transistor count in current and nextgen consoles

[Megadrive1988]

Dreamcast
NEC/Videologic PowerVR2DC: about 10 million
Hitachi SH-4: 3.2 million

PlayStation 2
Emotion Engine: 10.5 or 13 million
Graphics Synthesizer: 43 or 46 million
SPU2: ??

Gamecube
ArtX/ATI/NEC Flipper: 51 million
IBM Gekko: 22.5 million (including 256K L2)

Xbox
Nvidia NV2A: 60~66 million ??
Intel 733 Mhz CPU: 28 million
MCPX: 6 million

Xbox Next
ATI Radeon R5xx VPU ????????
IBM CPUs ????????

PlayStation 3
Broadband Engine: ~500 million ??
Visualizer: ~500 million ??
Media Engine ??

N5
ATI VPU ??????????
IBM CPUs ??????????


help me fill in the ?blanks? 8)

 

[Deadmeat]

...

Xbox Next
ATI Radeon R5xx VPU : ~200 million
XCPU2 : ~150 million

PlayStation 3
Emotion Engine 3 : ~150 million
Graphics Synthesizer 3 : ~250 million

 

[Quaz51]

EE > 10.5 Mtr (VUs = 5.8 Mtr), 13 Mtr for first version?? (240mm2 0.25um)

DC CPU > 3.2 Mtr (58mm2, 0.25um)

Gekko NGC > 6.5 Mtr + 16 Mtr L2 cache (43mm2, 0.18um)

PS1 CPU > 1 Mtr (128mm2 0.6um), 850 Ktr for last version (46mm2, 0.35um)

Flipper > 26 Mtr + 25 Mtr eDRAM (120-110mm2, 0.18um)

GS > ~ 8-10 Mtr + 34-36 Mtr eDRAM (279mm2, 0.25um)

GScube > 287 Mtr (462mm2, 0.18um)

N64 > 0.35um ...

 

[Megadrive1988]

Quaz51:

thanks for those figures. I'll probably edit them in later.

 

[Riddlewire]

Xbox
Nvidia NV2A: 66 million ??
Intel 733 Mhz CPU: ??
MCPX: ??

help me fill in the ?blanks? 8)

XCPU: 28 million (it's just a coppermine with 128k cache disabled)
MCPX: 6 million

 

[Megadrive1988]

thanks Riddlewire


so Xbox has 94~100 million transistors total

60~66 + 28 + 6

edit: I think Deadmeat's estimation for Xbox Next....

Xbox Next
ATI Radeon R5xx VPU : ~200 million
XCPU2 : ~150 million

of ~350 million, total, is a bit low, IMHO.

Xbox Next only ~3.5x the transistor count of Xbox?

even if that was only counting logic, and not embedded memory, it's still low.

I cannot concieve of Xbox Next having less than 400 million transistors, between its main chips (CPUs + VPU), not counting any possible emedded memory.

ok so if Deadmeat's figure was not counting embedded memory, then he and I are not THAT far apart, I suppose.

 

[Edge]

Figuring out the number of transistors for PS3 is a bit tough at this point in time, but my guess:

The original estimate for the Broadband Engine (Main Processor) is over a billion transistors on a single chip, but I don't see how Sony can pull that off by 2005, but the CELL architecture lends itself to being on multiple chips, and then at some later date all being put on a single chip.

Broadband Engine will most likely be four chips in it's first iteration, with each chip having one control CPU, one DMA engine, and eight co-processor cores (which are really the CELL processors themselves) along with 8 MB of eDRAM.

My estimate of 20 million transistors per CELL processor, comes to 160 million transistors total for one chip, and the 8 MB of eDRAM comes to 64 million transistors plus some for the DMAC and some for the control CPU, so rougly 250 million transistors.

Four chips means 1 billion transistors for the Broadband Engine alone. Could be two chips with 500 million each, but the end number is the same at 1 billion.

Now my guess for the GPU, is two chips at rougly 300 million each, which is two sets of (one control CPU + one DMAC + four coprocessor cores (CELLs)), and 16 MB of eDRAM, along with some extra logic for the backend rasterizer as mentioned in the CELL patent.

So two chips at 300 million is 600 million for the GPU. Add the 1 billion from the Broadband Engine and we have 1.6 billion transistors.

