Your thoughts on how much Ram will be needed next gen..

[jvd]

jvd, I'd agree... I think you also have to add the e-DRAM on the Visualizer... even in the patent images the e-DRAM for the Visualizer is not shared with the Broadband Engine...

64 MB for the Broadband Engine+ 32-64 MB for the Visualizer ( already has Image Cache ) + 128 MB of Yellowstone system DRAM should be a safe guess IMHO...

We might have Sound RAM and I/O CPU RAM, but they could very well be not separate pools, but we could use the system RAM ( 128 MB of Yellowstone DRAM ) for at least I/O RAM... It would not be difficult making it work at 800 MHz signaling rate in PlayStation 2 compatibility mode ( feed a 100 MHz clock instead of a 400 MHZ clock to the Yellowstone DRAM PLLs )...

But maybe we could see Sound RAM as a separate memory pool...

Considering the patent, I do not see the I/O CPU having separate RAM, well in theory all the Yellowstone DRAM would be I/O memory ( this is external memory, not e-DRAM )...

Yea i figure the cell chip is going to be damn expensive even on .65 .... the gs 2 or whatever its called with 32megs of on die will be expensive too . So thats why i think the ps3 will have the least amount of ram of the three since its using the most expensive ram .

ANyone know the cost of on die ram compared to conventional ram ?

 

[Paul]

Hell PS3 will be probably have the fastest ram.

 

[jvd]

Hell PS3 will be probably have the fastest ram.

if they are going with on die ram for both the cell chp and the gpu then yes but it will also be the most expensive and the smallest amount of ram .

 

[Paul]

Large amounts of slow ram doesn't make a good system. Take a Geforce 4 TI 4200 with 64mb, then the 128 version. For current games, the 64mb one is faster due to the ram being clocked higher.

Although, with new games in the future, the 128mb will be a much better choice. So, I'm at a loss as to what's better. Larger amounts of slower ram, or smaller amounts of fast ram.

Although this yellowstone which ps3 will use is REALLY being hyped as "cost effective" so we will have to see.

 

[jvd]

Large amounts of slow ram doesn't make a good system. Take a Geforce 4 TI 4200 with 64mb, then the 128 version. For current games, the 64mb one is faster due to the ram being clocked higher.

Although, with new games in the future, the 128mb will be a much better choice. So, I'm at a loss as to what's better. Larger amounts of slower ram, or smaller amounts of fast ram.

Although this yellowstone which ps3 will use is REALLY being hyped as "cost effective" so we will have to see.

ooookay i never said it was a bad thing . Find in my posts wehre i said it . I said it would have the least ram because it was using the most expensive ram i.e on board ram. Never said that was a bad thing .

Also the diff in ram speed is only a few mhz i think 20 mhz at the most , the diffrence bettween the ram on the cell chp and the ram the xbox 2 gpu will be huge.

 

[Paul]

You need to stop making assumptions that im basing everything I say based on your posts. It was a mere example, BTW that 20mhz makes a good 10-15fps increase in many games though, ive seen it.

PS3 having the least amount of ram? It's not fair to say at this point, because yellowstone is being hyped as very cost effective.

 

[jvd]

You need to stop making assumptions that im basing everything I say based on your posts. It was a mere example, BTW that 20mhz makes a good 10-15fps increase in many games though, ive seen it.

PS3 having the least amount of ram? It's not fair to say at this point, because yellowstone is being hyped as very cost effective.

No i'm not but your responding to my posts . Yes that 20mhz makes a good 10-15 fps , but then again when you get to a game that needs the 128 megs or you flip on fsaa the diffrence is more so than that 10-15 fps .

The yellowstone ram (if its ready who knows what can happen) may be very cost effective but a) if ms goes with a ram that is used in all pcs it will be cheaper than the rambus do to the volume of products moved , b) the on die ram of the cell chip and gs2 will be very expensive and they will have to find the money some where and less system ram is prob one of the things they will need less of since the high speed on die ram is there . thus not needing the same as the xbox 2 .

 

[Paul]

Yellowstone's architecture also enables pin count reduction and elimination of external termination resistors, further lowering overall system cost.

http://rambus.com/products/yellowstone/

Well, a tflop chip is going to be able to push an enourmous amount of polygons, so im sure you will need alot of ram for PS3.

And again, if xbox2 gets released a good time before ps3, sony will more than likely stick in more ram.

