Digital Foundry: next-gen PlayStation and Xbox to use AMD's 8-core CPU and Radeon HD

[Fx1]

I am also suspicious of it also having a blu-ray drive and a hard drive standard. And Sata 2?

It is possible that the CPU is Piledriver-based, but I doubt that.

there is no other format other than Blu Ray.

Digital isnt viable

 

[blackened23]

I agree that 100% digital distribution is not viable yet. It is an option for many consumers, however it is far from being ideal for 100% of consumers - there are a lot of people with bad internet, and capped internet. USA is practically the only country i'm aware of in which nearly all ISPs have no bandwidth cap, that isn't the case in EU, canada, etc. Furthermore, a lot of home users have only 1-3MBit internet which obviously isn't ideal for streaming or DD.

Anyway, multiple sources have mentioned blu ray being present on Xbox NEXT. IMO, it is plausible - HD DVD failed and it is the only viable physical media format currently. SATA II is also fine for what a console does. There is hardly a need for SATA 6GB/s speeds with a console.

 

[Olikan]

Whats that Data Move Engines?

maybe an updated "Unified North Bridge" found in trinity

very informative link:
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/05/28/trinity-has-a-brain-and-a-queue/#.UP2b3IF4_z8

 

[Lonbjerg]

maybe an updated "Unified North Bridge" found in trinity

very informative link:
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/05/28/trinity-has-a-brain-and-a-queue/#.UP2b3IF4_z8

Really?
Char-lie...*sigh*

 

[Olikan]

Really?
Char-lie...*sigh*

well... that article is the easiest to understand around

fine!...more of it:
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/AMD-Trinity-A104600M-Processor-Review/?page=3
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-4600m-trinity-piledriver,3202-4.html

 

[Scientist113]

The PowerPC 970 is an wide out-of-order processor and has nothing to do with the CPU in the Xbox 360 and PS3. It's in the same neighborhood as the Athlon 64 and original Core processors so it's much much faster than Atom processor.

The Power Processing Element is based on the PowerPC 970. Which is the main CPU in both those consoles.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I agree that 100% digital distribution is not viable yet. It is an option for many consumers, however it is far from being ideal for 100% of consumers - there are a lot of people with bad internet, and capped internet. USA is practically the only country i'm aware of in which nearly all ISPs have no bandwidth cap, that isn't the case in EU, canada, etc. Furthermore, a lot of home users have only 1-3MBit internet which obviously isn't ideal for streaming or DD.
.

A no too much?

 

[Piroko]

USA is practically the only country i'm aware of in which nearly all ISPs have no bandwidth cap, that isn't the case in EU, canada, etc.

Did your major ISPs stop using throttling and traffic shaping? Wasn't too long ago that I still heard a lot of complaints from military personnel stationed nearby at how bad your ISPs are compared to ours (Germany). No caps, no throttling and no traffic shaping with the big ISPs here and prices are 20~50€ per month.

 

[Scientist113]

Also one Jaguar core is not even close of being on par with poor Atom( both at 1.6Ghz). It's miles ahead of Atom IPC wise. It's like a race between a ferrari and a WV beetle .

I just looked up information on Atom - you are correct. It is a 32 nm max product - whereas the AMD Jaguar is a 20 nm product. Thus it is more advanced technology. It also features an in-order CISC pipeline, whereas the AMD Jaguar is out-of-order. Nevertheless according to these benchmarks:

http://www.hardwarezone.com/feature...os-lord-netbooks/benchmarking-and-performance

The Intel Atom is still better then a similarly clocked AMD Bobcat architecture, at the same clock speed, at non-3D applications. The Jaguar is a slightly improved version of Bobcat. Thus it is still about equivalent to a PowerPC 970 clocked at 3.2 ghz, for PC applications.

