[techradar] AMD on the PS4: We gave it the hardware Nvidia couldn't

Sycraft said:
Sounds like that may be accurate. If the rumors that it is an APU, as in integrated CPU and GPU on one die then that is correct. Having only one chip makes things cost less. Each chip raises the hardware price. However it also means that the overall performance can't be as high. You could not pack, say, a GTX 680 and a i7-2600 on one die. It would be too large, too hot, too prone to failure.

Hence AMD APUs are the cheap option. They cost less, and deliver less performance. That's all fine and well, but if people are taking what they said to mean "We delivered a performance level nVidia couldn't do," that is almost certainly false. We can see that in GPUs, nVidia has no problems performance wise.

My guess is it was the APU thing, combined with a willingness to take extremely low margins, that got AMD the contract. The APU made it cheaper and AMD probably took a very low margin deal, since they need the contract, and that was a price nVidia couldn't touch.
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lol still trying to spin it?

NVidia does not have an x86 license, so it was impossible for them to compete from the get go...
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
lol still trying to spin it?

NVidia does not have an x86 license, so it was impossible for them to compete from the get go...
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Spin what? It is what it is. What AMD could and did offer was a lower cost solution. Nothing wrong with that. However there seems to be this idea (which AMD likes, of course) that they are offering some level of performance/tech that nVidia couldn't. No, they offered an integrated solution which costs less. That's great, but it does mean less performance.

Doesn't really matter to me, I'm a PC only gamer, other than I'd like to see more powerful consoles to we get shiner PC ports.
 
^ok keep spinning it

Sony: We want an x86 solution.
AMD: OK, here you go...
NVidia: Sorry, we got nothing

But don't worry Targa 3 made into the $99 Ouya system....
 
Bitter much son? You seem to have an odd definition of "spin" as being "Anything I don't agree with."

Seriously I have no dog in this race. I'm not getting a console. I just think that some console fans are setting themselves up for disappointment. They seem to think that there's some amazing tech AMD has that will make the consoles better than anything else. In reality, sounds like they are going to be mid range since there are limits to the amount you can knock on to a single chip and that is the route they are going.

Me, I'm going to stick with computers, since I like having a high end computer anyhow, and I'll buy whatever GPU works the best for me since I'm not a rabid fanboy. At present that's a 680 in the desktop and 7970M in the laptop.
 
DeathPrincess said:
You don't seem very informed, the other consoles are AMD too...

The first consideration before anything else is price. If you look at the absolutely crap deal AMD got for the Xbox 360 (we can assume it's probably similar), it's unsurprising that other console makers would want that, and other GPU makers wouldn't want to "compete" with it...it's hard to razor a razor... :p
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Sterophile is to Sony what theNoid is to Microsoft. You won't get a productive argument from either of them.
 
Sycraft said:
Bitter much son? You seem to have an odd definition of "spin" as being "Anything I don't agree with."

Seriously I have no dog in this race. I'm not getting a console. I just think that some console fans are setting themselves up for disappointment. They seem to think that there's some amazing tech AMD has that will make the consoles better than anything else. In reality, sounds like they are going to be mid range since there are limits to the amount you can knock on to a single chip and that is the route they are going.

Me, I'm going to stick with computers, since I like having a high end computer anyhow, and I'll buy whatever GPU works the best for me since I'm not a rabid fanboy. At present that's a 680 in the desktop and 7970M in the laptop.
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trying to explain to you why NVidia did want to complete and why they are sore would not be worth it...
 
Sycraft said:
Spin what? It is what it is. What AMD could and did offer was a lower cost solution. Nothing wrong with that. However there seems to be this idea (which AMD likes, of course) that they are offering some level of performance/tech that nVidia couldn't. No, they offered an integrated solution which costs less. That's great, but it does mean less performance.
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You're missing the point. You keep bringing up lower cost. Lower cost compared to what ? A top of the line PC GPU ? That was never in the cards. Nobody else could offer the same level of tech as this AMD APU. Look up HSA. They are even ahead of Intel in that regard. GPU computing is going to be an important feature next gen. And note I said technology not performance. Too many people around here have a one track mind and can't understand bigger concepts.
 