Msoft could very well stick in a huge amount of some slow ram, however will it be as good as Yellowstone? No.

 

[Grall]

So how do you compare GameCube launching with 24MB main RAM and 16MB slow RAM when my PC already had 256MB in it? And many people even at the time had more than 256.

GC uses big, expensive RAM. One bit of 1T SRAM cells take up what, 3x the die area of standard DRAM cells? It's also not a commodity device like the DDR in XB (or even RDRAM of PS2) There's your answer, grrl. Cost.

It DOESN'T MATTER how they compare to PC's.

Sure it does. If it differs too friggin much, it's going to be percieved as weak.

As I said earlier, 128MB seems small, but 256-384MB sounds fantastic.

256 is going to seem awful small by 2005. I think the first nextgen console might launch with that much for cost reason, but expect the next to double up to 512 just for the sake of being able to present a bigger, phatter number. Thus the first console won't want to give the second that easy advantage for free and launch at 512 to not be beaten from the start.

It's far less likely second console will double up to a gig. THAT would be way too excessive from a cost/benefit standpoint I'd think. Maybe not if they used standard commodity RAM, but I think they won't. It would likely be too slow, especially if one of the manufacturers (*cough* M$ *cough*) goes with a UMA setup...

512MB is just excessive, and will basically ASK for developers to get lazy with their code.

So what if they do, who the fuck cares? Lazy coding is only a problem for PC users with less installed RAM than the developers. In the console world, all users would have half a gig and there would be no problem. I doubt even microsoft programmers would be able to program a game so sloppily it would run at less than 60fps consistently on a 1Tflops CPU.

If they kept piling on the effects and code everything sloppily sure even such a beast chokes eventually, but it would be quite a feat in itself. It's like a magnitude more powerful than the current gen for crying out loud.

IIRC, Xbox was originally intended for 128MB, but then MS decided to cut it back to 64MB to be sure devs would tighten up their coding technique.

I doubt it was for anything remotely like that reason. I'd say it was cost again.


*G*

 

[jvd]

Yellowstone's architecture also enables pin count reduction and elimination of external termination resistors, further lowering overall system cost.

http://rambus.com/products/yellowstone/

Well, a tflop chip is going to be able to push an enourmous amount of polygons, so im sure you will need alot of ram for PS3.

And again, if xbox2 gets released a good time before ps3, sony will more than likely stick in more ram.

Msoft could very well stick in a huge amount of some slow ram, however will it be as good as Yellowstone? No.

Paul first off . There is such a thing as cost. We don't know how much either company is willing to loose on system price .

Second . You might not need a huge amount of ram , just a decent amount of fast ram. The on die ram will be ultra fast and 64 megs is most likely more than enough. Also if the gs2 uses on die ram then yellowstone will not be great compared to the ondie ram and thus sony will put in the best amount of on die ram which will most likely be settled on at least 6 months ahead of the ps3s launch. Second off all just throwing in a crap load of ram is not allways a good thing , it can cause un needed heat , adds cost , adds more traces on the pcb . Its not just something to take lightly .

Now the cpu of the xbox 2 if its a normal x86 chip , hammer or p4 it will use off the shelf ram which i'm sure is less expensive than on the shelf esp when ms orders it in bulk and then all system builders order the same ram . Do you debate this ? Third of all the gpus will most likely have tricks and compresion and other things to get the most out of the slower of die ram. we do not know if the gs2 or the cell chip will have any of this .

 

[Tagrineth]

So how do you compare GameCube launching with 24MB main RAM and 16MB slow RAM when my PC already had 256MB in it? And many people even at the time had more than 256.

GC uses big, expensive RAM. One bit of 1T SRAM cells take up what, 3x the die area of standard DRAM cells? It's also not a commodity device like the DDR in XB (or even RDRAM of PS2) There's your answer, grrl. Cost.

Nice evasion. I meant space wise. Its main 'fast' RAM is 1/10th the size of my PC's main RAM. And if you count my 128MB VRAM the comparison skews even farther.

It DOESN'T MATTER how they compare to PC's.

Sure it does. If it differs too friggin much, it's going to be percieved as weak.

Doesn't seem to be hurting PS2 very much... most people don't even know (or care, for that matter) how much RAM is in their PC, let alone in their game console. Most of the people who care, will understand that in a console environment, you don't NEED as much of it anyway.