Some people here like Deadmeat, are assuming that Sony will simply not be able to deliver anywhere near their goals, and so have drastically reduced the power of the PS3, and so have included that in their transistor calculations. My estimate sticks to Sony's goals, and is more likely to be accurate.

The Broadband Engine can easily be multiple chips, because Rambus's 50 GB/sec chip-to-chip 'redwood' interface can be used for chip-to-chip communications and data transfer, and the design will never be crippled for future integration simply because no process in a game will ever span more than eight CELL processors which exist on a single chip. No game process would need to run on 32 processors at the same time.

 

[Deadmeat]

...

Xbox Next only ~3.5x the transistor count of Xbox?

Sure, since MS is trying to cut cost by all means...

 

[Megadrive1988]

Edge wrote:

Figuring out the number of transistors for PS3 is a bit tough at this point in time, but my guess:

The original estimate for the Broadband Engine (Main Processor) is over a billion transistors on a single chip, but I don't see how Sony can pull that off by 2005, but the CELL architecture lends itself to being on multiple chips, and then at some later date all being put on a single chip.

Broadband Engine will most likely be four chips in it's first iteration, with each chip having one control CPU, one DMA engine, and eight co-processor cores (which are really the CELL processors themselves) along with 8 MB of eDRAM.

My estimate of 20 million transistors per CELL processor, comes to 160 million transistors total for one chip, and the 8 MB of eDRAM comes to 64 million transistors plus some for the DMAC and some for the control CPU, so rougly 250 million transistors.

Four chips means 1 billion transistors for the Broadband Engine alone. Could be two chips with 500 million each, but the end number is the same at 1 billion.

Now my guess for the GPU, is two chips at rougly 300 million each, which is two sets of (one control CPU + one DMAC + four coprocessor cores (CELLs)), and 16 MB of eDRAM, along with some extra logic for the backend rasterizer as mentioned in the CELL patent.

So two chips at 300 million is 600 million for the GPU. Add the 1 billion from the Broadband Engine and we have 1.6 billion transistors.

Some people here like Deadmeat, are assuming that Sony will simply not be able to deliver anywhere near their goals, and so have drastically reduced the power of the PS3, and so have included that in their transistor calculations. My estimate sticks to Sony's goals, and is more likely to be accurate.

The Broadband Engine can easily be multiple chips, because Rambus's 50 GB/sec chip-to-chip 'redwood' interface can be used for chip-to-chip communications and data transfer, and the design will never be crippled for future integration simply because no process in a game will ever span more than eight CELL processors which exist on a single chip. No game process would need to run on 32 processors at the same time.

awesome post


I had figured, a long time ago, that PS3 might be 1 to 1.5 Billion transistors in total. no more than 500 million to 800 million for the Emotion Engine 3 or Broadband Engine.

wow, you say 1 Billion for the Broadband Engine. hard to believe, but ok, we'll see 8)

 

[Paul]

wow, you say 1 Billion for the Broadband Engine. hard to believe, but ok, we'll see

It's not hard to believe, it's inflated due to the on die memory be it e-DRAM, SRAM, w/e.

Transistor count is irrelevant, only area. Remember this.

 

[Deadmeat]

...

Transistor count is irrelevant, only area. Remember this.

Agreed. Transistor count is irrelevant, only die size.

And CELL is supposed be packed with low gate-density logics, and that takes a massive toll on die size and power consumption... This is why I keep giving you a low transistor count estimate for CELL. You complain about 150 million transistor count being too low, I say even that's a tight fit...

 

[Vince]

Re: ...

And CELL is supposed be packed with low gate-density logics, and that takes a massive toll on die size and power consumption... This is why I keep giving you a low transistor count estimate for CELL. You complain about 150 million transistor count being too low, I say even that's a tight fit...

You're off in your own little world dude. The R300 is almost cacheless in relative terms and packs over a 100million transistors, almost pue logic, in a 14.8*14.8mm die on 150nm. Why you continue to push your utter bias supported by nothing but stupidity on others amazes me.

 

[Guden Oden]

I would think there's almost zero possibility either CPU or GPU in PS3 is multi-chip. It would just complicate things an awful lot. How do you connect up four CPUs to external memory for starters. Also, eDRAM will instead of one large pool be four smaller pools that will get even smaller due to data duplication being neccessary (think Voodoo SLI problem here).

It could still happen, but I would think it's extremely unlikely.