Sony's Next Generation Portable unveiling - PSP2 in disguise

[onQ]

That's a truly pointless PR soundbite. The GPU handles threads and cores itself, transparently to the developer. Maybe he's getting confused with multithreading their engine for the 4 core CPU?

Since a lot of the functionality in the Vision Game Engine is fully multi-threaded, our game engine tech benefits nicely from the symmetrical multi-core architecture of NGP. Animations, mesh deformation, visibility determination, physics, streaming, and other subsystems are parallelized with the rendering and the game code. Together with a variety of GPU- and CPU-related optimizations we implemented for NGP, this allows us to run many scenes built for PS3 directly on NGP with few or no modifications – and at nice frame rates.

when you read it all together it seem like he is talking about both.


like because it's muti-core CPU & GPU they was able to parallel the graphics with the game code which makes the CPU & GPU good enough to run scenes right from the PS3.



actually this is the same thing I was asking about when I was talking about the PS2 emulation , I ask has there been any other platform made with a Quad-core CPU & GPU because to me it seems like they can parallel them together like how the Cells SPU's helped with the GPU in the PS3.

CPU helping the GPU with Graphics & the GPU helping the CPU with Computing

because NGP has a CPU that's good at Graphical task & a GPU that's good at Computing why not let them work together?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

when you read it all together it seem like he is talking about both.

You're right. Completely my fault, I read 'NGP' and took that to mean just the GPU. Dunno why - plain stupid on my part!

 

[Aeoniss]

Whoa, he said that 4xMSAA on the NGP was "pretty cheap" ??

 

[Exophase]

Whoa, he said that 4xMSAA on the NGP was "pretty cheap" ??

This is consistent with IMG's claims regarding MSAA. From the gamesindustry.biz interview:

"IMG: As mentioned before anti-aliasing (AA) was one of the key focus areas for Series5XT and the impact on performance is as low as possible without sacrificing image quality. We fully expect that AA will be enabled for the majority of content going forward due its low impact as can be seen on glbenchmark.com where the difference between AA on/off is just small performance fluctuations due to background tasks."

This makes sense because 4x MSAA only requires 4x the depth/stencil work except at triangle edges. Since the depth/stencil is kept on-chip and Series5XT has 8 times as many depth/stencil units as TMUs the impact won't be too extreme.

 

[Arwin]

In the IMG article recently posted it was actually stated that they work at their best when kept as autonomous from the CPU as possible, which makes sense given how long their scene rendering pipelines are.

I agree you have a good point there - I read that too in the Digital Foundry interview just yesterday. I also recall that in the PhyreEngine 3 discussion they indicate that the NGP build of the engine resembles the PC version most, partly suggesting a strongly independent GPU. Also, suggesting that facial recognition takes up one (of the as we now know 3 available) CPU Cores in its entirety seems to me to suggest that the GPU isn't as good at it, which is different from say the 360's setup where the GPU is in fact used for image recognition. While we don't know yet if they simply did not explore that kind of processing on the GPU, it could point in that direction.

 

[Exophase]

One thing we also don't know is how mature the OpenCL (or alternative API..?) support is on NGP right now. This might be something that we see more growth of down the road. But so long as people are porting console-like graphics they'll probably want to dedicate as much in the way of ALU/TMU resources as they can to shading, unless they're bottlenecked by something else.

 

[Ailuros]

Tests I had seen in a presentation from NOKIA on OMAP3 for image processing in 2009 were highly encouraging. Not relevant to image recognition, but those were the first GPGPU results I had seen from a SGX core.

 

[Ailuros]

it means I have reasons to think that's wrong & just looking at how NGP can have 4xMSAA with less of a performance hit than The PS3 is a good example of newer tech being made to do things more efficiently & effectively.

I don't want to interfere in the above "dispute", but tile based deferred rendering GPUs like the PowerVR GPU block in NGP always had an advantage in terms of memory footprint and bandwidth consumption when it comes to any form of anti-aliasing (be it super- or multi-sampling). Back in the KYRO2 days where desktop GPUs still had to struggle with super-sampling a humble KYRO2 being a mainstream GPU could embarass with SSAA quite in a few spots a higher end GeForce. It's an architectural advantage and not something that has been "invented today" for the NGP.