256 is going to seem awful small by 2005. I think the first nextgen console might launch with that much for cost reason, but expect the next to double up to 512 just for the sake of being able to present a bigger, phatter number. Thus the first console won't want to give the second that easy advantage for free and launch at 512 to not be beaten from the start.

It's far less likely second console will double up to a gig. THAT would be way too excessive from a cost/benefit standpoint I'd think. Maybe not if they used standard commodity RAM, but I think they won't. It would likely be too slow, especially if one of the manufacturers (*cough* M$ *cough*) goes with a UMA setup...

256 will seem small for PC's. Just like when the 32MB PS2 came out, 32MB was horribly pitiful for PC's. Just like when the 24+16MB GameCube came out, A YEAR LATER, its RAM quantity seemed horrendous compared to PC's! Even today on PC's, there are very, very few games (maybe 2-4?) that recommend 512MB for perfect play. The only ones I can think of offhand that demand that much, are SimCity4, DOOM3's Alpha (which is an alpha so it doesn't count; it isn't optimised yet), and maybe Command & Conquer: Generals.

512MB is just excessive, and will basically ASK for developers to get lazy with their code.

So what if they do, who the fuck cares? Lazy coding is only a problem for PC users with less installed RAM than the developers. In the console world, all users would have half a gig and there would be no problem. I doubt even microsoft programmers would be able to program a game so sloppily it would run at less than 60fps consistently on a 1Tflops CPU.

Yes, and that 1TFlops 'CPU' is also like 16 MPU's. Have fun managing 16 threads efficiently.

IIRC, Xbox was originally intended for 128MB, but then MS decided to cut it back to 64MB to be sure devs would tighten up their coding technique.

I doubt it was for anything remotely like that reason. I'd say it was cost again.

From what I can see, Microsoft is losing so much already, I'm sure another 64MB per console would be peanuts. Hell, the production PCB still has the screening for the additional RAM chips. Take a look at HardOCP, they opened the thing up and even commented on the screening.

 

[Panajev2001a]

So how do you compare GameCube launching with 24MB main RAM and 16MB slow RAM when my PC already had 256MB in it? And many people even at the time had more than 256.

It DOESN'T MATTER how they compare to PC's.

Standing ovation

As I said earlier, 128MB seems small, but 256-384MB sounds fantastic.

I'd agree... and onto what Sonic said...

Well... PlayStation 2 and GCN for example were NOT pure UMA designs and Playstation 3 seems to build on that hybrid UMA concept even more...

how ?

Well you have not factored in e-DRAM...

We are talking 64 MB of FAST e-DRAm for the Broadband Engine and 32-64 MB of FAST e-DRAm for the Visualizer...

That means ~128 MB of e-DRAM ( which is still RAM ) in local buffers for Broadband Engine and Visualizer ( and you add to that 4 MB of Local Storage for the Broadband Engine and 2 MB of Local Storage for the Visualizer which also has 4xImage Cache )...

With 128 MB of Yellowstone DRAM as external Memory we would not be in a bad situation... that would mean 256 MB of total RAM ( to which we can add Sound RAM )...

Maybe they could go crazy and add another 128 MB of Yellowstone DRAM, but it is seriously up to them...

 

[Panajev2001a]

Grall.... assuming the PE-DMAC-etc... busses are clocked at 1/4th the frequency of the APUs ( I expect the Visualizer to be clocked at 1 GHz as well... )...

The e-DRAM bandwidth we are talking about is 128 bytes/cycle or 128 GB/s at 1 GHz... if they go with memory and busses clocked at half the APUs' clock then we would have 256 GB/s...

I'd call that FAST RAM

Also... The Yellowstone DRAM...

http://www.rambus.com/rdf/rdf2002/pdf/rdf_consumer_track.pdf

We have 400 * 4 ( PLL ) * 2 ( DDR ) = 3.2 GHz signaling rate per pin... ODR or Octal Data Rate, 8 bits/cycle.

Yellowstone DRAM Macros use bi-directional data busses...


In the 64 bits memory controller configuration we have two channels with two Macros ( memory modules ) per channel... 32 bits per channel which means 64 bits as total data bus width...

Each DRAM Macros has two 8 bits data busses ( bi-directional )...

So, 8 bytes/cycle * 3.2 GHz = 25.6 GB/s ( 4x as fast as the yet to be released Canterwood chipset with dual channel DDR set-up )...