However due to its built-in, on-chip GPU, the Bobcat is 12 times better then a similarly clocked Intel Atom at 3D benchmarks. Just an interesting side-note. Also - the Jaguar features double the SIMD floating-point processing that the Bobcat does - so it will be even better at floating-point operations. Those additional 80 32-bit SIMD processing units give it 12 times better performance for 3D application. Or additional 20 128-bit SIMD units. The Atom has 2 64-bit SIMD units (or 1 128-bit SIMD unit), which can't do multiply-add, unlike the GPU cores. Thus it has - 20 times the floating point math hardware.

However I don't expect the Playstation 4 to have an APU - it has a separate vector co-processor it seems. Similar to the 32-bit SIMD GPU units seen on the APU.

So we're looking at 10 times the general purpose performance of Playstation 3 - for the Playstation 4. Easily. Let's say it has 320 SIMD units total, between the 8 cores, we're seeing floating-point performance that is 320 theoretical GFLOPS, which is almost double the Cell's 179 GFLOPS. Not bad.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I just looked up information on Atom - you are correct. It is a 32 nm max product - whereas the AMD Jaguar is a 20 nm product.

28, not 20.

 

[blackened23]

A no too much?

True enough I guess.

Anyway, from the online gaming I do it seems that all canadians (that i've talked to) have capped internet and many folks from EU do as well. Not sure about China, asia, etc, though. And i'm covering only part of EU, i'm sure it varies per country.

At least in the US, the demographics of consoles consist of many younger users -- with not all of them having online access, and much of their demographic has only 1-3MBit internet which would be not so great for DD.

I think Blu Ray would be the perfect fit for the 720, despite the licensing costs involved.

 

[blackened23]

Did your major ISPs stop using throttling and traffic shaping? Wasn't too long ago that I still heard a lot of complaints from military personnel stationed nearby at how bad your ISPs are compared to ours (Germany). No caps, no throttling and no traffic shaping with the big ISPs here and prices are 20~50€ per month.

A lot of ISPs throttle if they detect bittorrenting, but not many ISPs in the US have monthly caps though.

Still, there are tons of US residents with only 1-3MBit internet. DD is a great thing to have, but it isn't viable for 100% use on consoles. Not yet. So including a blu ray optical drive makes complete sense. From my understanding, both the 720 and PS4 will adopt a hybrid model where you can get any game via DD or by physical media - although having a HD for DD would add quite a bit to the cost of the console. I'm sure it will be quite the expensive accessory (since that's how MS/sony make money)

 

[ShintaiDK]

True enough I guess.

Anyway, from the online gaming I do it seems that all canadians (that i've talked to) have capped internet and many folks from EU do as well. Not sure about China, asia, etc, though. And i'm covering only part of EU, i'm sure it varies per country.

At least in the US, the demographics of consoles consist of many younger users -- with not all of them having online access, and much of their demographic has only 1-3MBit internet which would be not so great for DD.

I think Blu Ray would be the perfect fit for the 720, despite the licensing costs involved.

ISPs are unlimited usually in Europe and Asia.

Capping is mainly a US/Canada/UK/Audstralia thing.

Its actually amazing that some places still needs opticals due to lacking infrastructure.

http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_ISPs#ISPs_by_country
http://torrentfreak.com/new-data-exposes-bittorrent-throttling-isps-120809/

 

[Piroko]

http://www.hardwarezone.com/feature...os-lord-netbooks/benchmarking-and-performance

The Intel Atom is still better then a similarly clocked AMD Bobcat architecture, at the same clock speed, at non-3D applications.

Those scores seem awefully low compared to http://www.anandtech.com/show/4134/the-brazos-review-amds-e350-supplants-ion-for-miniitx/6
And other benchmarks show a greater difference.

 

[blackened23]

ISPs are unlimited usually in Europe and Asia.

Capping is mainly a US/Canada/UK/Audstralia thing.

Its actually amazing that some places still needs opticals due to lacking infrastructure.

http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_ISPs#ISPs_by_country

Ah, I see. I wasn't aware of conditions in asia, and EU varies by country it seems.

