Sony's Next Generation Portable unveiling - PSP2 in disguise
- Thread starter Farid
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According to some slides that were posted, the NGP will have 3 of its 4 CPU cores physically available for applications.
I presume that 4th core is reserved for OS and Anti Piracy measures.. Isn't that a bit much? Taking away 25% of its horsepower?
Edit: Whoops, this is old news here.
I presume that 4th core is reserved for OS and Anti Piracy measures.. Isn't that a bit much? Taking away 25% of its horsepower?
Edit: Whoops, this is old news here.
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That's hard to quantify. What measurable difference would that fourth core make, such that Joe Public could see a 3 core NGP game sided by side with a 4-core game and point out what's better? If it's the difference between 6 cars and 8 cars in GT, perhaps they'd notice, but if it's the difference between 12 and 16, it'd only be the documented numbers that'd idenitify the loss.
If the whole platform gets excellent background services (big if at the moment!), that'll help improve the NGP experience overall in a more obvious package. eg. The difference between realtime cross-app voice chat, or having a discrete application that you can't use in parallel with a game. And for security, the benefits to locking out pirates would be worth a lot more to Sony than the lost sales of the most geeky techfiends who refuse to buy because one of the cores isn't being used for their games!
From the few new screenshots I've seen of LiveArea and what they're developing for it, maybe not quite such a big if. Looks pretty serious!
I guess technically, if your display hardware is setup right, you don't even need a framebuffer, just enough of a scanline buffer to cover a single row of tiles. The output would have to be close to synchronized to the LCD refresh, though. This is how DS does it (except it's tiles are scanlines).
If Sony is tightly coupling the memory and display controller with the SGX this could be pretty doable, although you'd still need the ability to not output like this for when you do want a framebuffer or render to texture.
That was meant to be a feature of CLX in Dreamcast but I don't think it was ever used. (FWIW you need "frame" buffering for a couple of rows of tiles). Besides, I don't think the memory savings justify the extra complexity on the game of having to guarantee each row was rendered in sufficient time.
Oh, BTW, the Tomb Raider port we did featured a single buffered mode mainly because my graphics card at the time only had enough memory for 1 frame of 1024x768 so I made sure I could play the game at full res
Right, I meant two rows. I guess the more additional buffering you add on top of that the more slack you get - on DS you can fall 48 scanlines behind, but then you do start seeing entire lines dropped. With all of the other hard limits on the platform it'd be extremely hard to reach it there, not so much like with a traditional render.
With no double buffering you're limited to pumping out at LCD refresh rate or you get killed, which is probably also not preferable in most situations. Which I guess is what you meant by saying it's useful only in the right scenarios.
Oh, BTW, the Tomb Raider port we did featured a single buffered mode mainly because my graphics card at the time only had enough memory for 1 frame of 1024x768 so I made sure I could play the game at full res
Heh, neat.. was that with a Kyro? Or did it amount to actually watching the scene get drawn? That'd probably break my eyes, but I presume you had this to otherwise test the resolution.
Devs have enough of a hard time hitting double and even triple-buffer timings! For the cost of a few MBs of screen buffer, I definitely agree with you.
Oh gosh, this was back in the PCX1 / PCX2 days, and you don't see the scene being drawn because it only wrote complete tiles, across the PCI bus, into the 2D card's framebuffer. (Hmmm I think I might have had a 2MB Matrox card at the time)
No, the worst you got was a discontinuity at a tile boundary if the refresh was reading as a tile got updated. Unless you were standing on the spot spinning around (so that each frame looked very different) it wasn't very noticeable. A bit like turning off vsync when running double buffered.
Ah okay, so it was indeed a PVR card (sorry, I didn't know others aside from Kyro II were commercially available). It's good that you were able to see the single framebuffer approach in action as a proof of concept.