Guys, the jaguar chip being used in the PS4 is not super powerful per core: but it has eight cores. A game engine can easily be adapted from a big thread working on many variables to eight smaller threads updating the same number of variables, plus the floating point power of the GPU is much higher than any standalone CPU today. I think the PS4 may surprise us, but no: it won't be more powerful than a top-of-the-line PC, ever.
 
Maybe I am just missing something but considering it's a console wouldn't putting a stronger cpu in there make it comparable to having an extreme series i7 in a strictly gaming PC with one gpu at 1080p?

8 cores allows it to easily handle the back end along with other tasks like seamless switching between game and system menus.

This goes for Durango as well.
 
Sycraft said:
they offered an integrated solution which costs less. That's great, but it does mean less performance.
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actually, if engineered properly, it means relatively more performance VS. the same GPU and CPU on separate chips. and the PS4 solution has been engineered properly. I'm going to super simplify things here but: just by nature of being on the same chip, you get less latency. Also, they made customizations so that cache memory and system memory requires much less memory management than you would normally have in a split chip system. greatly decreasing latency, while increasing total bandwidth.

It also takes a note from one of the successes of the PS3. In PS3, Cell could enter RSX's graphic pipeline and offload work. Cell was often used for error checking, color correction, precision, lighting calculations (example: BF3 on PS3 runs the same FP16 lighting model as the PC version), anti-aliasing (Sony's MLAA goes far beyond the Intel white papers and is currently one of the most advanced variants of MLAA) and many other things. But most often, it was used for game geometry. This made up for some of the shortcomings of RSX and allowed it to focus completely on other things. Allowing the PS3 as a whole, to bat higher than it should have otherwise been able to. These are features that had to be specifically exploited, though. Most companies use middlewares, especially for multi-platform games. So some of this stuff wasn't done often. or was only done in first party games.

In PS4, the GPU and CPU can both access each other's pipelines and effectively share all kinds of work. Its been designed for this and again, there is a ton of bandwidth on tap. The chips has also been designed to really take advantage of multi-threading off its 8 cores. It won't have quite the same possibilities as Cell's SPU's (especially with certain types of work), but they took a lot of inspiration from the workflow for the SPUs, to increase threading efficiency.

The whole thing is like X86 on a refined backbone. Sony is also pushing to have programming for this stuff worked out earlier, so that devs have it on tap in their libraries to easily use and adapt to their engines. so that even middlewares could have this stuff in mind.
 
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In PS4, the GPU and CPU can both access each other's pipelines and effectively share all kinds of work. Its been designed for this and again, there is a ton of bandwidth on tap. The chips has also been designed to really take advantage of multi-threading off its 8 cores. It won't have quite the same possibilities as Cell's SPU's (especially with certain types of work), but they took a lot of inspiration from the workflow for the SPUs, to increase threading efficiency.
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The problem with talking about theoretical advantages is that it's not clear where the problem lies. For example lets assume that the PS4 has alot more bandwith between the GPU and CPU then a PC. Nice right?

But how do you know bandwith is a problem. Maybe the problem is a lack of single threaded integer processing for AI. We know in the PC world for example that switching to an 8x slot doesn't really kill your performance. That's because most programs are not bandwith starved.

As you point out the Cell had all kinds of theoretical advantages. It had 7SPU vs. 3 IN ORDER cores (in order really kinda stinks) that were in the xbox 360. But when it came to Skyrim it could barely run the game whereas the XBOX360 had no problem. Theory doesn't always work out..

I dont't buy this generations thereotical advantages. I think if bandwith was the issue AMD and NVIDIA would be pushing for huge mulit-lane connections instead of just 16x. If GDDR was so fast ASUS woudl have come out with a special GDDR motherboard.

By moving to PC kind parts and even using something that Sony is calling Direct X 11+ (so I read the other day) you can expect pretty good performance the downside is that there isn't this thereotical huge performance advantage that they will get someday in the future. Thats probably good for Sony though because the didn't really get anything out of that exotic hardware they released last time.
 