As far as US adoption, US and Canada are geographically huge countries so the infrastructure is more difficult in terms of wide adoption. There's also the fact that cable operaters in the US are monopolies with high pricing, so many home users opt for slower 1-10MBit speeds. I think the US still ranks in the top 10 in terms of speed and infrastructure, although the highest ranking countries are small ones such as switzerland - logistics makes it much easier to upgrade small geographic areas i'd imagine.

Anyway, I would love it if everyone had 50MBit internet. Bring on the DD. I haven't used physical media for games for a long time.

 

[Homeles]

It greatly improves upon the position they're at now. That's all that matters.

Edit: where did the post that I was responding to go?

 

[Hacp]

On 4 higher frequency cores vs 8 lower frequency cores. Higher frequency of the four cores will require more voltage. Power scales quadratically with voltage, so I can see why they decided to use 8 cores rather than 4, especially if they don't want RROD issues this time around.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Ah, I see. I wasn't aware of conditions in asia, and EU varies by country it seems.

As far as US adoption, US and Canada are geographically huge countries so the infrastructure is more difficult in terms of wide adoption. There's also the fact that cable operaters in the US are monopolies with high pricing, so many home users opt for slower 1-10MBit speeds. I think the US still ranks in the top 10 in terms of speed and infrastructure, although the highest ranking countries are small ones such as switzerland - logistics makes it much easier to upgrade small geographic areas i'd imagine.

Anyway, I would love it if everyone had 50MBit internet. Bring on the DD. I haven't used physical media for games for a long time.

I worked over 10 years in the backbone and ISP business. And there is no excuse to why US shouldnt have fast internet besides lack of regulation. Specially people in New York should have sub 50$ gbit. I can as such accept difficulties with people in Wyoming for example. But all the large cities got every single oppotunity on earth to be a freaking goldmine, even with cheap gbit.

So please, dont use those excuses on me.

In China for example its mandatory for new constructions from april to have fiber and being connected. In Sweden the fibernetwork is owned by the publi and rented out as dark fiber. In Denmark the government sets up minimum demands. Thats whats needed, a government that wants broadband so people can start using it to save society cost. I can only do my taxes online for example, there is no such thing as paper.

 

[itsmydamnation]

Are you expecting jaguar to be have even better performance/watt than 22nm atom, despite its process handicap of being built on 28nm? (if you are, then I'd buy that argument given that AMD was able to do just that with their 40nm brazos versus Intel's 32nm atom IIRC)

I expect across the 8 /~20-~25 ( whatever SKU's they make) for jaguar to be the more efficient even if only just a little bit. I expect silvermount to scale to lower wattage. in effect AMD's design for highest efficiency >6-8 watts intel design for highest efficiency <6-8 watts.

What i dont know is what to expect per perf clock with silvermount to look like, As we can see with A-15 vs A-9 vs A-7 vs custom OOOE and all the resources you bring to feed the ALU's has a power cost.

Given this and Intels plans for silver-mount to go head on into the phone market how much resources for OOOE is ATOM going to have, how complex a L/S system, how aggressive the perfetchers how complex the scheduler etc. I think we are going to see either 1 of two things:

1. a very light amount of OOOE resources and basic L/S and scheduling systems, its goal is simply to give a modest bump to perf per clock but there is still a significant delta between throughput of 1 thread and 2 threads on the core but have a very small incremental power cost.

2. A comparable amount of OOOE resources to jaguar with comparable perf per clock and a much smaller delta in throughput between a single thread and SMT with a higher power cost.

Now my logic tells me, given:

1. intels desire for phone wins
2. intel pushing IB/HW down into less then 17 watts ( TDP,SDP,south bridges etc i'll just leave that number at 17 for now....lol)

that silvermount is more likely to be the 1st one rather then the later one otherwise they are potentially limiting the phone market opportunities just to compete with themselves so to speak.