Using 6.4 GHz signaling rate ( base clock provided is 800 MHz then ) or a quad channel configuration ( or using four DRAM Macros per channel and using a dual channel configuration ) we would achieve over 50 GB/s...

Considering PlayStation 2 came out with a 3.2 GB/s main RAM technology and when PCs caught up with it, I'd say that 25.6 GB/s is fast enough as PlayStation 3's system RAM ( considering we have e-DRAM on both Broadband Engine and Visualizer )...

25.6 GB/s is a good spot as far as performance needed and cost...

Top of the line PCs at the end of this year ( or when Prescott, which supports the 800 MHz FSB and the 6.4 GB/s dual channel DDR SDRAM, is released to the masses ) will have 1/4th of that... I doubt than in 1-1.5 years we will see PCs' memory bandwidth quadruple... and even if we see this happening, I'd exclude this would mean low or mid-end PCs

 

[Squeak]

I think he meant TBR... still, there is a Z-buffer, on-chip... and still PVR supports external Z-buffer ( FP )...

I thought that might be it, but that didn't makes sense, since there is still a z-buffer.

There is a kind of z-buffer but it's a pretty small one.

I too would like to know more about rendering without z-buffer, even though it probably is an almost archaeic technology.

 

[Paul]

Paul first off . There is such a thing as cost. We don't know how much either company is willing to loose on system price .

Second . You might not need a huge amount of ram , just a decent amount of fast ram. The on die ram will be ultra fast and 64 megs is most likely more than enough. Also if the gs2 uses on die ram then yellowstone will not be great compared to the ondie ram and thus sony will put in the best amount of on die ram which will most likely be settled on at least 6 months ahead of the ps3s launch. Second off all just throwing in a crap load of ram is not allways a good thing , it can cause un needed heat , adds cost , adds more traces on the pcb . Its not just something to take lightly .

Both companies will take the loss so the price will be 300 usd on a USA launch. And your still going to need external memory, and my guess ps3 will have 512mb of it.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Paul...

I would say that 256 MB would be good ( excluding Sound RAM )... 64 MB for the Broadband 32-64 MB for the Visualizer and 128 of external RAM made of Yellowstone DRAM...

256 MB of Yellowstone DRAM might be used thus bringing the total ( excluding Sound RAM )l to 512 MB... still this increase in cost would have to be justified by a good and non negligible increase in performance ( or decrease in amount of probable bottlenecks )...

I just do not see Playstation 3 having 512 MB of Yellowstone DRAM ( the total, excluding Sound RAM, would now be 1 GB )...

I do not think this would be worth the price of maybe not having Re-writable Blu-Ray or having to lower the amount of e-DRAM on the Broadband Engine or the Visualizer...

I think that having 512 MB of Yellowstone DRAM and less e-DRAM would reduce maximum performance and not increase it due to increased dependency on the slower external RAM rather than the faster e-DRAM.

Also economically it is BETTER to loose money because of big Broadband Engine and Visualizer than more external RAM becuase with better manufacturing processes we will be able to shrink Broadband Engine and Visualizer till the point we can put them both on the same chip as it happened with the Emotion Engine and the Graphics Synthesizer used in the Playstation 2.

 

[Paul]

128mb External ram just won't cut it for 2005, I fail to see how it will.

 

[Panajev2001a]

you also have 128 MB of e-DRAM ( 64 MB for the Broadband Engine and 64 MB for the Visualizer ) plus Sound RAM ( 8-16 MB maybe )...

128 MB of e-DRAM + 128 MB of Yellowstone DRAM ( 25.6 GB/s ) + Sound RAM = 256 MB + Sound RAM

128 MB of e-DRAM + 256 MB of Yellowstone DRAM ( 25.6 GB/s ) + Sound RAM = 384 MB + Sound RAM

These are the two scenarios I see...


You want a different configuration...

128 MB of e-DRAM + 512 MB of Yellowstone DRAM ( 25.6 GB/s ) + Sound RAM = 740 MB + Sound RAM

Do you think this would be worth the added costs ( especially over the second configuration with 256 MB of external RAM added to the 128 MB of e-DRAM ) ?


32 MB of RDRAM in mid 2000 was not much going by PC standards ( bandwidth was fine though [3.2 GB/s] and so was the use of e-DRAM... ) and Gamecube's 24 MB of 1-TSRAM + 16 MB of 80 MB/s A-RAM ( total RAM = 40 MB ) was even worse as it came out 1 year after PlayStation 2... again if we go by PC standards

What about the Xbox then... the uber-console... 64 MB of RAM in a PC world that has 16-32 MB of VRAM on the GPU boards and 128-256 MB of main RAM ?

