Nvidia: Not Enough Money in a PS4 GPU for us to bother

[blackened23]

I agree with you that PCs and consoles are not mutually exclusive and you can enjoy both. But why do you need a $2500 PC to compete with a console?

Who says they're competing, gaming is a hobby of mine so I enjoy both? I also do more than gaming on the PC. I like XBLG for online connectivity, some games which have dead multiplayer on the PC are pretty lively with XBLG. And then there are the exclusives. Other games I prefer on the PC.

 

[sontin]

yes exactly, right now the GPU stalls instead, on an APU instead of stalling the CPU can fetch the data for the GPU.

You need a OnChip communication between CPU and GPU. As long the CPU and GPU only communicate over the memory bus it is not better than to use the PCIe bus. And because that is a serial workload the CPU is working on the next frame before the GPU finished the current. So there is no real bottleneck.

what does shader COMPILING have to do with anything? everything a GPU does is controlled by a driver, guess what controls the driver

It's the stage in which your "complex DX11+ shader" problem will be resolved. The driver is compiling the shaders in the right order for the gpu. There is no need for another communication with the CPU.

its a throughput "problem", its about sustained utilisation. here is an awesome thread about it: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=61567

you have a time budget to render a frame, PC's cant issue draw calls as fast as Consoles, this is waisted ms.

There is no frame limit on a pc. Consoles working with 30FPS or 33ms. So they need a much faster API system to handle the workload. PC hardware is much faster especially the cpu part.

 

[itsmydamnation]

You need a OnChip communication between CPU and GPU. As long the CPU and GPU only communicate over the memory bus it is not better than to use the PCIe bus. And because that is a serial workload the CPU is working on the next frame before the GPU finished the current. So there is no real bottleneck.



It's the stage in which your "complex DX11+ shader" problem will be resolved. The driver is compiling the shaders in the right order for the gpu. There is no need for another communication with the CPU.



There is no frame limit on a pc. Consoles working with 30FPS or 33ms. So they need a much faster API system to handle the workload. PC hardware is much faster especially the cpu part.

No offence but i give up, you don't actually understand how a GPU works even at a high level, Compiling a shader from HLSL at run time has absolutely nothing to do with anything of significance. You will note on Consoles they don't do run time Compiling of shaders because they dont need to because they have only 1 target. Compiling of a shader HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT'S EXECUTION.


im out, dunning Kruger effect strikes again, i have better things to do with my time.

 

[sontin]

The graphics pipeline is straight forward. There is no reason to communicate with the CPU after the processing again. All the shader compiling for the GPU happens before the GPU is seeing the data.

For graphics workload a APU is not better than a discrete GPU.

 

[BladeVenom]

If you want to get super technical about things, the xbox 360 did exceed the capability of PCs at release - the 360 had a unified shader model before even PCs did.

Yet PC games still looked better. The first cross platform graphics intense game after the 360 came out, that I remember was Oblivion. It looked better on the PC. http://www.gamespot.com/features/6147028/p-2.html

The 360 was also hampered by a weak CPU, and not much memory.

 

[Arachnotronic]

As someone who spends a great deal of time analyzing the financials of AMD, Nvidia, Intel, and others...

AMD absolutely needed to do this deal; without it, bankruptcy would be a very legitimate concern in the face of the widening gap between Intel and AMD in PC processors/APUs, and AMD's practical nonexistence (and lack of focus) in the higher margin, higher ASP segments of the GPU (Quadro, Tesla) business that Nvidia dominates.

Nvidia is a well oiled machine that executes and delivers time and again, learning quickly from its past mistakes, picking the battles it fights judiciously, and ultimately wins. AMD is a company that in 40 years has done nothing but lose money, as it has been hampered by piss-poor executive decision after piss-poor executive decision.

I don't know what the motivations for the "AMD fans" or the "Nvidia fans" are here, but let's not forget that these are businesses and we should ultimately judge them by their success at operating like them. Nvidia is a winner, and AMD so far has been a loser. That being said, winning the consoles may be what it takes to get them to cash flow positive in 2H 2013, and I suspect that they gave Sony and Microsoft very, very nice deals here.

