Rumor: Playstation 4 will have AMD CPU and GPU (or an APU)

[jpiniero]

To the wall? Closer to 300W(don't have figures for PSU rating, but they have a 230W PSU in the least power intensive PS3 I have seen(320GB). A 75Watt GPU for a new high end console would be incredibly low.

http://wpweb2.tepper.cmu.edu/ceic/pdfs/CEIC_11_01.pdf

I'm assuming that when they quote those draw numbers, it's to the wall. My guess is that the PSU is rated at 230W for reliability reasons.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

I can't see an Xman release from Sony or Microsoft. PS3 has yet to be maxed out and I doubt Microsoft wants to rush anything out the door because of the RROD issue suffered last time they did that. Christmas 2013 is when I expect anything.

Lol the hardware in the PS3 is ancient, it was maxed out years ago.

 

[Fox5]

PS3 cpu was a weak core processor, with 6 SPE's for floating point math.
Cell is basically a dead end design, whereas AMD's gpus are some of the most cost effective floating point monsters out there. All AMD needs is some decent amounts of cache integrated into the gpu (hint, unify cpu and gpu L3 cache, which I think they already plan to do), and a bulldozer derived cpu with tight integration with the gpu would be a far better design than cell ever had. AMD is hurting right now, so they might give sony a sweet heart deal on costs, maybe even sell the design.

That said, last gen of consoles had a 200W design TDP, while the hottest thing to ever grace an AMD socket was only 140W. Will Sony leave that much power budget on the tablet and go for a slimmer, smaller console, or would we have the freaking AMD cpu ever produced?

 

[BenSkywalker]

http://wpweb2.tepper.cmu.edu/ceic/pdfs/CEIC_11_01.pdf

That was good for a laugh, not anything approaching believable, but good for a laugh If you don't understand why, read the entire paper.

Cell is basically a dead end design, whereas AMD's gpus are some of the most cost effective floating point monsters out there.

As long as you only want theoretical numbers, AMD's GPUs have been very good. Trying to program them to get them to do anything useful, well, not so much. I understand that their new architecture has made obvious huge efforts to rectify this, evident by the utterly shockingly low performance/mm on their current node for graphics, it remains to be seen if it will be competitive with what they would be dealing with from the competition(a current Cell could use 8 cores and close to 100 SPEs for FPU tasks and be much easier to code for then what we have seen from AMD).

A top of line Intel CPU would be a huge step backwards for the consoles, talking about the garbage AMD can't get the trash guys to haul away for them..... not very appealing to put it mildly

 

[Ancalagon44]

But... but... but... the Cell processor is amazing, its the best that ever lived, it is STILL not being used to its full potential! Why would Sony abandon it, why would they not make a Cell 2 or Cell Plus, unless... unless its not the best?

NOOOOOOO!!!!!

 

[-Slacker-]

No, the Cell processor is definitely the best, just ask BenSkywalker.

 

[Anteaus]

A top of line Intel CPU would be a huge step backwards for the consoles, talking about the garbage AMD can't get the trash guys to haul away for them..... not very appealing to put it mildly

So you're saying is that a high end i7 chip would be a huge step backwards? That's a strange thing to say considering the i7 has been systematically destroying the competition by large margins since it's inception. What makes these chips specifically advantageous to consoles is that they are very efficient at dealing with multimedia, considering they were designed for that purpose, with efficient GPU pipelines.

 

[BD2003]

So you're saying is that a high end i7 chip would be a huge step backwards? That's a strange thing to say considering the i7 has been systematically destroying the competition by large margins since it's inception. What makes these chips specifically advantageous to consoles is that they are very efficient at dealing with multimedia, considering they were designed for that purpose, with efficient GPU pipelines.

I think he's referring to its GPU.

 

[BenSkywalker]

So you're saying is that a high end i7 chip would be a huge step backwards?

On an architectural basis? Absolutely, without a doubt, no question.

That's a strange thing to say considering the i7 has been systematically destroying the competition by large margins since it's inception.

Bragging about having the fastest x86 chip is akin to bragging you have the fastest tricycle.