The Intel Atom is still better then a similarly clocked AMD Bobcat architecture, at the same clock speed, at non-3D applications. The Jaguar is a slightly improved version of Bobcat.

you are completely incorrect there buddy, ATOM's throughout is slightly ahead of Bobcat ( being SMT and the other not)Bobcat single thread performance is way ahead of ATOM. Also Jaguar isn't a little increment, it doubles the width of pretty much every data path, it adds 128bit FPU's. It adds another level of prefetching ( a very far ahead fetcher the drops data into the L2) and makes vast changes to its OOOE ( its detailed at a high level in there hotchips 2012 presentation)

 

[Lonbjerg]

28, not 20.

Isn't TSMC's 28nm what Intel calls 32nm?

 

[blackened23]

I worked over 10 years in the backbone and ISP business. And there is no excuse to why US shouldnt have fast internet besides lack of regulation. Specially people in New York should have sub 50$ gbit. I can as such accept difficulties with people in Wyoming for example. But all the large cities got every single oppotunity on earth to be a freaking goldmine, even with cheap gbit.

So please, dont use those excuses on me.

In China for example its mandatory for new constructions from april to have fiber and being connected. In Sweden the fibernetwork is owned by the publi and rented out as dark fiber. In Denmark the government sets up minimum demands. Thats whats needed, a government that wants broadband so people can start using it to save society cost. I can only do my taxes online for example, there is no such thing as paper.

Whoa! I have no idea where this is coming from, calm down. I was merely pointing out that many in the US don't have super fast 100MBit internet. I agree with you, I think it should be more widely available and affordable, and while many areas of the US DO have fast internet - most internet here is tiered.

That means you can (in most areas) buy 3Mbit, 5Mbit, 10Mbit, 20, 50, 100, and so on. Since most providers are monopolies, it can get expensive. So here's where the problem begins: most users opt for the super cheap 20$ per month 1-3MBit plan. I don't think that is ideal for DD or streaming.

Do I like this? No. Is this the way things should be here? I dont think so, No. I agree with you that it should change; I think wideband should be more widespread and more affordable for the masses. Besides which, you make it sound as if the US has terrible internet. That really is not the case, a lot of areas have wideband but it is expensive; The US also consistently ranks 10th or 11th worldwide I believe in terms of infrastructure (it could have changed recently, not sure).

I'm just merely pointing out that since it is so expensive, that many people in the US/canada/etc still opt for physical media which is why MS has to support it

 

[ShintaiDK]

Isn't TSMC's 28nm what Intel calls 32nm?

No, its a halfnode of 32.

 

[itsmydamnation]

Isn't TSMC's 28nm what Intel calls 32nm?

no, TSMC actually cancelled 32nm unlike 45nm which they just renamed 40nm.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Whoa! I have no idea where this is coming from, calm down. I was merely pointing out that many in the US don't have super fast 100MBit internet. I agree with you, I think it should be more widely available and affordable, and while many areas of the US DO have fast internet - most internet here is tiered.

That means you can (in most areas) buy 3Mbit, 5Mbit, 10Mbit, 20, 50, 100, and so on. Since most providers are monopolies, it can get expensive. So here's where the problem begins: most users opt for the super cheap 20$ per month 1-3MBit plan. I don't think that is ideal for DD or streaming.

Do I like this? No. Is this the way things should be here? I dont think so, No. I agree with you that it should change; I think wideband should be more widespread and more affordable for the masses. Besides which, you make it sound as if the US has terrible internet. That really is not the case, a lot of areas have wideband but it is expensive; The US also consistently ranks 10th or 11th worldwide I believe in terms of infrastructure (it could have changed recently, not sure).

I'm just merely pointing out that since it is so expensive, that many people in the US/canada/etc still opt for physical media which is why MS has to support it

Broadband in the US is ranked 15 in OECD in terms of subscribers per 100 people.

I just want to point a huge myth out. It got absolutely nothing to do with size thats often used ass the primary excuse. You can only blame the politicians for you dont have faster and cheaper uncapped internet.

Companies act like companies do. So while their behaviour aint "ethical". Its not them to blame.

 

[Fx1]

I like blu ray personally. Storing 100gb on a disk works out way cheaper than 100gb on a HDD