Oh, and to the people thinking that PC games will suddenly be optimized for GCN and leave Nvidia out in the dust - not going to be so easy. Nvidia spends quite a bit of money working with developers to make sure things are pristine, and as you can see with Nvidia's execution on the driver side (remember the TressFX debacle that was quickly resolved?), the company will make sure to keep its dominant position in PC gaming barring another Fermi-like disaster.

Kepler was a brilliant design that was much cheaper to make than AMD's parts, while at the same time performed well enough where it counted (PC graphics) to warrant premium ASP. The really high end compute stuff sells for $1,000 and is routinely selling out. Nvidia knows how to run its business - it's AMD that has problems. I know gamers here love that AMD cards are cheaper, but believe me this is not by choice.

Anyway, get back to arguing about whether Nvidia should have taken the low margin console business - but my simple response to this is that Nvidia has a much smaller headcount than AMD, so it needs to partition its resources effectively into places that have very high ROI. Look at GRID, look at Tesla/Quadro, and even look at GeForce. High margin money makers with great technology leverage across the product lineups. Tegra, which currently is NOT profitable for Nvidia, has a real shot at becoming a very nice moneymaker for the company. Nvidia has the modem, has the GPU IP, has the software guys, and is producing better and better SoCs and winning bigger and bigger designs each year. Gross margins for mobile SoCs are 50%, so all that Nvidia needs is volume, which should come as it rides the secular tablet growth wave and as consolidation hits.

Nvidia did not need console wins, but AMD is likely to benefit significantly from it.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

As someone who spends a great deal of time analyzing the financials of AMD, Nvidia, Intel, and others...

AMD absolutely needed to do this deal; without it, bankruptcy would be a very legitimate concern in the face of the widening gap between Intel and AMD in PC processors/APUs, and AMD's practical nonexistence (and lack of focus) in the higher margin, higher ASP segments of the GPU (Quadro, Tesla) business that Nvidia dominates.

Nvidia is a well oiled machine that executes and delivers time and again, learning quickly from its past mistakes, picking the battles it fights judiciously, and ultimately wins. AMD is a company that in 40 years has done nothing but lose money, as it has been hampered by piss-poor executive decision after piss-poor executive decision.

I don't know what the motivations for the "AMD fans" or the "Nvidia fans" are here, but let's not forget that these are businesses and we should ultimately judge them by their success at operating like them. Nvidia is a winner, and AMD so far has been a loser. That being said, winning the consoles may be what it takes to get them to cash flow positive in 2H 2013, and I suspect that they gave Sony and Microsoft very, very nice deals here.

Oh, and to the people thinking that PC games will suddenly be optimized for GCN and leave Nvidia out in the dust - not going to be so easy. Nvidia spends quite a bit of money working with developers to make sure things are pristine, and as you can see with Nvidia's execution on the driver side (remember the TressFX debacle that was quickly resolved?), the company will make sure to keep its dominant position in PC gaming barring another Fermi-like disaster.

Kepler was a brilliant design that was much cheaper to make than AMD's parts, while at the same time performed well enough where it counted (PC graphics) to warrant premium ASP. The really high end compute stuff sells for $1,000 and is routinely selling out. Nvidia knows how to run its business - it's AMD that has problems. I know gamers here love that AMD cards are cheaper, but believe me this is not by choice.

Anyway, get back to arguing about whether Nvidia should have taken the low margin console business - but my simple response to this is that Nvidia has a much smaller headcount than AMD, so it needs to partition its resources effectively into places that have very high ROI. Look at GRID, look at Tesla/Quadro, and even look at GeForce. High margin money makers with great technology leverage across the product lineups. Tegra, which currently is NOT profitable for Nvidia, has a real shot at becoming a very nice moneymaker for the company. Nvidia has the modem, has the GPU IP, has the software guys, and is producing better and better SoCs and winning bigger and bigger designs each year. Gross margins for mobile SoCs are 50%, so all that Nvidia needs is volume, which should come as it rides the secular tablet growth wave and as consolidation hits.

Nvidia did not need console wins, but AMD is likely to benefit significantly from it.

TL: DR version = Nvidia has multiple business markets where they already make money. This is a win for AMD, but Nvidia didn't need it to continue dominating their other areas of interest.

In my opinion Nvidia not needing these console deals to survive is a lot different than there not being any money or benefit for Nvidia which is the stance their PR is taking.

It's obviously PR spin from Nvidia.