Give or take the performance penalty on such a TBDR for multi-sampling AA is in the ballpark where coverage sampling AA (CSAA) on an IMR would be (such as Tegra), with the difference of MSAA being more efficient than CSAA in terms of output quality.

In the first batch of SGX cores (SGX520-540, USSE1) there's only 8 z/stencil on each core. With the Series5XT refresh (SGX543/544/554) the amount of z/stencil units was doubled per core to 16 z/stencil. For a typical TBDR it doesn't help only minimizing multi-sampling AA penalty, but it also makes their hidden surface removal twice as efficient per clock amongst other things.

Fore mentioned KYRO2 above was a >DX6 GPU (lacking a DX7 T&L unit) with 2 rendering pipelines and 2 TMUs yet was equipped with 32 z/stencil units. TBDRs usually have a quite high amount of z/stencil units primarily for HSR; SGX being an embedded and not a desktop design has naturally quite a few tradeoffs to save space because the utmost headache there is power consumption.

A 2 ALU/2TMU SGX535 (GMA500, iPhone3GS etc.) should roughly be on par with a KYRO2 GPU in terms of performance (if it wouldn't be for Intel's ridiculous drivers for the GMA500).

***edit: the PS3 employs occasionally MLAA (morphological AA) yet it runs on the Cell processor; in terms of output quality it's quite inferior compared to multi-sampling, but makes perfect sense on a console like the PS3 since it comes for free.

 

[babcat]

I have came to the conclusion the only logical thing for Sony to do is to wait and put a dual core Series 6 GPU in the PSP2.

This would make sure their device does not become instantly obsolete.

 

[Ailuros]

I have came to the conclusion the only logical thing for Sony to do is to wait and put a dual core Series 6 GPU in the PSP2.

The announced ST Ericsson A9600 "Rogue" isn't a single core GPU either; it might be either a triple or quad-core GPU depending on frequency.

This would make sure their device does not become instantly obsolete.

Depends what someone means with "obsolete".

 

[Megadrive1988]

PowerVR Series 6 "Rogue" is coming far too late to be included in PSP2/NGP.

 

[liem107]

is it worth it?

I wonder if it is really wise from sony to launch a mobile gaming device in this climate. I don t know if they have done their market research properly but i have the feeling the psp2 is doomed before it is launched.
As i see things, the market is already overcrowded with playable mobile devices and the psp2 will most likely come quite far in the wish list of buyers if it doesn t come perfect from launch date.After all, the vast majority of people don t have unlimited finances..and even with my 6 figures salary, i may not want to spend money in a device which will just take the dust.
The power of tablets socs will evolve so fast that even a mighty quad a9+sgx543 will feel outdated within 6 months of the launch... with this in mind, i don t think a lot of developpers will want to engage ressources to be wasted in a niche market.
Sony may have not noticed, but the mobile gaming market is not limited to psp vs ds anymore.
I think it would be wiser for sony to engage all their ressources in a next ps4 which may be the last playstation if sony comes late again to the battle or under gunned.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Tablets and smartphones lack both dedicated hardware buttons\analog-sticks and don't have sufficient gameplay battery life.
Tablet and smartphone OSs also lack the long-term contracts and support with AAA game developers, which makes all the difference for a console's success.

Sure, all this could change and the NGP might be, in a couple of years upon its release, overrun by smartphones with buttons\analog-sticks or dedicated gaming peripherals, but Sony already made sure they're first on that frontline when\if that happens.

IMO, one of NGP's threats might actually be Nintendo Feel\Stream, as it proposes to replace both the NGP and the PS3 when you're at home.

 

[liem107]

I would totally agree with what you said about hardware buttons.... but this only concerns a small proportion of mobile players... unfortunately, the vast market is made of casual gamers... and even without hardware buttons, we can imagine future games on tablets taking advantage of bluetooth gamepads or keyboards.
in the past, a geek had a budget for a nice mobile phone and a budget for a portable gaming device... nowadays, i am not sure that a lot of geeks would spend money in a smartphone and a tablet and still have enough money to spend on a mobile gaming device.
also, if they buy a game, they would most certainly want it to be compatible with all their devices... which relegates the NGP further in a small niche market.
If you look at sales, you would most likely see games like pokemon and monster hunter completely crushing AAA titles like gow. This is sad and not very encouraging for big devs. All these blockbusters don't require the massive power of the NGP.
Don't misunderstand me, I would be most delighted to be wrong and see the NGP shine.... but I know that Sony is very much prone to schizophrenic behaviours.
On one hand , the Hardware company wants to create a perfect multimedia Hub, but on the other hand , the media company wants a closed system with a half baked media support (I mean bad browser and no support for NTFS and MKV) .