What makes these chips specifically advantageous to consoles is that they are very efficient at dealing with multimedia, considering they were designed for that purpose, with efficient GPU pipelines.

In terms of efficient, i7 is shockingly bad next to the ARM based offerings, in terms of peak performance i7 is terrible next to pretty much anything modern that consumes over 20 watts not made by AMD.

No, the Cell processor is definitely the best, just ask BenSkywalker.

You know what a six core i7 and Cell have in common? About the same peak performance. It would be stupid to take a huge leap backwards in terms of architecture(and that is ignoring that AMD is terrible compared to Intel for CPUs).

No, the Cell processor is definitely the best, just ask BenSkywalker.

Pointing out that a new Camaro will blow the doors off of a 1974 Pinto with a cracked head in no way fathomable means you are saying it is faster then a Veyron. It doesn't have to be Cell, but x86 is *terrible* for a console processor. I use Cell as right now it competes with the fastest CPUs Intel has released to date and it came out *six years ago*. x86 sucks for computational power.

Why would Sony abandon it, why would they not make a Cell 2 or Cell Plus, unless... unless its not the best?

R&D costs would be the best reason not to make another Cell style processor, but there are a lot of better solutions then x86 and even if they were dumb enough to go with x86 there are much better solutions then AMD.

 

[Anteaus]

We aren't trying to put satellites into orbit. We are talking bout games. No one denies that the Cell is a amazing number cruncher nor that it wouldn't work well in various applications, but you need to pick the right tool for the job. Admittidly the X86 is old tech, but we are talking about a game console, and the current mainstream i5-i7 chips are more than enough to power a game console at 1920X1080 when paired with a reasonable GPU. While it's true we won't be able to decrypt NSA communcations with it, I'm pretty sure that's not the target demographic. After all, the PS4 and 720 are being designed basically as HTPCs that play games anyways. The pure game console is dead.

In addition, Sony needs to attract developers that have traditionally been programming for X86 processors, and a good way to do that is meeting them half way..not be alienating them by forcing them to use hardware that they aren't familier with that in reality won't necessarily give them a better product.

 

[InfinitySquared]

We aren't trying to put satellites into orbit. We are talking bout games. No one denies that the Cell is a amazing number cruncher nor that it wouldn't work well in various applications, but you need to pick the right tool for the job. Admittidly the X86 is old tech, but we are talking about a game console, and the current mainstream i5-i7 chips are more than enough to power a game console at 1920X1080 when paired with a reasonable GPU. While it's true we won't be able to decrypt NSA communcations with it, I'm pretty sure that's not the target demographic. After all, the PS4 and 720 are being designed basically as HTPCs that play games anyways. The pure game console is dead.

In addition, Sony needs to attract developers that have traditionally been programming for X86 processors, and a good way to do that is meeting them half way..not be alienating them by forcing them to use hardware that they aren't familier with that in reality won't necessarily give them a better product.

1 - an i7 in a console is dumb for various reasons, such as heat dissipation, and the fact that the supporting architecture is PC focused, not Console focused. An overheating console, where have we heard that before...

2 - Since when did the PS3 have trouble attracting developers? There is no need to pander to x86 devs. None at all.

 

[Anteaus]

1 - an i7 in a console is dumb for various reasons, such as heat dissipation, and the fact that the supporting architecture is PC focused, not Console focused. An overheating console, where have we heard that before...

2 - Since when did the PS3 have trouble attracting developers? There is no need to pander to x86 devs. None at all.

1. Those are absolutely legit concerns about why i7 shouldn't be used in a console. I doubt they were even in contention for that use in the first place. My response was its legitimacy from a pure performance standpoint, not whether it made sense in regards to thermal and noise considerations.

2. From a game release perspective, even considering that the 360 had a year head start, the PS3 still lagged in overall game releases in various catagories. I'm not saying the games released for PS3 were bad, just that the 360 has more choices. I attribute this due to developers that traditionally made PC games creating content for the 360. There is no doubt that using DX on the 360 was a great move by MS.

