Velocity Architecture - more than 100GB available for game assets

Given than Sony and MS are already using none clamshell for PS5 and XSX, and they need their current bus width, there are probably limited opportunities for cost reduction on memory anyway.

I suppose it's possible that MS could go from 320-bits @ 14 ghz, and drop to 256-bits at 18 ghz, so go from 10 chips to 8, but that would assume 18 ghz memory becomes cost effective and that the additional raw BW it would give (beyond 320-bit @ 14) could compensate for fewer memory channels and 20% less GPU L3 cache.

So ... maybe?

 

Right... This is a bit beyond my depth, but maybe considering BC compatibility with both high end and low end products (Portable?) 10+ years ahead and also servers, maybe keeping memory amounts at powo2 could make reaching compatibility easier for stuff far enough ahead we can't even predict.

 

This as well. Honestly gives me more reason why I wish it didn't exist. I wish they'd spent that extra development time and efforts funding the start of a AAA title. All I'm playing on my Series X is old games at the moment. Yet on the PS5 they're getting AAA first party third person titles in about a month or two

 

I think you meant 14Gbps and 18Gbps?

 

It's worth noting (I think, probably) that XSX is still a power of 2 quantity of memory by capacity if not by memory chip count. So if they're flexible enough to move to smaller buses at higher clocks they could possible move back to 8 memory chips.

In the long term and with at least a couple of memory density increases left, it's quite possible that future BC devices would simple have more ram than is needed and so exactly matching wouldn't be necessary.

 

Pretty sure that's what I said...?

14 & 18 Gbps is 14 & 18 ghz effective data rate. Both are measured across every data bit of the channel. Effective clock multiplied by data pins (bus times data) is memory bandwidth. GDDR6 is 2 x 16 bit per chip.

 

I am so lost trying to follow. This is regarding the current velocity architecture and cost reductions on future current gen Series machines or following generation speculation?

 

I'm also not following the correlation between memory configuration and velocity architecture either.

 

I think folks are trying to discuss the balance between SSD bandwidth for Xbox and memory quantity - and it's kind of moved onto what next gen might look like.

I think the cost reductions bit was just an OT spinoff about Xbox memory config. I'm guilty of indulging that too, so my bad. I'll pipe down.

 

Keeping the buses the same, symmetrical chip setups would have:

a) made memory management significantly easier
b) not need to rely on the devkits being extremely optimal to obtain good performance from memory
c) you'd not have to include the memory shuffling commands that they have in the API to swap data from slow to fast pools and vice versa, thus reducing the likelihood of random hitching.
d) BC is a non issue with everything being uniform, BC go forward for next generation will have memory swaps for seemingly no reason now.

BC performance may also have been improved with upgrading last gen title as the memory layout becomes a bit more challenging with the split pools.

Overall, MS may have determined that the end result was the same in the long run, but I'm not sure if they are hitting their internal performance targets right now. Performing at about or worse than a 5700 is not where I think they expect XSX to land.

With respect to velocity architecture, it's not exactly clear how a split pool layout or a uniform memory layout would have equal or worse performance. It clearly can't be better than a uniform pool however.

 

Memory swaps? For what? Moving data around the RAM eats bandwidth in and of itself.

I can see the need to move data around to improve bandwidth or latency but that would be due to caveats that go beyond (336 GBps vs 560 GBps).

The XSX CPU never has access to 560 GBps regardless of where the targeted data exists in RAM. That’s been relatively true of any AMD APU based console (the PS5 might not be limited in such a fashion). The CPU busses only had access to a fraction of the bandwidth that the RAM on that hardware provided. And the GPUs couldn’t pulled data from allocated memory used by cpu caches at max bandwidth. Even memory allocated for cpu and gpu sharing had limited bandwidth.

I can see limitations (which presents disparities much larger than 560 vs 336 GBps) such as those that may still exist in the new hardware encouraging memory swaps.

However a bunch of memory swaps isn’t going to make 10 GBs of VRAM at 560 GBps and 2 GBs of VRAM at 336 GBps appear as 12 GBs at 560 GBps. Shuttling data back and forth for such purposes is just going to lower overall bandwidth over time.

The difference in bandwidth between the two pools seems too small to encourage such a mechanism. Just directly request the data in the slow pool and live with 336 GBs of bandwidth.

 

uhh your mailbox

 

Same thing I've thought, but in relation to some of the acquisition money they've set aside, like the purported $40 billion for TikTok. That certainly could've been earmarked for a bit more on the consoles or towards getting a few new 1P games ready for launch. Bleeding Edge could've benefited from a delay and launched in the Fall alongside the new consoles and XBO, might've been a hit if they had done so.

I just hope by the latter half of this year whatever disorganization XGS has had is resolved; getting back on acquisition talk though I'm not even particularly crazy with the new rumors. It'll be a big get if they snag a major dev/pub but it also means we'll probably have to wait a few years before seeing anything from that acquisition. Though, I suppose this changes if MS are already aware of certain developments pre-acquisition and make arrangements to secure those (like what I THINK they've done with the new Indiana Jones games which should be releasing sooner rather than later, they have a new money coming next year I think).

Well, more specifically, SSD raw/compressed bandwidth to memory capacity and SSD raw/compressed bandwidth to memory bandwidth ratios, assuming similar ratios would want to at least be maintained for future designs if not improved, but yeah it was leaning a bit into 10th-gen speculation and I'm guilty of that slippery slope as well, there's already a thread for that.

Dunno if there's really too much to talk about VA ATM on the technical side that hasn't already been touched on prior, since we don't have any new details. Has anymore managed to source any documentation to the specific SK Hynix chip in the drive? That could give us a lot of new info on latency figures, random access times, etc. We're seeing roughly similar performance between MS and Sony's SSDs at least when it comes to load times of 3P multiplats; if we had access to more info on the NAND chip itself we'd be able to figure what the channel count is, among other things, and maybe draw some conclusions WRT PS5's NAND devices, too.

Speaking of which has anyone found any documentation on the Toshiba/Kioxia NAND chips the PS5 uses, or the specifics on its DDR cache chip?

Maybe on its own it doesn't, but perhaps when combined with the GPU clocks being somewhat low for a higher-end RDNA 2 card (even if part of the reason is for power consumption targets), the clocks could exacerbate whatever complications lie in a split pool?

In the end it's on Microsoft to improve the performance situation; they clearly have the resources but it's also a matter of priorities. If they can, they can't take too long. VRS Tier 2 support in new 1P games is a good start, but I know it's nagging them they can't claim that "best place to play 3P games" title at this time since more often than not they have not been consistently outperforming the competition and in some ways lagging behind. The differences might be smaller than ever, but they're still there and analysis puts a magnifying glass on things the vast majority otherwise wouldn't be able to spot on their own (I sure likely wouldn't).

Question is will they have their Sega moment; by the time Sega got the new SGL stuff ready for Saturn they put out games like Virtua Fighter 2 that ran better than anything on PS1 that year and was pretty noticeable. Microsoft needs that type of a bump IMO but I dunno if they'll get it considering some of the big games coming from Sony 1P this year (provided there are no delays). But if they can at least get things to par where they're more consistently pulling edges, even if they aren't that grand in the scheme of things, they'll probably feel more assured.