put in a laptop now! Why go with those ineffecient pentium processors...).I have been reading about how hot the PPC CPU are and that was one of the reasons apple decided to go with Intel.(apple probably said:Too little too late.We already have too deep an investment in intel now.).

 

[Tahir2]

No.

 

[pc999]

I think Revolutions CPU will almost definitely be a 750 derivitive considering what I've heard from other sources outside the IGN article. But of course it won't simply be a Gekko CPU at twice the speed as IGN suggest. It will be a significantly upgraded CPU using the same basic architecture. It could still be a very powerful CPU as well with the right features and clock speed. Especially with its support of out of order processing, which as we know can give large increases in speed over in order cores like the PPE in certain tasks (AI) and generally makes programming easier as well.

Is not a 970 better across the board than a 750, how could be cheaper to upgrade a Gekko to match a modern CPU?

On the other and if they keep the same cache a dual core at 1Ghz more a VMX (normal/simple ones does have 4M transistores Right?so upgraded till 8M or 2xVMX per core) units per core may be better in some areas and stil match the same 58M transistores from the 970 and still very cool, but would that be as easy or easier to devolop as they say than (or better in performance in overall terms) a costum 970 (or any modern CPU)? To me with dont make any sense to they use a 750 derivative (Gekko itself never impressed me anyway) plus the OoO is said to not very good also they do need to make a lot of work that is alrady made in the modern chips.

Anyway if you can tell why is your source reliable or which reason do you have to belive in that it may be convice me more in that way, till now I still dont really see any reason to that.

 

[Rodéric]

precisely.


I think nintendo talking about they are waiting for final hardware means they are waiting to fabb Broadway on the the 65nm process when its reading.Probably IBM showed Apple a blueprint of a low heat 65nm 970FX or 970MP ( IBM probably thought lower wattage PPC CPU could be used in thier quad macs or maybe a mobile PPC 970MP? IBM probably said:hey look we did it we solved the overheating problems hey PPC 970FX/970MP can be put in a laptop now! Why go with those ineffecient pentium processors...).I have been reading about how hot the PPC CPU are and that was one of the reasons apple decided to go with Intel.(apple probably said:Too little too late.We already have too deep an investment in intel now.).

Sorry, but that's not really relevant to the discussion, power consumption on a computer due to power saving features can't be applied to a console.
A computer CPU spend most of its time idle, and so can be slown down...
A console runs @100% almost all the time (since you're playing), so power saving tech don't help.

 

[Teasy]

Fox5

What Apple cpu does a 750 compare to? If it's a G3/G4, I seem to recall that those had very minimal OOE because the pipeline was so short.

I believe the 750 architecture was used in Apples G3 and G4's yes. The OOE support being minimal is relative I suppose, its not minimal compared to PPE's OOE support

pc999

Is not a 970 better across the board than a 750, how could be cheaper to upgrade a Gekko to match a modern CPU?

I'm no CPU expert so I really don't know exactly how a 970 would compare to the best 750 based CPU, sorry. I'd like to know myself actually

Anyway if you can tell why is your source reliable or which reason do you have to belive in that it may be convice me more in that way, till now I still dont really see any reason to that.

Its come from a couple of sources, I can't vouch for either of them personally, but it just seems to me that its increasingly likely. So its nothing concrete, but its what I believe at the moment. One of the sources was quite specific (1.7Ghz dual core 750 derivative with 1MB cache and VMX units). Unfortunately that is the source I'm least sure of, the other one I trust more says he doesn't have details on clock speed or number of cores yet. He only knows that its a 750 derivative with VMX and extraordinary thermal characteristics.

 

[pc999]

Its come from a couple of sources, I can't vouch for either of them personally, but it just seems to me that its increasingly likely. So its nothing concrete, but its what I believe at the moment. One of the sources was quite specific (1.7Ghz dual core 750 derivative with 1MB cache and VMX units). Unfortunately that is the source I'm least sure of, the other one I trust more says he doesn't have details on clock speed or number of cores yet. He only knows that its a 750 derivative with VMX and extraordinary thermal characteristics.

Thanks for that :smile:, althought be caurefull with your first source as Fafalada said (a lot of pages ago) that no 750 could reach (or go higher? need to see better which one is) than 1Ghz as it is not even designed to that (dont know if is possible to moddifie the CPU in such a extreme way but if it is then it goes back to my question), the other one is more consistent, thanks for sharing the info, this starts to intrigue me .

 

[fearsomepirate]

What throughput numbers are you referring to?

Either Matt's article on IGN or Gamesindustry.biz reported that Nintendo's been telling devs to work with double the throughput of the Cube. When you think about it, it makes sense. Cube already had the throughput to throw plenty of crap on a 640x480 screen. If your target is SD, you really don't more than about double the polygons, textures, and fillrate of a Gamecube (well, depending on how complex your shaders are going to be). Putting a bunch of thoughts together, I think DX9-like architecture with enough shaders and clockspeed to push about twice as many polygons and textures through as Gamecube could would make for some pretty decent graphics at 480p. The one thing I've got questions about is FSAA...I think the thing absolutely needs the hardware muscle to do 4x, but doubling the fillrate wouldn't be enough and still have enough left over for shader effects, would it?

Fox5: 750 is a G3. And you're right, the OOE was pretty primitive.

