The Case for Arm in Nextgen Consoles?

[liolio]

I wonder if the point of this discussion is "will manufacturers embrace the jump to even more heterogeneous computing" ( Sony approach) or rip the last benefit out of SMP design (more a MS approach). Imho there is a lot of perf to gain sticking to SMP and using Xenon as reference, a lot, for convenience I could see all the manufacturers stick to SMP designs.

I believe that console manufacturers have still not hit diminishing return either in pursuing IPC via OoO execution and TLP via SMP systems. I feel like in the eyes of many people late X86 SMP designs are underrated beasts. I feel like if one were allowed to push one of these things in a closed box system a lot less people would be bothered to look (for now) into more complicated approaches to raising performances. What are the "people in the known" opinion on that matter?

 

[tuna]

Well in case of Lenovo (they are the first and only for now) the tv comes with both a remote control and a controller.
My tegra 2 based phone still haven't been upgraded to ICS so I can't confirm but I read that ICS provides better supports for peripherals like external keyboards, controller, possibly mouse etc.
Android is a full blown OS still evolving and evolving fast I don't think we would miss options, I would not be surprise if the best fit would simply be another ICS device.

What kind of controller?

 

[liolio]

What kind of controller?

Don't intend to be rude but there are many vids on youtube. This Lenovo device isn't on any account perfect but it's clearly a breakthrough, the best effort I've seen to change TV into something else.

 

[TheChefO]

I wonder if the point of this discussion is "will manufacturers embrace the jump to even more heterogeneous computing"

Actually the intent was to see if ARM offered some tangible benefit in the ISA or architecturally vs Power or other designs.

I haven't seen a good argument for ARM yet...

 

[3dilettante]

ISA is of secondary importance, most probably even less at this point so long as there's nothing very wrong. It has an impact on how compact and efficient parts of the chip may be. For other reasons, it can have an impact on business concerns such as licensing, support, and compatibility.

IBM has shown itself to be a very accomodating and competent partner when it comes to designing cores for a console and licensing seems to have been very favorable.
An x86 design from Intel might be good on the design and process technology side, but the outcome of the original Xbox shows that the business side was not as favorable.

ARM is very flexible on the business side, but it doesn't have the history of designing high speed cores or very good memory and chip interfaces.
IBM is very good with engineering physical implementations at the speeds and performance levels of consoles.

Those sorts of non-technical considerations take greater precedence. There's no magical instruction set that is going to make a performant design easy to do or manufacture.

 

[TheChefO]

ISA is of secondary importance, most probably even less at this point so long as there's nothing very wrong. It has an impact on how compact and efficient parts of the chip may be. For other reasons, it can have an impact on business concerns such as licensing, support, and compatibility.

IBM has shown itself to be a very accomodating and competent partner when it comes to designing cores for a console and licensing seems to have been very favorable.
An x86 design from Intel might be good on the design and process technology side, but the outcome of the original Xbox shows that the business side was not as favorable.

ARM is very flexible on the business side, but it doesn't have the history of designing high speed cores or very good memory and chip interfaces.
IBM is very good with engineering physical implementations at the speeds and performance levels of consoles.

Those sorts of non-technical considerations take greater precedence. There's no magical instruction set that is going to make a performant design easy to do or manufacture.

Chalk another up in the "hands down" category.

Honestly the cross platform compatibility case is a good one, but this can be achieved via a small arm core onboard without basing the entire architecture around a limited and incompatible chipset.

I should have made this a poll, but this thread result speaks for itself.