Vita 2 / PS4 Go?

[HBRU]

The patch justifies a new sell of the game ... And should be quite easy (cpu and ram are the same, gpu has different geometry, bandwith less but enough for 720p).... Also -of course- media cant be Blue Ray but something similar as Switch uses... So no problem of used games that ruins new games sale. Different product that target (partially) different potential users.

Sony, MS, Nintendo dont gain much from hardware... So new hardware build up has sense for them for just selling more software... Either new software to new people or old software to new people or even old software to old people (on a slightly different platform).

someone has not played for instance The Witcher 3 on the home console.... Has time to play while traveling... Instead of purchase an used copy at gamestop buys a new copy either digital or phisical for the PS4-GO. Someone else has alredy the digital copy for the ps4 can buy a small fee license for using it also on PS4-GO. The small difference in platform justifies also the new fee to be payd.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

someone has not played for instance The Witcher 3 on the home console.... Has time to play while traveling... Instead of purchase an used copy at gamestop buys a new copy either digital or phisical for the PS4-GO. Someone else has alredy the digital copy for the ps4 can buy a small fee license for using it also on PS4-GO. The small difference in platform justifies also the new fee to be payd.

Some kind of bluray-to-digital upgrade must be considered if Sony comes up with a "PS4 Go", yes.
Supporting only digital distribution would result in retailer boycott, as happened with the PSP Go.

 

[HBRU]

dont know.... The blue ray can be reselled after... I think a digital copy can be upgraded from PS4 to PS4-GO with some little money. But what you think of using the same PS4pro APU downclocked to 300 mhz ?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

dont know.... The blue ray can be reselled after...

Many PS4 games come with codes inside that are one-time use DLCs you can associate to your PSN account. If you resell the game you can't resell the code.

But what you think of using the same PS4pro APU downclocked to 300 mhz ?

I think it doesn't make sense to use the same SoC from a home console into a handheld.
An iGPU at 300MHz would mean developers would have to invest a ton of time and money into their games to be compatible with the new platform. That means many - probably most - developers would skip the platform altogether.

If Sony were to go that way, there would be little reason to keep using GCN or Jaguar cores. A custom SoC with ARM cores, PowerVR GPU and WideIO memory like they did with the Vita would make a whole lot more sense.

 

[HBRU]

i suppose some kind of study similar MS did for the Scorpio would be usefull to Sony for targeting an APU compatible with the existing software with slight softwareadjustment just to reach 720 p.... Maybe even new DDR5 are enough for the bandwith required for 720 p.... That would help saving money and power... But requires new silicon.

 

[3dilettante]

There are some other concerns besides what I have mentioned about these APUs not really being able to fit in a mobile power budget even when they are almost entirely gated off.
If it is just the PS4 Pro APU, then cutting the GDDR5 bus in half is not going to provide all the ROPs or L2--since those are linked to the channels. Taking those out would mean it's not the PS4 Pro APU.
Even at half-width, I am not certain the GDDR5 would be practical in a mobile power budget next to that kind of SOC.

It's also not likely that downclocking will take power consumption the rest of the way. The processes have a nominal voltage they're not going to drop below, and AMD's chips usually get stuck few notches above what competing chips can reach. The voltage floor and static power consumption could be excessive even if the clock were to drop to 300 MHz, assuming the PS4 Pro chip has that as an option for clock speed at nearly idle--not even including the sort of utilization a game would have.

 

[HBRU]

I was talking of 2018's DDR5

I was talking of 2018's DDR5

I was talking of 2018's DDR5... Not GDDR5

 

[3dilettante]

I did not see the more recent post concerning DDR5, as my post was already in progress.
The promises for DDR5 are vague. It's supposed to be more efficient than DDR4, but DDR4 in module form and a 64-bit bus already consumes several watts at low bandwidth. You may need to pick a number for the bandwidth you think is sufficient, before extrapolating to DDR5. DDR5's specification may be due in 2018, but that doesn't firm up when it becomes available in quantity. DDR4's rollout after its specification was finalized was long.

 

[HBRU]

ah ok... DDR5 are promising anyway and may fit well in cost, power and bandwidth with this supposed portable console. I herd in 2018 are going to be available.

 

[3dilettante]

ah ok... DDR5 are promising anyway and may fit well in cost, power and bandwidth with this supposed portable console. I herd in 2018 are going to be available.

Per the following, the specification is planned to be finalized in 2018.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...r5-ram-will-double-the-speed-of-ddr4-in-2018/

Most implementations are going to wait until after that, given the lead time for design and manufacturing and the chance of late changes.
Even then, as with DDR4, various factors can lead to a slowed deployment from final spec and widespread use. The article gives a 3 year gap for DDR4, and even with initial mainstream use it might not reach the point of being cheap enough for a console device for some time after.

 

[MrFox]

I can't see how a portable PS4 could possibly have any reasonable power consumption, even with a big downclock. I imagine a Vita successor would be using ARM and powerVR, and easy BC. (and planned for mid gen hardware upgrade perhaps, not a very big expense if they use a mostly off the shelf SoC, like nintendo did). VR/AR support could make it a desirable product since it works better with a walled garden platform.
https://www.imgtec.com/powervr/graphics/furian/

Better not fuck it up this time, and provide a standard microSD slot

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I can't see how a portable PS4 could possibly have any reasonable power consumption, even with a big downclock.

Forget the downclock.
Let's just wait and see how the 14/16FF Raven Ridge will perform in the 15-20W range.