 

[3DVagabond]

Just because it wouldn't be profitable enough for nVidia doesn't mean that it's the same for AMD. It's likely, because of AMD's prior APU business, that it cost them far less to design the Playstation APU than it would have cost nVidia to design competitive hardware. Then there's the X86 license on AMD's side as well.

 

[blackened23]

Nobody here knows anything about the profitability. What we do have is some here talking about things they don't know in an attempt to talk smack. I do know that nvidia received a 200 million advance for the xbox original GPU in 2001 - Obviously inflation would make the same amount far greater in 2013. That amount doesn't really amount to peanuts for a 2001 figure.

Wasn't there some sort of lawsuit or mediation between microsoft and nvidia involving the original xbox GPU? It's no secret that nvidia wasn't easy to get along with, because microsoft and sony wanted to lower the die size and cost over time with the xbox and PS3 GPUs. Nvidia didn't want to play (with the xbox gpu) because it was "their" IP. So I really don't think nvidia would have had a shot for a contracts anyway, because they made life hard for both microsoft and sony. It was "Nvidia's IP" and they didn't want microsoft and sony improving "THEIR" process. Aside from that, I don't think the amount is peanuts - 200 million in 2001. Admittedly, I don't know how profitable such contracts are currently. Nobody here in this thread knows, either.

What we do know is that if nvidia is being truthful, they wanted to dedicate their engineering resources to other products - presumably their mobile products. Their opportunity costs for theoretically creating a console GPU is diverting attention away from Tegra, and keeping focus on Tegra makes complete sense from a business standpoint... Tegra is a very profitable product and diverting resources away from that probably wouldn't be the best idea. While I think that good profits can be had from consoles - as I mentioned, it resulted in a 200 million advance in 2001 for nvidia - that still is not as high as what a successful mobile processor can do in terms of profits.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Haven't both ATI and nVidia been burned in the past with consoles? They're probably learning from their previous mistakes and simply either want more money per part or more cost to cover the engineering of making a special chip to sell to Sony, MS or Nintendo.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Tegra is a very profitable product and diverting resources away from that probably wouldn't be the best idea. While I think that good profits can be had from consoles - as I mentioned, it resulted in a 200 million advance in 2001 for nvidia - that still is not as high as what a successful mobile processor can do in terms of profits.

Errmmm....not quite. Tegra is actually losing Nvidia >=$100M/quarter. The gross margins are fine, but they don't yet have the volume to cover all of the expenses. I expect that when they finally have Grey addressing the phone market that there is a dramatic increase in profitability, but just servicing tablets right now isn't a winning proposition.

That being said, I do think if they pull it off and become a legitimate Qualcomm competitor, that they will grow their business at the top & bottom lines, and could very well become the next big semiconductor growth story. I just wish they would stop with the BS benchmarks of T4 v.s. cripped i5/i7 results in the Geekbench database - very disingenuous.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Doesn't this contract have to be money per part because AMD owns the x86 license and the console manufacturers do not?

From the xbox 360 wiki:

As of September 30, 2012, 70 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide...

From the PS3 Wiki:

As of November 4, 2012, 70 million PlayStation 3s have been sold worldwide

So say it's only $10 per APU (highly doubt it's this low). 140,000,000x10=1.4 billion dollars.

The AMD haters think that that is a negligable amount of money eve if that's over 6 years? What if it is closer to $100 per APU they provide? This is huge money.

Even at $100 bucks to AMD, Microsoft and Sony could feasible get the rest of the parts for a single console for around $100, and still have a profit of $100 per console with a MSRP of $300. They will not be selling these consoles for a loss which is huge for them, because they lost money in the beginning for every console sold.

 

[3DVagabond]

A product with a $200 BoP could never retail for $300.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I don't think any of the console makers would do for a $100 per chip profit part from anyone, only company that can successfully do that is apple.

 

[AnandThenMan]

I fail to see any downside for AMD here. They already largely have the tech, the PS4 APU silicon is an evolution of what they've been putting into the market for several years. Plus AMD is able to take the tech going into the PS4 and leverage that into other products/markets.

It's simply a good fit for Sony and AMD, and a non starter for Nvidia because they don't have the tech anyway. It's not any more complicated than that, and it's extremely obvious that Nvidia is doing damage control. They can talk all they want but failing to get silicon in any of the next gen consoles is a blow for them. But again if you read between the lines, Nvidia is probably telling the truth unintentionally. If Sony was forced to source a GPU and CPU separately,that divides the pie in two and would not leave much profit to made by Nvidia. AMD can take a lower percentage on a larger number because they are supplying both in one package.