Stereophile said:
You're missing the point. You keep bringing up lower cost. Lower cost compared to what ? A top of the line PC GPU ? That was never in the cards. Nobody else could offer the same level of tech as this AMD APU. Look up HSA. They are even ahead of Intel in that regard. GPU computing is going to be an important feature next gen. And note I said technology not performance. Too many people around here have a one track mind and can't understand bigger concepts.
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Given enough cash and stubbornness, Sony could've had high-end Intel CPU and nVidia GPU, providing arguably better performance at similar power draw. Would it have been a good decision? Not really.

Intel has its problems due price of doing business. Sure, they enjoy their margins but revenue is falling. Reality is more complex than our wet dreams.
 
NVidia does not have an x86 license, so it was impossible for them to compete from the get go...
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You don't need x86 for a game machine though. You blow like a million transistors on your CISC to RISC translator.. (which all the intel and AMD x86 chips have now). True its not a huge hit - but don't spin it like moving to x86 is an efficency based one.

NVIDIA would have crafted then an ARM + GPU solution which would have worked just as well - if not better. What NVIDIA is saying is that they don't think the deal is really profitable for them with the terms Sony would be giving them.

Since we don't know what those terms are - I don't see how we can argue. I have read that its likely AMD only gets a one time fee and they won't make anything off the number of chips sold.

Think of it like Lotus asking for Toyota to craft them an engine. Just because they do happen to use some Toyota engines in a Lotus that doesn't mean Honda, Hyundai or Chrysler couldn't build them a perfectly suitable engine as well.
 
GuyClinch said:
NVIDIA would have crafted then an ARM + GPU solution which would have worked just as well - if not better. What NVIDIA is saying is that they don't think the deal is really profitable for them with the terms Sony would be giving them.
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Fanboi alert. First 64-bit ARM products are months away and they are no match for the current x86 offerings, whatever clockspeeds. No point in cramming 128 ARM cores. either. Big numbers are useless for gaming.
 
dgz said:
Given enough cash and stubbornness, Sony could've had high-end Intel CPU and nVidia GPU, providing arguably better performance at similar power draw. Would it have been a good decision? Not really.
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Sony going with a bleeding edge Nvidia/Intel combo would be so disasterous the point is moot, absurd really. People balked at a $599 console, a PS4 containing a Titan and i7 would cost over a grand.
 
dgz said:
Fanboi alert. First 64-bit ARM products are months away and they are no match for the current x86 offerings, whatever clockspeeds. No point in cramming 128 ARM cores. either. Big numbers are useless for gaming.
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Yeah big LOL at the notion Sony should have used ARM as its main CPU instead of the AMD Jaguar based APU.:D
 
Arm+Tegra isn't going to cut it and that's all NV has now. Isn't that just common sense?
 
Anyone remember how the Nvidia GPU in the PS3 couldn't scale to 1080p while the AMD GPU could?
 
I think people misunderstand with ARM and Intel and all that. Sony's other choice wasn't nVidia doing everything, it was nVidia doing the graphics chip and someone else, probably IBM, doing the CPU. Instruction set is all kinds of not relevant for consoles, since you have to do a specific design for it anyhow. An IBM (or Intel, though that would be unlikely) + nVidia or AMD separate chip solution could be more powerful, since you have more silicon area to work with. However it'd be more costly since it is two chip. Also it is highly likely nVidia wasn't willing to accept as low a margins as AMD for the parts.

Hence why AMD could offer what they couldn't: AMD has an all-in-one CPU-GPU solution in a higher end market than nVidia does. nVidia only has mobile components in that arena, and modular components higher up.
 
Nvidia always over promise and under deliver. Tegra has been a huge fail till now. Glad Sony went with AMD.
 
Sprayingmango said:
And who cares? When it comes out it will still be years behind PC Hardware. Consoles = lose
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PC = massive overhead and $$$. At least on consoles developers can come close to fully using the hardware. PC hardware = overrated expensive and late.
 
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GuyClinch said:
As you point out the Cell had all kinds of theoretical advantages. It had 7SPU vs. 3 IN ORDER cores (in order really kinda stinks) that were in the xbox 360. But when it came to Skyrim it could barely run the game whereas the XBOX360 had no problem. Theory doesn't always work out..
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games like Skyrim and Crysis 2 didn't get custom code to take advantage of the PS3's SPUs. Crysis 2 PS3 is essentially running off the single main core.