And then keep in mind that:
1 - a PS4 Go could use a single stack of "HBM low-cost" while still maintaining the necessary bandwidth (200GB/s per stack)
2 - both TSMC and Globalfoundries are expecting >60% power reduction between 14/16FF and 7FF. Meaning whatever Raven Ridge can do in 20W, an architecturally similar 7FF SoC will be able to do in 8W.

We'll probably get some Raven Ridge specs within a week during Computex, but AMD already got us a sneak peek:

7th-gen APUs are made on 28nm and offer an 8 CU GPU at 900MHz (900 GFLOPs) with a 45W TDP.
Following the numbers in the graph, a 22.5W Raven Ridge will offer a 1.3 TFLOPs GPU, but with a CPU performance and power budget that should be a complete overkill compared to the old Jaguars. This means they can probably just reduce the CPU clocks and include a wider iGPU instead.
Only thing that Raven Ridge will be missing is be memory bandwidth, but again a single stack of HBM low-cost would do the trick.

 

[MrFox]

Really difficult to find numbers about hbm power consumption, at least I never found any . But there are some rules of thumb about frequency, distance, and number of lines, multiplying the interface wattage (and voltage squared). I'm thinking maybe hbm at 200GB/s could be a lot more power hungry compared to slower lpddr4. Could be why we are not seeing any fast memory on any portable products??? WideIO products (i.e. Vita) were incredibly low frequency for power reasons. It was also a big risk using custom memory. A very small amount too!

Whatever our wild imagination created for Switch speculation, just to fall back down on earth with nothing magical, that would probably happen about Vita2 or ps4 portable.

 

[cheapchips]

There's no real need to have HBM in any current portable devices is there? Tablets aren't powerful enough and don't have a use case for pushing the boat out on performance.

High-end gaming laptops have enough space for DDR5 and battery life isn't really a selling point.

Other laptops are either sold on small form factor or are commodity items.

A PS4 tablet is the the only place it make significant sense at present. That might change with better AMD APUs.

 

[HBRU]

If DDR5 arrives quickly and are what is promised then a 720p ps4-go may become a reality.... Otherwise too difficult.....

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Really difficult to find numbers about hbm power consumption, at least I never found any

AMD claimed the Fury X's HBM 1 had a >35GB/s per Watt.
This means at 512GB/s, Fury X's four stacks had a combined power consumption of 15W. That's 3.75W per stack.
HBM low-cost will probably reduce the power consumption per stack. At least for the difference in manufacturing process (28nm -> 16FF at least), it might consume 2x less. Especially if it's running at less than the 3Gbps required to reach 200GB/s.

In the end, I'd put each single stack of HBM low-cost consuming between 2 and 4W.

I'm thinking maybe hbm at 200GB/s could be a lot more power hungry compared to slower lpddr4.

At those bandwidth levels HBM might be more power efficient.
LPDDR4 is very efficient to be used in a 2*32bit arrangement (2 chips side by side or in clamshell) and reach ~25GB/s.
But to reach 176GB/s you'd need 8 chips. Now you need to put 8 memory chips in a tablet's PCB.

If DDR5 arrives quickly

DDR5 won't arrive early.
Regular DDR isn't made for consoles, it's made for very large mass production quantities at very low cost-per-GB. It's to be used in PCs, notebooks, servers, render farms, etc. etc.
The inertia to adopt a new DDR standard is huge compared to LPDDR and GDDR.

then a 720p ps4-go may become a reality...

...

Again:
720p PS4-Go doesn't make any sense, and it's not the coming of DDR5 that will make it magically possible.
It's either a system that is fully capable of playing PS4 games (and this means being able to run PS4 code cycle-per-cycle) or it's a handheld using a completely different architecture.
Sure, Sony's target for a future handheld might be "PS4-level graphics at 720p", but then it's not a console that plays PS4 games.

 

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

The portable PS4 concept had received the most focus so far. Such a device would be great, but it would be expensive to manufacture and probably have quite a poor battery life.

How would people feel about Sony going a different direction and focusing on a cheap, low powered, high quality device?

Personally, I'd love to see a smartphone sized device that can slot into a larger DualShock 4 to function as a controller or independent, portable console. Or, it could be slotted into a headset for VR.

The cheaper the better, for the widest possible audience. But how cheap could it be with a VR compatible screen? Is 1080p 120hz OLED too costly?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

How would people feel about Sony going a different direction and focusing on a cheap, low powered, high quality device?

What's cheap + low-powered + high quality?

It would go directly against the Switch. At best it would be blasted by the Switch, at worse it would be blasted by tablets and smartphones.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It would go directly against the Switch. At best it would be blasted by the Switch...

Why couldn't any other device compete with Switch? What is it about Switch that means it has the portable market all to itself? I'm not arguing Sony could make a successful portable, but I don't see what it is about the Switch that makes its position unassailable. It's another gaming platform. Even though historically Nintendo has had the portable space all to itself, I think PSP showed a good portable properly supported could do as well as Nintendo in the portable space and that should be possible again. eg. What if Apple released a Switch-like iThing? A phablet with a dock as described here for PS4P, maybe?

 

[HBRU]

Hope you are right TottenTranz. But even adapting for a 720p output the existing software on a cutted down ps4-go would not be such a difficult task... Yes DDR5 are coming too slow... I know. But HBM ? I see them expensive and you still have the gpu that is consuming way too much even at 7 nm. I'm not so convinced that the PS4pro downclocked at 300 mhz is an idea to refuse. At such frequency it should drain really very little power... Basically only the Jaguar are going to run at full 1.6 Ghz.