And it doesn't hurt that AMD is going to be supplying similar tech to Microsoft. This is the perfect way for AMD to propagate their APU's/graphic tech into the marketplace by side stepping the OEM barriers imposed by Intel. Smart business.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

A product with a $200 BoP could never retail for $300.

Why not exactly?

 

[HurleyBird]

Yet PC games still looked better. The first cross platform graphics intense game after the 360 came out, that I remember was Oblivion. It looked better on the PC. http://www.gamespot.com/features/6147028/p-2.html

Makes sense, as the developers hadn't had a chance to get close to the metal yet so soon after release. That being said, try running Skyrim on that same "high end" PC (AMD Athlon FX-60 and GeForce 7900 GTX) and compare it to the Xbox360. I'm sure the 360 will come out more than on top.

 

[Will Robinson]

As someone who spends a great deal of time analyzing the financials of AMD, Nvidia, Intel, and others...

AMD absolutely needed to do this deal; without it, bankruptcy would be a very legitimate concern in the face of the widening gap between Intel and AMD in PC processors/APUs, and AMD's practical nonexistence (and lack of focus) in the higher margin, higher ASP segments of the GPU (Quadro, Tesla) business that Nvidia dominates.

Nvidia is a well oiled machine that executes and delivers time and again, learning quickly from its past mistakes, picking the battles it fights judiciously, and ultimately wins. AMD is a company that in 40 years has done nothing but lose money, as it has been hampered by piss-poor executive decision after piss-poor executive decision.

I don't know what the motivations for the "AMD fans" or the "Nvidia fans" are here, but let's not forget that these are businesses and we should ultimately judge them by their success at operating like them. Nvidia is a winner, and AMD so far has been a loser. That being said, winning the consoles may be what it takes to get them to cash flow positive in 2H 2013, and I suspect that they gave Sony and Microsoft very, very nice deals here.

Oh, and to the people thinking that PC games will suddenly be optimized for GCN and leave Nvidia out in the dust - not going to be so easy. Nvidia spends quite a bit of money working with developers to make sure things are pristine, and as you can see with Nvidia's execution on the driver side (remember the TressFX debacle that was quickly resolved?), the company will make sure to keep its dominant position in PC gaming barring another Fermi-like disaster.

Kepler was a brilliant design that was much cheaper to make than AMD's parts, while at the same time performed well enough where it counted (PC graphics) to warrant premium ASP. The really high end compute stuff sells for $1,000 and is routinely selling out. Nvidia knows how to run its business - it's AMD that has problems. I know gamers here love that AMD cards are cheaper, but believe me this is not by choice.

Anyway, get back to arguing about whether Nvidia should have taken the low margin console business - but my simple response to this is that Nvidia has a much smaller headcount than AMD, so it needs to partition its resources effectively into places that have very high ROI. Look at GRID, look at Tesla/Quadro, and even look at GeForce. High margin money makers with great technology leverage across the product lineups. Tegra, which currently is NOT profitable for Nvidia, has a real shot at becoming a very nice moneymaker for the company. Nvidia has the modem, has the GPU IP, has the software guys, and is producing better and better SoCs and winning bigger and bigger designs each year. Gross margins for mobile SoCs are 50%, so all that Nvidia needs is volume, which should come as it rides the secular tablet growth wave and as consolidation hits.

Nvidia did not need console wins, but AMD is likely to benefit significantly from it.

Some of your thoughts are valid..others way off base.
AMD (GPU)fans like their hardware and the way it works...not the company per se.
Any company loyalty there would be a holdover from their ATi days when they were a cutting edge,highly innovative company.
They have managed to produce class leading hardware in just about every generation since the days of 9700 Pro so its a case of going with the good stuff not bravely supporting a failing company as you portray it.
The console wins will provide a much needed steady revenue stream which should benefit the company greatly.
NVDA fans ought to be damn glad AMD/ATi are still in the game otherwise $1000 Titan like prices would be the norm these days.
Remember $600+ GTX260's and 280s getting brought back to reality with $300 HD4870s?

 

[NIGELG]

As someone who spends a great deal of time analyzing the financials of AMD, Nvidia, Intel, and others...