I think it's a)
they are using eDRAM with a PS2 like memory set up it's been 11 years sense the PS2 came out with 4MB of eDRAM that's enough time for the tech to be at a price & level where getting 128MB of eDRAM now for a handheld would be like getting 4MB of eDRAM 11 years ago for a console
PS2 32MB ram with 4MB eDRAM VRam
NGP 512MB or 1GB ram with 128MB eDRAM VRam
32MB X 32 = 1024MB ram & 4MB X 32 = 128MB eDRAM VRam
just my guess at how things are being done
plus that would give us hope for easy PS2 EMU on the NGP
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Time differential means nothing here. They are different architectures and NGP's innards bare no relation to PS2's. I don't think there's any precedent for pairing SGX with eDRAM. TBDR is orthogonal to high BW use anyway, so eDRAM doesn't make that much sense. Furthermore, your hopes of 128 MBs eDRAM are very wishful thinking. XB360 managed 10 MBs, which wasn't enough to fit a whole frame but due to cost considerations was what they were limited to. So 6 years after PS2, the increase was from 4 MBs to 10 MBs. Another 5 years, you think they can get a 10x increase in eDRAM on chip?! As a head's up, IBM have just got 32 MBs eDRAM into their POWER7 server processors using a new technology. At about 10 mbit/mm^2 @ 45nm, 128 MBs eDRAM would take up about 100mm^2. the NGP GPU is probably something like 32 mm^2 @ 65nm if I'm reading these specs right (8mm^2 per core) - someone correct me if wrong. But basically as you can see, lots of eDRAM would be huge, expensive, and isn't going to happen.
Not a chance! The eDRAM bandwidth of PS2 is the least of your worries. The GPU would be impossible to emulate in real time as its such an alternative architecture. NGP has no more chance of software emulation of PS2 as PS3 had - None.plus that would give us hope for easy PS2 EMU on the NGP
thanks for the info so maybe not eDRAM but I'm guessing that the 128MB of Vram is going to be some kind of fast ram.
& I still think that NGP will have a better chance at PS2 emulation than the PS3 because SONY know what's needed to make PS2 emulation work & maybe designed it to work better.
but then again they can just use the code that they are using for the HD re releases to just sell the games on PSN
I think Sony already knew whats needed for PS2 emulation before finishing up the PS3. Thats why extra chips where used.
Unless you imply that they will seriously revamp the GPU in NGP while for some reasons they dint with PS3 the very same issues arise (both are "fat state" architectures and wont respond well to PS2-like workloads.)
Improbable, in the same way we expected RSX to have special source for emulation, and it turned out to be a pretty stock part. What's required for emulation is basically the Reality Synthesizer in there. I don't see how any other GPU could emulate it unless its an extremely customised part, which is adding considerable cost and complexity.
Having said that, the GS was titchy. If the handheld went with an eDRAM design, 4MBs like PS2, they could possibly fit the GS logic in there and then just need EE emulation. Which again wouldn't be easy!
At this point I rate hardware BC's chances as highly unlikely, and any PS2 games for the paltform will be rewrites. Although having the full PS2 library available could be lucrative for Sony.
what about the fact that NGP will have quad-core cpu , quad-core gpu & dedicated media chips
wouldn't that make it easier to split the PS2 emulation up into small jobs for each core ?
& what about the PSP emulation? isn't that being done without using PSP parts?
it's 11 years later PS2 can be emulated by Sony without using the same PS2 parts this is not some guys in their basements trying to emulate PS2 on different types of PC setups with different hardware & OS it's Sony making new hardware knowing what's needed to get the job done & knowing what held it back on the PS3
everything about the NGP isn't known yet so I wouldn't be so quick to say it's not going to happen just because it's not working on the PS3. I seen a PSP attempt to emulate a dreamcast so I have a hard time believing that Sony can't emulate PS2 on new hardware that they are releasing 11 years after the PS2 they can pretty much have PS2 as SoC now.
plus it seems like they have more to gain from having PS2 games on PSN for NGP than they did having people play their old PS2 games on the PS3.
wouldn't that make it easier to split the PS2 emulation up into small jobs for each core ?
& what about the PSP emulation? isn't that being done without using PSP parts?
it's 11 years later PS2 can be emulated by Sony without using the same PS2 parts this is not some guys in their basements trying to emulate PS2 on different types of PC setups with different hardware & OS it's Sony making new hardware knowing what's needed to get the job done & knowing what held it back on the PS3
everything about the NGP isn't known yet so I wouldn't be so quick to say it's not going to happen just because it's not working on the PS3. I seen a PSP attempt to emulate a dreamcast so I have a hard time believing that Sony can't emulate PS2 on new hardware that they are releasing 11 years after the PS2 they can pretty much have PS2 as SoC now.
plus it seems like they have more to gain from having PS2 games on PSN for NGP than they did having people play their old PS2 games on the PS3.
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