 

[Greg_Nearfield]

Either Matt's article on IGN or Gamesindustry.biz reported that Nintendo's been telling devs to work with double the throughput of the Cube. When you think about it, it makes sense. Cube already had the throughput to throw plenty of crap on a 640x480 screen. If your target is SD, you really don't more than about double the polygons, textures, and fillrate of a Gamecube (well, depending on how complex your shaders are going to be). Putting a bunch of thoughts together, I think DX9-like architecture with enough shaders and clockspeed to push about twice as many polygons and textures through as Gamecube could would make for some pretty decent graphics at 480p. The one thing I've got questions about is FSAA...I think the thing absolutely needs the hardware muscle to do 4x, but doubling the fillrate wouldn't be enough and still have enough left over for shader effects, would it?

Fox5: 750 is a G3. And you're right, the OOE was pretty primitive.

No fearsome what do you(If you were Iwata) do when your hardware is not finished(This is hinting at 65nm implementation in Revolution I swear)and the only thing thats remotely similar to it (archetecture wise) is the GC.You don't have REV dev kits out yet(because the hardware is not finished) and you don't want to let developers know the specs because they will spill the beans to your competitors.(that would be a disaster)what do you do?

 

[pc999]

Cube already had the throughput to throw plenty of crap on a 640x480 screen. If your target is SD, you really don't more than about double the polygons, textures, and fillrate of a Gamecube (well, depending on how complex your shaders are going to be). Putting a bunch of thoughts together, I think DX9-like architecture with enough shaders and clockspeed to push about twice as many polygons and textures through as Gamecube could would make for some pretty decent graphics at 480p. The one thing I've got questions about is FSAA...I think the thing absolutely needs the hardware muscle to do 4x, but doubling the fillrate wouldn't be enough and still have enough left over for shader effects, would it?

Are you sure, because while one polygon per pixel is 648x480x60(FPS)=18.432.000p/sec (GC does 10M-12M in game) doenst that depend on the number of visible poligons (like the back of the carachters, cars, AI carachters behind boxs etc...) that should be needed eg for physics (at least that as one of the concerns of Carnnack) so I dont know if the poligons will scale so liniar as that just because with is 480p.

BTW read again Greg_Nearfield I think you did not catch what fearsomepirate is trying to say.

 

[Teasy]

Either Matt's article on IGN or Gamesindustry.biz reported that Nintendo's been telling devs to work with double the throughput of the Cube.

What does throughput mean in this case though? Like everything in Matt's article its so vague and ambigious it could mean almost anything so I wouldn't put to much stock in it.

Putting a bunch of thoughts together, I think DX9-like architecture with enough shaders and clockspeed to push about twice as many polygons and textures through as Gamecube could would make for some pretty decent graphics at 480p.

Fillrate I more or less agree with but definitely not polygons. Any DX9 chip is going to have far more polygon power then twice that of Flipper.

 

[see colon]

Fillrate I more or less agree with but definitely not polygons. Any DX9 chip is going to have far more polygon power then twice that of Flipper.

not to mention programability.

 

[Teasy]

althought be caurefull with your first source as Fafalada said (a lot of pages ago) that no 750 could reach (or go higher? need to see better which one is) than 1Ghz as it is not even designed to that (dont know if is possible to moddifie the CPU in such a extreme way but if it is then it goes back to my question)

The 750VX already did that (750 CPU with VMX and extra pipeline stages). While it was never mass produced I very much doubt that IBM were making the CPU up.

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Agree

Either Matt's article on IGN or Gamesindustry.biz reported that Nintendo's been telling devs to work with double the throughput of the Cube. When you think about it, it makes sense. Cube already had the throughput to throw plenty of crap on a 640x480 screen. If your target is SD, you really don't more than about double the polygons, textures, and fillrate of a Gamecube (well, depending on how complex your shaders are going to be). Putting a bunch of thoughts together, I think DX9-like architecture with enough shaders and clockspeed to push about twice as many polygons and textures through as Gamecube could would make for some pretty decent graphics at 480p. The one thing I've got questions about is FSAA...I think the thing absolutely needs the hardware muscle to do 4x, but doubling the fillrate wouldn't be enough and still have enough left over for shader effects, would it?

Fox5: 750 is a G3. And you're right, the OOE was pretty primitive.

I feel you are correct my that at 480P not much extra polygons are needed for look of smoothness because of pixels/polygon but also what about other vertex calculations? I forgot name but Xbox360 game engine shown with ugly characters of funny colors and with antennas (some may know what I speak of) is (IIRC) only 150,000 polygons/frame, same as many current gen games, but has 5 geometry pass! But I feel that such use is also waste of capability so maybe you are right. Maybe 2x is enough for next-gen look.

Also may be very high pixel shader capability can make biggest difference.

 

[Ty]

Its come from a couple of sources, I can't vouch for either of them personally, but it just seems to me that its increasingly likely. So its nothing concrete, but its what I believe at the moment. One of the sources was quite specific (1.7Ghz dual core 750 derivative with 1MB cache and VMX units). Unfortunately that is the source I'm least sure of, the other one I trust more says he doesn't have details on clock speed or number of cores yet. He only knows that its a 750 derivative with VMX and extraordinary thermal characteristics.

Your "sources" are beginning to sound like jvd's.

Do they work in the industry at all?

 

[pc999]

Just saw this, take as you want

http://nintendo-revolution.blogspot.com/

What do you think?
BTW remember that XB used also used a X1800 demo.
Better someone save this in the case of they do not last much.

 

[mckmas8808]

Save it for what? Do you think the picture will unhost itself? I think that demo is unreal. More Unreal than the Unreal engine itself.

 

[Tahir2]

The slides are 100% fake.

 

[mckmas8808]

The slides are 100% fake.

Why do you say that?