 

[jpiniero]

That was good for a laugh, not anything approaching believable, but good for a laugh If you don't understand why, read the entire paper.

True, but the power draw numbers for the PS3 and 360 are in the ballpark in what I've seen elsewhere.

In addition, Sony needs to attract developers that have traditionally been programming for X86 processors

No they're not - they're developing for PowerPC. That's what the 360 uses.
It would make sense for Sony to stick to a similar architecture that the 720 has for cross platform games. There hasn't been anything that I've seen that suggests that MS is moving away from PowerPC.

 

[Bryf50]

On an architectural basis? Absolutely, without a doubt, no question.



Bragging about having the fastest x86 chip is akin to bragging you have the fastest tricycle.



In terms of efficient, i7 is shockingly bad next to the ARM based offerings, in terms of peak performance i7 is terrible next to pretty much anything modern that consumes over 20 watts not made by AMD.
No. Yes ARM socs consume very little power. In return they have very little performance. Efficiency is power/performance. Theres nothing inherent to ARM that makes it have magically low effeciency. If an ARM CPU was built to be as fast as a Sandy Bridge CPU it would consume a similar amount of power. The same can also be said in reverse. If an x86 cpu was built to be as slow as an ARM CPU. We're seeing this happen right now with Intels x86 SOCs.


You know what a six core i7 and Cell have in common? About the same peak performance. It would be stupid to take a huge leap backwards in terms of architecture(and that is ignoring that AMD is terrible compared to Intel for CPUs).



Pointing out that a new Camaro will blow the doors off of a 1974 Pinto with a cracked head in no way fathomable means you are saying it is faster then a Veyron. It doesn't have to be Cell, but x86 is *terrible* for a console processor. I use Cell as right now it competes with the fastest CPUs Intel has released to date and it came out *six years ago*. x86 sucks for computational power.



R&D costs would be the best reason not to make another Cell style processor, but there are a lot of better solutions then x86 and even if they were dumb enough to go with x86 there are much better solutions then AMD.

SOOO much misinformation it makes my brain hurt. I really don't know where to start. I think you should look up some of the articles Anand did on the cell a while back.

Here's a post i found that says it better than i can.

Well then you would assume wrong, since x86 does not limit the modern CPU that much as they use micro-code to fit the instructions to the hardware, x86 ops are just translated to a way the CPU can process them best.

Implying that current desktop processors from AMD and Intel are "old tech" is ludicrous, the comment that "Cell is of a newer architecture with better optimisations and engineering effort" is even more ridiculous as the Phenom and Core2 are actually far and away more advanced than the cell is and are much more intelligent CPUs, compared to the cell which is a more like a VLIW processor being excessively compiler dependant and difficult to optimise and near impossible to keep fully utilised in something as complex as a game environment.

Cell was not built to be the most powerful processor, it was built to offer as much theoretical power per transistor, as a result it IS a compromised design since engineering trade-offs were made, it lacks in order processing, branch prediction, and its SPEs have limited functionality. Its main PPC based CPU is also stoneage compared to something like the Core 2.

 

[BenSkywalker]

No one denies that the Cell is a amazing number cruncher nor that it wouldn't work well in various applications, but you need to pick the right tool for the job.

This is *precisely* why x86 is shockingly bad for consoles. Killer OoO integer performance is very important for word processing- pretty close to useless for gaming. Monster vector performance is extremely useful for gaming- where x86 in relative terms is at its' poorest. Everything x86 is great at is nearly useless in a console, everything x86 is terrible at is very important in a console.

In addition, Sony needs to attract developers that have traditionally been programming for X86 processors

Why does Sony need to attract PC developers? They can all fail developing for x86 if they want. Given PC game sales versus console game sales Sony would miss close to nothing. The only areas where PC games truly excel is MMOs and RTSs, and being comfortable with a code base isn't going to change the fact that consoles simply aren't going to be good for those types of games.

I think you should look up some of the articles Anand did on the cell a while back.

Carmack explained how Cell was superior to the i7. Anand said Cell was inferior to the Pentium4. You can pick who to trust on coding expertise.