 

[Paul]

512mb of Yellowstone ram would cost alot now, but in two years it won't. And 64mb Vram for the GS3? Im not sure that will be enough, noone wants ps3 to be to be a vram starved system like ps2. Especially since ps3 will be a beast, you cannot have something primitive such as limited ram hampering it.

Not to mention, an entire system based on Rdram wouldn't cost as much as like putting a few Rdram chips in a PC.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Paul... Yellowstone is not available yet in ANY board, in any segment... the technology is NOT yet mass-produced... and we are already ~mid 2003...

Adding more memory would also mean to increase the size of each DRAM Macro which might or might not be possible...

Right now we are talking about dual channel with 2 DRAM Macros per channel... achieving 25.6 GB/s ( 64 bits memory controller configuration and 3.2 GHz signaling rate... also did I mention the data busses are bi-directional ? ) ...

256 MB of Yellowstone DRAM following this kind of set-up would mean: 64 MB DRAM Macros which means 512 Mbits DRAM Macros...

Of course they might add other chips without increasing the "total" data bus width of each channel... still to bring it down to 128 Mbits Macros level we would have... 8 DRAM Macros per channel ( 16 DRAM Macros in Total )... still this would mean longer traces for the data bus plus I do not know the efficiency and power characteristics of Yellowstone when we have 8 modules per channel...

Yellowstone IS NOT regular RDRAM: the address bus is no longer multi-plexed with data, data bus is bi-directional, signaling rate achieves ODR levels, etc... and again, this memory has not been mass-produced as of yet ( limited volume even by PlayStation 3's launch )... You cannot look at reduction of PC800 and PC1066 RDRAM to guess Yellowstone's price in 2005...

Repeating ( sorry I am in "broken record" mode ) we HAVE e-DRAM on both Broadband Engine and Visualizer... even with 128 MB of external RAM, the total RAM would be 256 MB...

I would not call 256-384 MB ( 384 MB counting 256 MB of external RAM ) a primitive and limiting amount...

PlayStation 2 has 32 MB of external RAM and 4 MB of e-DRAM and 4 MB of SPU2 + I/O CPU RAM ( 2 MB of SPU2's RAM and 2 MB of I/O CPU's RAM )... a total of 40 MB ... 384 MB is still 9.6x that amount and we are not including PlayStation 3's Sound RAM which I believe will be aseparate memory pool...

PSX had ~ 4 MB of total RAM... PlayStation 2 has, in total, only 40 MB of RAM which means ~10x PSX's RAM...

I think my >9.6x increase ( you have to factor in Sound RAM still ) is more in line with the increase in RAM PlayStation 2 had over PSX...

And 64mb Vram for the GS3? Im not sure that will be enough

Uhm... the current GS has 4 MB of 48 GB/s e-DRAM... the Visualizer has 64 MB of ( assuming 1 GHz clock-speed ) 128 GB/s e-DRAM... plus the Visualizer has 2 MB of Local Storage ( 128 KB of Local Storage for each APU ) and we have Image Cache ( 1 for each PE in the Visualizer )...

Basically we are talking about 16x of e-DRAM which is also 2.67x faster and we are not considering that this time the Visualizer might support Texture and Color Compression which would increase the effective bandwidth of the Visualizer... with the programmability of the PEs I'd expect some programmers to implement fast VQ decompression in software if they use some other form of Texture Compression Scheme

In that case the Local Storage in each APU could also be used as a small texture cache... ( containing compressed textures [or part of them ] that are decompressed and fed to the Pixel Engine or the other APUs that run the Pixel Shading programs... ).

Even talking about 1280x720p ( also known as 720p widescreen... it would be 1024x720 if we were talking about 4:3 full-screen resolutions ) and dual-buffering ( back buffer at 32 bits and front-buffer at 24 bits )... and 32 bits Z-buffer too...

(1280 * 720 * 4 bytes/pixel ) + ( 1280 * 720 * 3 bytes/pixel ) + (1280 * 720 * 4 bytes/pixel ) = ~9.67 MB

This would leave 54.33 MB of RAM for textures ( or for FSAA/MSAA and textures )... and this is compressed space potentially.

Also... 128+ GB/s of e-DRAM bandwidth... it doesn't look bad to me