PS4: new kits shipping now, AMD A10 used as base

[pelov]

b) Why would you want to remove the vector units? Game code is an ideal use case for vector units.

There's still unnecessary clutter, though.

And AMD has said they were removing MMX completely in Steamroller along with a redesign of the FPUs. If it's a Piledriver core then it's got to be a custom Piledriver core

 

[Cerb]

If I'm not mistaken, couldn't amd also drop support for some instruction sets (like mmx, sse, etc) from the cpu that are deemed unnecessary by Sony? Realistically if Sony is going to do an apu here, then it's going to have to be manufactured very cheaply en mass, and large dies will cut into that. But couldn't there be savings to be found by culling some transistors from the CPU as well?

Why remove MMX and SSE? They take up basically no space and power, these days, and 90% of what makes them up are required by the newer vector extensions, which are used all the time (SSE2, FI, is commonly used for scalar arithmetic, and has mature compiler support).

While there may be removable features, the only reasonable things to actually remove from the CPU die would be cache and cores (possibly IA32 support, if AMD happened to make their decoders in a way that they could do that).

 

[inf64]

There's still unnecessary clutter, though.

And AMD has said they were removing MMX completely in Steamroller along with a redesign of the FPUs. If it's a Piledriver core then it's got to be a custom Piledriver core

MMX will not be removed in SR core,just the re balancing of execution resources that are responsible for MMX instruction execution.

 

[cytg111]

this "modified" apu .. who would own the rights? Would amd be able to pump these out to other markets as well, or are they likely to have an 'exclusive' deal with sony?

 

[Kenmitch]

this "modified" apu .. who would own the rights? Would amd be able to pump these out to other markets as well, or are they likely to have an 'exclusive' deal with sony?

I'd tend to believe it would depend on the " modified " part(s) of the apu in question.

 

[NTMBK]

this "modified" apu .. who would own the rights? Would amd be able to pump these out to other markets as well, or are they likely to have an 'exclusive' deal with sony?

In the last round of chips, IBM held onto the rights to sell their PowerPC core out of the Cell to any other customers they felt like. (Including Microsoft.)

 

[cytg111]

maybe its the re-evaluated kaveri "replacement"..

 

[ShintaiDK]

There's still unnecessary clutter, though.

And AMD has said they were removing MMX completely in Steamroller along with a redesign of the FPUs. If it's a Piledriver core then it's got to be a custom Piledriver core

Removing MMX basicly means you lose 32bit compability. I dont think users would like that random software just didnt work.

MMX, 3DNow!, SSE1 and x87 is basicly only gone in pure Windows 64bit. And x87 is still there tho and cant be removed due to some compability modes. SSE2 is to be used instead of x87.

 

[NTMBK]

MMX, 3DNow!, SSE1 and x87 is basicly only gone in pure Windows 64bit.

MMX and 3DNow may be little used, sure, but SSE1 is most definitely not! SSE2 is not a replacement for SSE, it is a supplement.