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I would totally agree with what you said about hardware buttons.... but this only concerns a small proportion of mobile players... unfortunately, the vast market is made of casual gamers...

Hum.. DS + PSP sales combined reach 220 million units. We can assume confortably that every DS and PSP gamer bought at least one game -> at $30 to $50.


Smartphone sales numbers surpass that number quite easily, but not everyone buys games. There's this whole chunk of people that will never play a game in their smartphone, even if it's free or ad-supported.

Furthermore, smartphone games cost something between 50c and $5, with most of them going for $1. You'd have to sell some 45 times more of that $1 game for smartphones than for the $45 PSP title, in order to get the same amount of revenue.


That said, developers will develop for a system that makes them money. For some reason, you haven't seen much AAA developer ventures into Android and iOS. Infinity Blade and Rage were just experiments, and Epic has already complained about how Infinity Blade gave them little money because the smartphone people aren't willing to pay much more than that $1 for the game.

Then there's the whole piracy issue. Piracy on Android is a breeze, ond iOS isn't much harder once you have a jailbroken iPhone.



Plus, Sony is still on time to allow a dual-boot for Android, if they wish. That'd turn the NGP into a fully functional tablet computer, for example.
And even if they don't, a good-enough browser would suffice for most - if not all - things you can do with a tablet.

 

[Exophase]

Plus, Sony is still on time to allow a dual-boot for Android, if they wish. That'd turn the NGP into a fully functional tablet computer, for example.

If only...

 

[liem107]

I wish you were right.... but considering the "otheros" history with Sony, I seriously doubt that Sony would ever try a dual boot. At best we could hope for a third party browser like chrome or opera as an app to download on the PSN... but an Android dual boot is most likely out of the picture. Regarding multimedia capabilities, I predict the device would have a half baked format support excluding of course mkv (look at Bravia TVs compared to Samsung or LG TVs).
This kind of mean little details tend to upset geeky buyers which is a serious mistake from the Sony media branch. I am pretty sure there is no obstacle from a hardware point of view to integrate a perfect media hub. Sony tends to forget that the geeky buyers have some influence on their less tech savvy friends... and social network is a big thing nowadays.

 

[DieH@rd]

01.net claims that NGP will have 256main ram and 128mb of vram. No internal storage in non-3G models [that will be priced like 3DS].

Rumor: NGP Specs Dowgraded, 2011 Release in Japan

The NGP will release this year in Japan and next year in the rest of the world according to 01.net, a French site tech with a history of reliably reporting leaked Sony information. That same site leaked accurate specs of the NGP weeks before the devices unveiling in January.

According to 01.net's information, non-3G models of the NGP will be priced competitively with the 3DS. Meaning we can expect that the low-end model will cost around $250-$300. In order to reach that price window some sacrifices had to be made. While earlier reports pegged the new handheld as sporting 512MB of RAM, the newest information suggests that Sony has cut that number in half to 256MB. In order to compensate for the loss, the company reduced the size of the OS footprint in memory. 26MB of the 256 is high-speed RAM that can be used for certain tasks that require quicker access to system memory. The 128MB of graphics memory are still in place; however the planned 16MB of internal flash memory have been removed in favor of cheaper external storage.

While none of this information has been confirmed by Sony, 01.net's track record with Sony information lends credence to their claims. One way or another, we'll find out at E3.

http://www.01net.com/editorial/5336...011-moins-puissante-et-moins-chere-que-prevu/
http://www.1up.com/news/ram-cut-internal-memory-removed

 

[RudeCurve]

If this is what's required to get the price down to a reasonable level then I'm all for it. I have plenty of extra memory cards laying around so the removal of internal storage is a non-issue IF I were in the market for a PSP2.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

If this is what's required to get the price down to a reasonable level then I'm all for it. I have plenty of extra memory cards laying around so the removal of internal storage is a non-issue IF I were in the market for a PSP2.

Even ridiculously priced Memory Stick Micro M2s? How many of those do you have?

"It's a Sony", but don't forget there's a good and a bad side to it.