Sony's Next Generation Portable unveiling - PSP2 in disguise

[Arwin]

So 1 CPU is locked for OS, one is available for gaming.. what of the other two?

Is Sony holding back their hardware again, like they did with the original PSP?

What are you talking about? They are saying that while on consoles they often just used one CPU core (losers ... - not that Virtua Tennis needs that much CPU I reckon) while on the Vita they are using all available CPU cores. Something like that ... ?

How can you even think that only 1 core on Vita is available for gaming? What have you guys been drinking? LOL

 

[french toast]

What are you talking about? They are saying that while on consoles they often just used one CPU core (losers ... - not that Virtua Tennis needs that much CPU I reckon) while on the Vita they are using all available CPU cores. Something like that ... ?

How can you even think that only 1 core on Vita is available for gaming? What have you guys been drinking? LOL

Ha ha we've been sippin on the Koolaid!...you want some

 

[Deleted member 13524]

What are you talking about? They are saying that while on consoles they often just used one CPU core (losers ... - not that Virtua Tennis needs that much CPU I reckon) while on the Vita they are using all available CPU cores. Something like that ... ?

How can you even think that only 1 core on Vita is available for gaming? What have you guys been drinking? LOL

It was just my interpretation from this post...

 

[Lazy8s]

Tabris's post:
"They use all core of the CPU (on Vita) when console's one (i.e. PS3 version) only use 1 core"

 

[Deleted member 13524]

So.. erm.. Vita is not a console, according to that post?

Meh, doesn't matter. My assumption was wrong, so it isn't that bad after all..

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So.. erm.. Vita is not a console, according to that post?

It's clearly a rough translation, and I think most people make the distinction between 'console' as home device and 'handheld' for a portable.

 

[dagamer]

The PS3 only has one traditional CPU core as we know it; I wouldn't count SPEs.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The PS3 only has one traditional CPU core as we know it; I wouldn't count SPEs.

Then you count wrong, but that's another discussion already had here. I suggest you go loko it up.

 

[Lazy8s]

A handheld console isn't an oxymoron, so people really should use "home" as a qualifier in front of "console" when they're making that reference.

 

[Arwin]

Tabris's post:
"They use all core of the CPU (on Vita) when console's one (i.e. PS3 version) only use 1 core"

Yeah, I looked at the text using Google Chrome and it was pretty clear what they meant. They also mention that it wasn't so easy because most code assumed a single thread.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

A handheld console isn't an oxymoron, so people really should use "home" as a qualifier in front of "console" when they're making that reference.

Human beings are lazy and take obvious shortcuts. If you're talking about the games industry, 'handheld' obviously means handheld console. And if you are using 'handheld' to mean a handheld console, then 'console' naturally means a home console. These terms have been in use for years, so I don't see a need to change anything.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Human beings are lazy and take obvious shortcuts. If you're talking about the games industry, 'handheld' obviously means handheld console. And if you are using 'handheld' to mean a handheld console, then 'console' naturally means a home console. These terms have been in use for years, so I don't see a need to change anything.

It may have something to do with the terms we use in my main language, but I don't recall ever seeing someone omitting the "console" from "handheld console" and assuming "console" as "home console".

I always used "consoles" for both formats and used "portable console" when I'm actually talking about handheld consoles. I would never think that saying "console" when talking about a handheld console would mean "home console".
Besides, a handheld could be a portable console, a smartphone, a tablet, a MID, a MP3 player, etc etc.

Meh, semantics...

 

[Arwin]

Yeah. But I guess the availability of handheld 'PCs' (Android, iOS, Windows Phone 7) now has a natural new distinction in the handheld space in that regard.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They're not called handhelds anyway. I've only seem them referred to as tablets and smartphones, or my own attempt at a common umbrella name for them, 'touchies'. And in context of talking about games for consoles, 'handheld' is a given.

 

[Arwin]

They're not called handhelds anyway. I've only seem them referred to as tablets and smartphones, or my own attempt at a common umbrella name for them, 'touchies'. And in context of talking about games for consoles, 'handheld' is a given.

Right, but those are also not called PCs. That's why the whole discussion is confusing anyway. I'm not even sure that people already agree with me that console vs pc is similar to Vita/3DS versus iOS/Android/etc.

 

[anexanhume]

Sorry to thread necro but very interesting article about PS Vita, specifically the memory interface to the 128MB VRAM.

http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/technology-blog/2012/07/sony%E2%80%99s-ps-vita-uses-chip-on-chip-sip-%E2%80%93-3d-but-not-3d/

Close examination reveals that there are 1080 pads in two blocks of 540 (4 blocks of 45 rows of 6 pads), so likely 2 x 512 bit I/O operation, possibly sub-divided into 4 x 128.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Very interesting. Has Vita secretly got a mass of bandwidth available?

 

[Arwin]

Reminds me a little of this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5688/apple-ipad-2012-review/12

There's probably some kind of similar bottleneck elsewhere in the system, though at the same time, what the Vita does now already would I think require performance not to far from half of the PS3's VRAM performance, which was 22GB/s, right? Almost half the bandwidth of the PS3, half the VRAM, a presumably way more than half the CPU power, significantly slower CPU memory (though more available), much less shading power, etc all doesn't make up nearly enough for having half the resolution, hence you can run PS3 like games, but you'll lose framerate, detail, shaders, etc., much like we see now in even the best games out there.

In that perspective, it's almost impossible to imagine that VRAM performance in the Vita would be significantly less than 12,8GB/s, considering what the games manage to pull off despite so many disadvantages?

So in that sense, perhaps not that secret ...

EDIT: after all, you need some bandwidth to do something like this I imagine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08u_zpfB_hQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=207s

And despite having lowered resolution, towards the end of the game you'll have seen some pretty spectacular stuff in Uncharted too.

 

[ltcommander.data]

Reminds me a little of this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5688/apple-ipad-2012-review/12

There's probably some kind of similar bottleneck elsewhere in the system, though at the same time, what the Vita does now already would I think require performance not to far from half of the PS3's VRAM performance, which was 22GB/s, right? Almost half the bandwidth of the PS3, half the VRAM, a presumably way more than half the CPU power, significantly slower CPU memory (though more available), much less shading power, etc all doesn't make up nearly enough for having half the resolution, hence you can run PS3 like games, but you'll lose framerate, detail, shaders, etc., much like we see now in even the best games out there.

In that perspective, it's almost impossible to imagine that VRAM performance in the Vita would be significantly less than 12,8GB/s, considering what the games manage to pull off despite so many disadvantages?

So in that sense, perhaps not that secret ...

EDIT: after all, you need some bandwidth to do something like this I imagine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08u_zpfB_hQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=207s

And despite having lowered resolution, towards the end of the game you'll have seen some pretty spectacular stuff in Uncharted too.

Well first-gen Wide I/O gives up to 12.8GB/s on a 512-bit bus, but Chipworks says the Vita has 2x512-bit memory, which means the Vita potentially has up to 25.6GB/s of video memory bandwidth, more than the PS3. That would definitely put the bottleneck elsewhere.

 

[Exophase]

Plus Vita should really have less demands on VRAM bandwidth than PS3 due to TBDR..

But this assumes that the TBDR is playing nice with the conventional g-buffer techniques (that all the passes are staying in-tile)