AMD absolutely needed to do this deal; without it, bankruptcy would be a very legitimate concern in the face of the widening gap between Intel and AMD in PC processors/APUs, and AMD's practical nonexistence (and lack of focus) in the higher margin, higher ASP segments of the GPU (Quadro, Tesla) business that Nvidia dominates.

Nvidia is a well oiled machine that executes and delivers time and again, learning quickly from its past mistakes, picking the battles it fights judiciously, and ultimately wins. AMD is a company that in 40 years has done nothing but lose money, as it has been hampered by piss-poor executive decision after piss-poor executive decision.

I don't know what the motivations for the "AMD fans" or the "Nvidia fans" are here, but let's not forget that these are businesses and we should ultimately judge them by their success at operating like them. Nvidia is a winner, and AMD so far has been a loser. That being said, winning the consoles may be what it takes to get them to cash flow positive in 2H 2013, and I suspect that they gave Sony and Microsoft very, very nice deals here.

Oh, and to the people thinking that PC games will suddenly be optimized for GCN and leave Nvidia out in the dust - not going to be so easy. Nvidia spends quite a bit of money working with developers to make sure things are pristine, and as you can see with Nvidia's execution on the driver side (remember the TressFX debacle that was quickly resolved?), the company will make sure to keep its dominant position in PC gaming barring another Fermi-like disaster.

Kepler was a brilliant design that was much cheaper to make than AMD's parts, while at the same time performed well enough where it counted (PC graphics) to warrant premium ASP. The really high end compute stuff sells for $1,000 and is routinely selling out. Nvidia knows how to run its business - it's AMD that has problems. I know gamers here love that AMD cards are cheaper, but believe me this is not by choice.

Anyway, get back to arguing about whether Nvidia should have taken the low margin console business - but my simple response to this is that Nvidia has a much smaller headcount than AMD, so it needs to partition its resources effectively into places that have very high ROI. Look at GRID, look at Tesla/Quadro, and even look at GeForce. High margin money makers with great technology leverage across the product lineups. Tegra, which currently is NOT profitable for Nvidia, has a real shot at becoming a very nice moneymaker for the company. Nvidia has the modem, has the GPU IP, has the software guys, and is producing better and better SoCs and winning bigger and bigger designs each year. Gross margins for mobile SoCs are 50%, so all that Nvidia needs is volume, which should come as it rides the secular tablet growth wave and as consolidation hits.

Nvidia did not need console wins, but AMD is likely to benefit significantly from it.

Your handle is ''Intel 17''?Sorry Man,I can't take you seriously.

 

[blackened23]

Your handle is ''Intel 17''?Sorry Man,I can't take you seriously.

Hmm? His handle? Why? Nothing is unreasonable about his post even if you disagree.

 

[3DVagabond]

Why not exactly?

There would be no money made by anyone except for the BoP OEMs. If the parts cost $200 they'd still have to make the product, package, ship, distribute, etc.. Keep in mind that each of those steps have multiple costs attached to them. Manufacturer has a markup, distributors have a mark up, retailers have a mark up. Then there's support to the developers and after sales support. There was the cost of developing the product and then marketing it. $100 per item isn't going to cover all of that.

 

[Arachnotronic]

NVDA fans ought to be damn glad AMD/ATi are still in the game otherwise $1000 Titan like prices would be the norm these days.

No, because the general GPU-buying population would not be able to afford $1000 cards.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Your handle is ''Intel 17''?Sorry Man,I can't take you seriously.

Your loss.

 

[cplusplus]

What do you mean "without PC's bloated dx11 api" ?????
Wouldn't a console with or without CPU/GPU on same die utilize DX11 api?

Nope. They'd have the ability to, but they wouldn't necessarily have to. Both consoles will have both a high level language that they can use, and a low level one they can use to extract more performance. The PS3 has both of these, for example. The first (high level) is an OpenGL variant, but the second (low level) is called libGCM and doesn't contain a lot of the API overhead that DX/OGL do. And I believe the same holds true with the 360 (except their high level language is a DX variant).

 

[Will Robinson]

No, because the general GPU-buying population would not be able to afford $1000 cards.

Oh I see,an NVDA dominated market would be better for consumers then...I get it.

Kind of like Intel without AMD huh?:whiste: