Sony Working on AMD Ryzen LLVM Compiler Improvements, Possibly for PlayStation 5

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Phoronix is speculating that the next PlayStation will likely be powered by a Ryzen CPU/APU based on information gleaned from Simon Pilgrim’s LinkedIn profile and recent GitHub submissions. Pilgrim, who serves as one of Sony’s top programmers, appears to be spending much of his time tuning Ryzen for a future product.

It's interesting that Sony is working on upstream LLVM improvements specific to AMD Zen processors when they aren't currently shipping any Ryzen/EPYC-based systems. But let's not forget that the PlayStation 4 is powered by a semi-custom AMD Jaguar CPU with GCN Radeon graphics. On top of that, Sony indeed uses LLVM/Clang as the compiler for the PlayStation 4.
 
Good. Jaguar really hampered the current generation, a "big" core like Ryzen is exactly what consoles need.
 
I would like to see more stream processors in the next gen APU.11 stream processors is fine for mass market desktop. Gamers need more. It might cannibalize add in card sales for now to release something like that now but next spring everything will move to Vega from Polaris. Still have not seen the rumored Vega28 and Vega32 which were validated by Korea Radio Labs. Those are probably mobile parts not released yet.
 
Patton187 said:
Sounds good. This bext gen will bring consoles insanely close to pc imho.
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I agree. As low end as the current APUs are comparatively what good developers have squeezed out of the OG PS4 is frankly nothing short of amazing. Ryzen based consoles I’m betting will have a very high level of fidelity more easily (cheaply) achieving God of War and Horizon levels.

I fully suspect resolution vs frame rate battles to still be an ongoing issue though. 30ish at 4kish or 1080p60. With more games probably pushing resolution over just have more and smoother effects. What’s the point of 4K if it’s a slide show with particle effects turned off.
 
An 8 core raven ridge type APU for PS5 would be intriguing. I mean look what they could make a Jaguar chip do for PS4.. and anything Ryzen flavored would probably be 10x faster than cat cores.
 
Seems logical. I would imagine this could well be the last console generation to sport big power chewing CPUs and GPUs, before the game streaming boxes and services take over in the mid 20s. So hopefully whatever they pack into the PS5 will be beefy enough to stick around for 5-6 years.
 
Hope they contribute back. Be cool to have some Ryzen optimizations developed for FreeBSD
 
ChadD said:
Seems logical. I would imagine this could well be the last console generation to sport big power chewing CPUs and GPUs, before the game streaming boxes and services take over in the mid 20s. So hopefully whatever they pack into the PS5 will be beefy enough to stick around for 5-6 years.
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I don't see that happening in the distant future. The way I see it, Sony creates the PS4 but it doesn't sell very well. Mainly because of the remaster craziness that will happen like the last generation. That and more people will jump on PC yet again, like they did when the PS4/Xbone were launched. The only console that might live is whatever Nintendo makes because Nintendo games.

Streaming services will never take off cause they're dumb.
 
ChadD said:
...before the game streaming boxes and services take over in the mid 20s.
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While I don't love game discs, I'm not ready to go all digital either considering there is no resale. But even pretending that someone perfects cloud game streaming in the next 10 years, remember a good chunk of USA doesn't have fast broadband. I know people who can only get 1mb DSL and are happy to have it instead of dialup. (yes, dialup still exists).

But maybe in 10 years, yes, we will all have 6g cell phones as wifi hotspots and they will work everywhere, even in the woods or mountains (cough, yeah right, cough).

And don't even talk about satellite internet, it is so expensive and slow it's not worth mentioning.
 
Burticus said:
And don't even talk about satellite internet, it is so expensive and slow it's not worth mentioning.
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Sorry, but I have to mention satellite internet, since it is set to massively improve in the near future. ;) There are multiple companies planning on sending up swarms of internet satellites in low Earth orbit, which will offer massively improved latency & bandwidth over existing geosynchronous internet satellites. Starlink, which is owned by SpaceX, launched its first two test satellites back in February, and has received FCC approval to set up a constellation of over 4,000 satellites in LEO. They claim that the latency times will be in the 25-40ms range.
 
ChadD said:
Seems logical. I would imagine this could well be the last console generation to sport big power chewing CPUs and GPUs, before the game streaming boxes and services take over in the mid 20s. So hopefully whatever they pack into the PS5 will be beefy enough to stick around for 5-6 years.
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Input latency is still a sticky problem they won't solve anytime soon. Best case (on fiber internet, good programming, low latency video stream encode/decode etc), streaming adds ~2 frames of lag at 30 FPS. That's unacceptable for quicker games, enough to where even casual players would notice/feel nauseous.

Game logic can move to the cloud, but for many years you're going to need a beefy CPU and GPU to render the image itself locally. Eventually, we might get a thin-client with Occulus-like frame warping, but that's still alot of local processing. I don't think you can do full game streaming for fast-paced games without optical computing throughout the entire chain, or a server really close to your house.
 
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ChadD said:
Seems logical. I would imagine this could well be the last console generation to sport big power chewing CPUs and GPUs, before the game streaming boxes and services take over in the mid 20s. So hopefully whatever they pack into the PS5 will be beefy enough to stick around for 5-6 years.
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I dont want a streaming box , but Im afraid you speak true.
 
brucethemoose said:
Input latency is still a sticky problem they won't solve anytime soon. Best case (on fiber internet, good programming, low latency video stream encode/decode etc), streaming adds ~2 frames of lag at 30 FPS. That's unacceptable for quicker games, enough to where even casual players would notice/feel nauseous.

Game logic can move to the cloud, but for many years you're going to need a beefy CPU and GPU to render the image itself locally. Eventually, we might get a thin-client with Occulus-like frame warping, but that's still alot of local processing. I don't think you can do full game streaming for fast-paced games without optical computing throughout the entire chain, or a server really close to your house.
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Perhaps. Hard to say what the future holds. I will say I have seen the NV service on a decent fiber connection and ya if the majority of people could get that.... PC gaming would be dead. I know that sounds like an insane thing to say on [H]. lol Really though $200 streaming hardware and a decent connection and you get detail = ultra settings on the absolute best HW you can buy for 5k. I didn't notice any lag at all myself... didn't seem any worse then anything I had seen on a PS4 or Xbone, but the Visual quality was for sure superior to all but the absolute craziest PC setup.

I think we all have to remember the masses are what matters (saddly perhaps). The TV industry and the Movie industry used to say the same thing about streaming. But physical discs are superior, steaming is going to have annoying drops in quality, Streaming is less. We all know what happened there... and ya 4k Blu discs are wonderful and all but still ALL the disc sales combined (DVD, Blu, UHD Blu) where less then half what Netflix alone made in 2017. Don't even get me started on audio streaming and online music sales... quality there blows too. Audio and videophiles don't drive those markets... and I doubt the gamephiles will drive the gaming market in the future either.
 
I wonder if this will have any impact on desktop GPUs for Linux/FreeBSD? Since ps4 is FreeBSD, I'd anticipate that to be the same for ps5.
 
ChadD said:
Perhaps. Hard to say what the future holds. I will say I have seen the NV service on a decent fiber connection and ya if the majority of people could get that.... PC gaming would be dead. I know that sounds like an insane thing to say on [H]. lol Really though $200 streaming hardware and a decent connection and you get detail = ultra settings on the absolute best HW you can buy for 5k. I didn't notice any lag at all myself... didn't seem any worse then anything I had seen on a PS4 or Xbone, but the Visual quality was for sure superior to all but the absolute craziest PC setup.

I think we all have to remember the masses are what matters (saddly perhaps). The TV industry and the Movie industry used to say the same thing about streaming. But physical discs are superior, steaming is going to have annoying drops in quality, Streaming is less. We all know what happened there... and ya 4k Blu discs are wonderful and all but still ALL the disc sales combined (DVD, Blu, UHD Blu) where less then half what Netflix alone made in 2017. Don't even get me started on audio streaming and online music sales... quality there blows too. Audio and videophiles don't drive those markets... and I doubt the gamephiles will drive the gaming market in the future either.
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Well the gaming industry can still move to digital rentals/services without streaming the game remotely.

You're right, I've heard Nvidia Gamestream is just about perfect as such a thing can be... On a good home setup. A very large chunk of people play Fortnite, PubG, CoD, Halo, CS, Overwatch and so on, and they do it on TVs that aren't particularly fast already. Between the TV, the stream and other factors, 80+ ms of overall input lag is just too noticable for it to catch on, I think.
 
brucethemoose said:
Well the gaming industry can still move to digital rentals/services without streaming the game remotely.

You're right, I've heard Nvidia Gamestream is just about perfect as such a thing can be... On a good home setup. A very large chunk of people play Fortnite, PubG, CoD, Halo, CS, Overwatch and so on, and they do it on TVs that aren't particularly fast already. Between the TV, the stream and other factors, 80+ ms of overall input lag is just too noticable for it to catch on, I think.
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Digital sales are fine for awhile. Not long term. look at the music industry... sure Apples digital music sales have ruled for awhile, but I really doubt that wins long term against streaming and sub sales. I mean Valve has ruled for a long time... I wouldn't be shocked to see them lead the charge on streaming.

The conversion to subscriptions and streaming has happened to every other entertainment medium, I really don't understand why gaming would be special in that regard. Input lag ? come on most people are gaming on mid range at best GPUs on their PCs, and many are happy with PS4/Xbone which are hardly perfect lag free online platforms.

As I posted I don't think game streaming is going to be Sonys answer to PS4. PS5 with zen cores... yep sounds logical for now. I really wouldn't bet on a PS6 with a Zen 3 or 4 though. Chances are PS6 will run an arm SOC with good on board stream compression, I mean we already have the hardware for game streaming really the bottle neck is wide spread fiber quality internet. If you already have a fiber connection, the tech is already there for game streaming. The only real question imo is which company is going to be the Netflix of gaming... Sony Nvidia MS Valve or some unnamed startup.

I believe it may actually be possible that Sony does in fact go cheap hardware + streaming with PS5. (I wouldn't bet a lot of money on it, I'm just saying its not impossible either). I'm sure some at Sony have considered not being the first big house there could bite them... allowing some other company to become the Netflix of game streaming.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/...d-beta-valve-pc-game-streaming-service-launch

I mean steam is oh so close to just going full out stream happy. Imagine a $5 a month sub to play say 50-100 different games a month. Valve could charge the developers to be included every month... and offer steam sale support at the end of each month to push sell through so people can keep playing their favs. Heck in a few years new AAA titles could basically be free streams during their launch window, or at least when they start pushing the "gold" versions a year later. lol
 
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BloodyIron said:
I wonder if this will have any impact on desktop GPUs for Linux/FreeBSD? Since ps4 is FreeBSD, I'd anticipate that to be the same for ps5.
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Not unless Sony for some reasons abandons their own 3D APIs. The PS4 uses a lot of open source software like webkit and cairo, but the ps4 is not open. Sony doesn't upstream their code... GNM and GNMX their 3D APIs are completely closed source. No *nix versions of those.
 
Megalith said:
Phoronix is speculating that the next PlayStation will likely be powered by a Ryzen CPU/APU based on information gleaned from Simon Pilgrim’s LinkedIn profile and recent GitHub submissions. Pilgrim, who serves as one of Sony’s top programmers, appears to be spending much of his time tuning Ryzen for a future product.

It's interesting that Sony is working on upstream LLVM improvements specific to AMD Zen processors when they aren't currently shipping any Ryzen/EPYC-based systems. But let's not forget that the PlayStation 4 is powered by a semi-custom AMD Jaguar CPU with GCN Radeon graphics. On top of that, Sony indeed uses LLVM/Clang as the compiler for the PlayStation 4.
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Let me guess, the PS5 will use the rumored Zen2+Navi 7nm APU.
 
Certainly, but AMD does open source a lot of their driver development stuff. Hence Ubuntu 18.04 shipping with awesome AMD support out of the box!

It seems to me, if this involves improving the AMD drivers, this may trickle back to other platforms. But this is of course speculation...

ChadD said:
Not unless Sony for some reasons abandons their own 3D APIs. The PS4 uses a lot of open source software like webkit and cairo, but the ps4 is not open. Sony doesn't upstream their code... GNM and GNMX their 3D APIs are completely closed source. No *nix versions of those.
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juanrga said:
How do you get 10x? I got something closer to 5x.
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I was guesstimating, you might be right. But looking at the wikipedia for jaguar, based on clock speed (which is not a great comparison, but I can't find GFlops apples to apples) the Liverpool Jaguar (in the ps4) is 800mhz. So roughly x5 just on clockspeed. I would like to see a GFlops rating for both though. And this is just CPU, not talking about GPU... current Vega has to be 3-5x better than the PS4.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_(microarchitecture)
 
ChadD said:
John Antioco ? Is that you ?
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I had to Google that name to get the joke. But yea, game streaming will never take off cause there is literally zero benefits for the consumer. On the other hand, there's lots of bad anti-consumer problems that come with game streaming.

More likely we'll finally move away from X86 and Nvidia/AMD for gaming. ARM CPU's with Mali, Ardreno, and PowerVR graphics is more likely the future than game streaming cause they'll be dirt cheap. They're already dirt cheap but nobody is making them nearly as fast as x86 chips, at least not yet. That along with Linux as the core OS, we'll see a convergeance that'll finally get us away from a market with limited competition.

The only real benefit of game streaming is that it MIGHT be cheaper, and that's a big might. Like assuming you buy games all the time and spend a lot of money on the best hardware, and I mean like a Intel 8600K with a Nvidia 1080 Ti. But technically it'll be much worse image quality with latency, which won't appeal to those who buy this type of hardware. Those who still run 2500K's and Geforce GTX 660's are gonna see this as a worse deal than just keeping 5+ year old hardware that still works fine.
 
juanrga said:
How do you get 10x? I got something closer to 5x.
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You gotta anticipate power and die size and production. It will probably be 4-core with integrated Vega. They might just actually be building the ground-work for a system that's 5 years away, and showing good faith in developing the compiler extensions and performance to cozy up to AMD.

I think 4 core custom Ryzen will make sense, especially if they have a custom CCX for 4 cores and targeted performance. They are taking a stab at PS3 again, but the hardware is actually there to allow it.

The most notable thing will be the gpu processor on-board and how well integrated it is into the CPU's pipeline.

This is low level stuff. How far out the projection is for the system could be several years. This might be a custom ryzen/navi APU that Sony is targeting. I only suggest ryzen/navi...because Vega is so big. So this might be the groundwork of a very basic ryzen/navi apu 2 years from now.
 
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Burticus said:
I was guesstimating, you might be right. But looking at the wikipedia for jaguar, based on clock speed (which is not a great comparison, but I can't find GFlops apples to apples) the Liverpool Jaguar (in the ps4) is 800mhz. So roughly x5 just on clockspeed. I would like to see a GFlops rating for both though. And this is just CPU, not talking about GPU... current Vega has to be 3-5x better than the PS4.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_(microarchitecture)
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I wouldn't just compare the GFLOPS rating, as floating point operations is only one part of the CPU (and GPU), and does not directly correlate with CPU performance in total, as integer functions and IPC both play a large factor.
This is one area where a synthetic benchmark can give a better rough guestimate or ballpark of where CPUs and GPUs fit next to one another performance-wise in general.

The best comparison I can attempt to give between Jaguar and Ryzen is this:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-5-1500X-vs-AMD-GX-420CA-SOC/3001vs2121

Both the Ryzen 5 1500X and AMD GX-420CA are quad-cores, so we can do a nearly identical comparison of them, at least with IPC.
Please keep in mind that the synthetic benchmark's scores in the link above by itself doesn't mean anything specifically other than a placeholder for where each CPU falls performance-wise to one another.

The Ryzen 5 1500X quad-core @ 3.5GHz scored 10685.
The AMD GX-420CA (Jaguar) quad-core @ 2.0GHz scored 2299.

Now lets do the math on this!


So, if we want an apples-to-apples GHz to GHz comparison, we want to bring the Ryzen 5 1500X down to 2.0GHz as well, along with the score itself:
2.0 ÷ 3.5 = ~0.571428571
(3.5 is roughly 57% faster than 2.0)

Now, we want to take the score of the Ryzen 5 1500X and bring it down in the same manner:
~0.571428571 x 10685 = 6106 (rounding up from a long decimal)
(lowering the Ryzen CPU's score by 57% as well to match the equally reduced clock speed to allow a direct comparison)

So, a Ryzen 5 1500X quad-core @ 2.0GHz would have a score of 6106.
How does this compare in IPC in general performance-wise to the AMD GX-420CA?

6106 ÷ 2299 = ~2.655937364

Thus, the general performance core-for-core and clock-for-clock for the Ryzen 5 1500X quad-core @ 2.0GHz would be roughly 2.66 times faster than the AMD GX-420CA quad-core @ 2.0GHz.



Now, I should state that these scores do not implicitly compare whetstone (floating point) or drystone (integer) operations or performance, and this is just a performance-in-general comparison.
Hope this helps! :D
 
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DukenukemX said:
I had to Google that name to get the joke. But yea, game streaming will never take off cause there is literally zero benefits for the consumer. On the other hand, there's lots of bad anti-consumer problems that come with game streaming.

More likely we'll finally move away from X86 and Nvidia/AMD for gaming. ARM CPU's with Mali, Ardreno, and PowerVR graphics is more likely the future than game streaming cause they'll be dirt cheap. They're already dirt cheap but nobody is making them nearly as fast as x86 chips, at least not yet. That along with Linux as the core OS, we'll see a convergeance that'll finally get us away from a market with limited competition.

The only real benefit of game streaming is that it MIGHT be cheaper, and that's a big might. Like assuming you buy games all the time and spend a lot of money on the best hardware, and I mean like a Intel 8600K with a Nvidia 1080 Ti. But technically it'll be much worse image quality with latency, which won't appeal to those who buy this type of hardware. Those who still run 2500K's and Geforce GTX 660's are gonna see this as a worse deal than just keeping 5+ year old hardware that still works fine.
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I agree with you on the eventual move to ARM no matter what happens with streaming. Intel hasn't done enough to build truly revolutionary SOC. x86 is beefier today but they loose ground to ARM every year... while continuing to draw more power. Sure their are some low power x86 chips around but they don't perform either.

As for streaming having no consumer benefit. That sounds a bit insane to me;
1) console hardware for half the cost
2) console hardware that has IQ = to the highest end PC GPU (if you have seen NV service in action there is no way you are saying the IQ is less its simply not its GPU farm level ultra settings being streamed)
3) Choice if its done right... I mean really how is paying a sub to play a bunch of games bad for a consumer. Especially if the service is nailing down AAA titles at launch. I mean no specific big service push has been announced. If a company like Valve however was able to get the big AAA houses to stream games during their launch window that is a huge win for gamers. If it was my service to create that is exactly what I would do.... offer games for 30 days at a time, run a game on the sub service for a few weeks at launch and offer sub customers a 20% off the launch price. If valve offered a sub that let you stream every game in your library... a 200+ revolving line up of games every month. I think that would have huge consumer benefit.

No doubt though it would really depend on who offers the service, how stong their back end server game is... and how many AAA studios they attract. A $15-20 service with crap offerings isn't going anywhere. A $5-10 offering though that lets you play forever the games you do purchase... on a platform like Steam where lots of people already own 100s of titles. I think it might be surprising how fast that could take off. Steam link is quite popular... the only difference would be instead of running up your power bill running your own game server you buy the server time from them for a few bucks a month. That is a huge savings over the cost of building a top end Gaming server every few years.

I would be shocked if in the next 4-5 years Valve doesn't do exactly that. They have been improving their Steam Linux in home streaming tech and nailing that down... now releasing a steam link Android app. The next step is to make a big server investment... put together a $100 streaming console running a steaming only version of Steam OS, and build an attractive streaming package for game developers. I would have to think Sony sees that coming at some point as well... which is why I believe this will be the last of the "powerful" consoles they produce. They can perhaps get away with it if the PS5 ships before the end of next year... that would give them a few years to drop production costs, should valve (or heck even MS) try and go for the inexpensive streaming console.
 
I'd like to see the PS5 in 2023 at the earliest. Any earlier than that and it won't be a significant upgrade, given how slowly tech is improving these days. Used to be we'd get double the performance every 1,5 years, nowadays a new gen of graphics cards is like 25%-35% faster.
 
maxz01 said:
I'd like to see the PS5 in 2023 at the earliest. Any earlier than that and it won't be a significant upgrade, given how slowly tech is improving these days. Used to be we'd get double the performance every 1,5 years, nowadays a new gen of graphics cards is like 25%-35% faster.
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Even if they kept the same GPU in the PS4 Pro (roughly equivalent to an RX 480 from what I've seen examples of) and just upgraded the CPU on it, the PS4 Pro would be capable of AAA games with native 4K 60fps.
The Jaguar CPU is what is holding the current generation back, and being clocked at 2.3GHz is just not enough for that architecture to keep the GPU fed data properly - maybe if it were clocked at 4.5GHz or faster, but those are really weak x86_64 cores.

I'm not knocking the Jaguar architecture at all, it's just that when it was developed back in 2013, it was designed for low-power systems, thin clients, and embedded systems of that era - hardly a high performance contender of that era, let alone in 2018 or the 2020s!
I would not be surprised at all to see Sony and/or Microsoft move to ARM processors at this point, just like Nintendo did, regardless of whether they are streaming or dedicated systems.

Heck, even an ARMv8 A57 CPU core is clock-for-clock around ~1.5 times faster than an x86_64 Jaguar CPU core, and it requires far less electrical power plus it produces much less heat; it might also be potentially cheaper due to the licensing of x86_64, but that is pure speculation on my part.
 
I expect the next gen consoles are going to be 8-core Ryzen SoCs with 48+ Vega cores. I don't imagine HBM being on them, as it would be way too expensive. I imagine 12GB being the next logical step in memory, as DRAM is really expensive right now.

On the 7nm process, this chip would be small enough and cheap enough to be put on a premium-priced console.
 
Red Falcon said:
Heck, even an ARMv8 A57 CPU core is clock-for-clock around ~1.5 times faster than an x86_64 Jaguar CPU core, and it requires far less electrical power plus it produces much less heat; it might also be potentially cheaper due to the licensing of x86_64, but that is pure speculation on my part.
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I would think if Sony was really serious about moving to ARM, they would get their own ARM licence and make their own. I'm not sure that would be the most cost effective way to go still unless Sony had plans beyond a PS5 for a chip. I could for sure at some point see them designing a new portable though, and a Sony designed ARM chip that could have a Mobile and a higher clock console version could make the cost involved a lot more attractive. Higher costs up front for lower costs on the back end. I guess it depends how good a deal they can get out of AMD now that AMD isn't quite as desperate.
 
Red Falcon said:
Even if they kept the same GPU in the PS4 Pro (roughly equivalent to an RX 480 from what I've seen examples of) and just upgraded the CPU on it, the PS4 Pro would be capable of AAA games with native 4K 60fps.
The Jaguar CPU is what is holding the current generation back, and being clocked at 2.3GHz is just not enough for that architecture to keep the GPU fed data properly - maybe if it were clocked at 4.5GHz or faster, but those are really weak x86_64 cores.

I'm not knocking the Jaguar architecture at all, it's just that when it was developed back in 2013, it was designed for low-power systems, thin clients, and embedded systems of that era - hardly a high performance contender of that era, let alone in 2018 or the 2020s!
I would not be surprised at all to see Sony and/or Microsoft move to ARM processors at this point, just like Nintendo did, regardless of whether they are streaming or dedicated systems.

Heck, even an ARMv8 A57 CPU core is clock-for-clock around ~1.5 times faster than an x86_64 Jaguar CPU core, and it requires far less electrical power plus it produces much less heat; it might also be potentially cheaper due to the licensing of x86_64, but that is pure speculation on my part.
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Extremely bad speculation, considering that Backwards compatibility is a real thing now on the Xbox ecosystem. Also, the Zen cores would have to run at around 2GHz just to fit into the proper power envelope, and I just do not see an 8 core with 48 Vega Cores, unless folks are willing to spend at least $750 on the console, at least from the way I am seeing it.
 
ChadD said:
As for streaming having no consumer benefit. That sounds a bit insane to me;
1) console hardware for half the cost
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That won't matter if the ARM CPU market becomes competitive to x86. Look at the whole Kodi box thing where a quad core ARM 64-bit CPU with decent Mali graphics is only $50. I've had no problems running N64 games on those things. The market is so competitive that It won't be long before a Kodi box has the equivalent of a Tegra X1 in it.

Up until recently PC gaming has always been cheaper than console gaming, with the exception of inflated GPU and RAM prices. That trend will continue. And yes, I'm factoring in paying a monthly fee for online play and cheaper games on average.

2) console hardware that has IQ = to the highest end PC GPU (if you have seen NV service in action there is no way you are saying the IQ is less its simply not its GPU farm level ultra settings being streamed)
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I can't find any examples but that's the nature of compression. You will lose image quality.
3) Choice if its done right... I mean really how is paying a sub to play a bunch of games bad for a consumer. Especially if the service is nailing down AAA titles at launch.
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Nothing is ever done right. Everything is done to extract as much money as possible. It'll end up like video streaming services when you'll need a Battle.net, an Origin, a Steam, and a Uplay account where you pay a monthly fee each just to play your games. I don't see that going down well with consumers.

I mean no specific big service push has been announced. If a company like Valve however was able to get the big AAA houses to stream games during their launch window that is a huge win for gamers. If it was my service to create that is exactly what I would do.... offer games for 30 days at a time, run a game on the sub service for a few weeks at launch and offer sub customers a 20% off the launch price. If valve offered a sub that let you stream every game in your library... a 200+ revolving line up of games every month. I think that would have huge consumer benefit.
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As long as I can download the game and play it the day it's released I'd have no problem with this. The moment when companies force you to play the game online only, or it's delayed for a month before you can download and play is when #cloudgate will be the next big thing that'll upset gamers.

I'd rather let the market decide if cloud gaming is worth anyones money, rather it being forced down consumer throats. Cause we know they will force it on consumers.

No doubt though it would really depend on who offers the service, how stong their back end server game is... and how many AAA studios they attract. A $15-20 service with crap offerings isn't going anywhere. A $5-10 offering though that lets you play forever the games you do purchase... on a platform like Steam where lots of people already own 100s of titles. I think it might be surprising how fast that could take off. Steam link is quite popular... the only difference would be instead of running up your power bill running your own game server you buy the server time from them for a few bucks a month. That is a huge savings over the cost of building a top end Gaming server every few years.
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If I ran my own home server to Stream games, I would just send a magic packet to wake it up to play my games. It's not much different than running a Plex server. I haven't seen cloud gaming take off. It already exists, and you can get it now but nobody has it. Certainly nobody talks about it and praises it.

I would be shocked if in the next 4-5 years Valve doesn't do exactly that. They have been improving their Steam Linux in home streaming tech and nailing that down... now releasing a steam link Android app. The next step is to make a big server investment... put together a $100 streaming console running a steaming only version of Steam OS, and build an attractive streaming package for game developers. I would have to think Sony sees that coming at some point as well... which is why I believe this will be the last of the "powerful" consoles they produce. They can perhaps get away with it if the PS5 ships before the end of next year... that would give them a few years to drop production costs, should valve (or heck even MS) try and go for the inexpensive streaming console.
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I'm sure Valve is exploring this, cause they'd make far more money this way than you just buying games. But nobody is going to play $15-$20 a month to play their $60 games. As it is I can't remember the last time I payed $60 for a game, let a lone a game on Steam. I've been going to G2A.com and paying a fraction for the games and just putting the keys into Steam to download them. I also don't buy games day one of sale. Up until a week ago I've been rocking my FX 8350 for like 5 years. Just recently I upgrade to Ryzen 1700 and they'll likely last me another 5 years.
 
KazeoHin said:
I expect the next gen consoles are going to be 8-core Ryzen SoCs with 48+ Vega cores. I don't imagine HBM being on them, as it would be way too expensive. I imagine 12GB being the next logical step in memory, as DRAM is really expensive right now.

On the 7nm process, this chip would be small enough and cheap enough to be put on a premium-priced console.
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The CPU that'll end up in the PS5 would likely be clocked much lower than your traditional Ryzen 8 core. I wouldn't be shocked if it ran at 1.8Ghz or around there. HBM makes sense, even though its expansive. Console makers tend to like to avoid price fluctuation and would rather get a contract that guarantees them a fixed cost for the production of HBM. We're also years away from when a PS5 is released, so who knows what'll happen in the memory market by then.
 
DukenukemX said:
I can't find any examples but that's the nature of compression. You will lose image quality.
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Yes compression for sure you loose a bit...

The point is the VAST majority of gamers on not on 1080ti level hardware, they are on 1060... 750 ti... and the number on integrated chips is even higher. For average gamers streaming compression is no where near an issue if they are streaming 60fps of ultra PC setting games. I will take a little bit of compression at 60fps ultra over no compression 1060 level hardware any day.

There is no doubt that a super high end gaming PC is still going to be superior... the real question is how does streaming compare to the average gamers experience. IMO from what I have seen it destroys what most people would expect out of a current console and is beyond anything the average gamer has even seen at a rich friends house. ;)

The compression artifact issue arguments remind me exactly of what the movie industry said about streaming 5 years ago... but but Blu has so much less compression on it. Ya guess what for average consumers Netflix was a massive step up from the Wal Mart Bin DVDs they where buying at the time. As fantastic as Blu was average people just didn't and still don't have cinephile level gear at home. Same applies to gamers... the masses don't have high end gaming PCs. (streaming movies, tv, music the one thing it all has in common is its aimed at the masses not aficionados... gaming services will be no different)
 
I really thought Sony would go with nVidia for the GPU for the PS5. I fail to see what Vega offers that is above and beyond the current Xbox One X. Do they really think AMD will be able to engineer something better in time? This is a risky move by Sony. Sure, Ryzen is a fantastic CPU choice. But I can really see the GPU side of things ending very badly for them.
 
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