Skyrim PS3 in particular was just a poor port. Bethesda's comments about their PS3 version reads like they forced out something they knew was in-optimal and then put bandaids on it until they couldn't see the problems anymore.

Sycraft said:
I think people misunderstand with ARM and Intel and all that. Sony's other choice wasn't nVidia doing everything, it was nVidia doing the graphics chip and someone else, probably IBM, doing the CPU. Instruction set is all kinds of not relevant for consoles, since you have to do a specific design for it anyhow.
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Sony's choice at the beginning of PS4 development, was to go x86. They felt instruction set IS relevant. With the emphasis on X86 and the difficulty of fitting custom code time into a tight development schedule, Sony opted to start with developer preference and then figure out novel ways to tweak it to get the most out of it.

*here's a translated excerpt from a recent interview with Cerney:

[I]Cerney: The GPGPU for us is a feature that is of utmost importance. For that purpose, we’ve customized the existing technologies in many ways.

Just as an example…when the CPU and GPU exchange information in a generic PC, the CPU inputs information, and the GPU needs to read the information and clear the cache, initially. When returning the results, the GPU needs to clear the cache, then return the result to the CPU. We’ve created a cache bypass. The GPU can return the result using this bypass directly. By using this design, we can send data directly from the main memory to the GPU shader core. Essentially, we can bypass the GPU L1 and L2 cache. Of course, this isn’t just for data read, but also for write. Because of this, we have an extremely high bandwidth of 10GB/sec.

Also, we’ve also added a little tag to the L2 cache. We call this the VOLATILE tag. We are able to control data in the cache based on whether the data is marked with VOLATILE or not. If this tag is used, this data can be written directly to the memory. As a result, the entirety of the cache can be used efficiently for graphics processing.

This function allows for harmonization of graphics processing and computing, and allows for efficient function of both. Essentially “Harmony” in Japanese. We’re trying to replicate the SPU Runtime System (SPURS) of the PS3 by heavily customizing the cache and bus. SPURS is designed to virtualize and independently manage SPU resources. For the PS4 hardware, the GPU can also be used in an analogous manner as x86-64 to use resources at various levels. This idea has 8 pipes and each pipe(?) has 8 computation queues. Each queue can execute things such as physics computation middle ware, and other prioprietarily designed workflows. This, while simultaneously handling graphics processing.

This type of functionality isn’t used widely in the launch titles. However, I expect this to be used widely in many games throughout the life of the console and see this becoming an extremely important feature.[/I]
 
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Stereophile said:
You couldn't put discrete GTX 680 and i7 chips in there either. Waaaay too expensive, hot, and power demanding for a mass market priced console. The Crytek CEO of all people said the next gen PS4 has as much graphics hp as can realistically go into a console.

If Sony went with Nvidia GPU, it would have been close in performance to what AMD provided and they would still need to find a CPU. Nvidia calling Sony cheap is just a loaded word and not reflective of reality. I mean if an 18cu 1.8TF GPU is going cheap, what would they call Durango's puny 1.2TF effort ? An Xbox-U ?
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Awesome post thank you!! I love the xbox-u... lol

And also as an nvidia fan myself when they dissed the ps4 I thought fuck nvidia, its not sonys or ms's fault you can make a cpu as good as them to put in their consoles. Kudos to amd for having the better tools for the world to play with!!
 
zaxour said:
Anyone remember how the Nvidia GPU in the PS3 couldn't scale to 1080p while the AMD GPU could?
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Yep it could only scale horizontally. The vertical scaling had a bug in the hw design. Gee I wonder why nobody wanted Nvidia next gen ?:p
 
Fanboi alert. First 64-bit ARM products are months away and they are no match for the current x86 offerings, whatever clockspeeds. No point in cramming 128 ARM cores. either. Big numbers are useless for gaming.
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Sigh. They are not as fast because they aren't DESIGNED to be as fast. It has nothing to do with the arm architecture. If you look at the performance of chips and compare it to the number of transistors - you quickly conculde its not about ARM vs. x86 its about how many transistors you are throwing at the problem.

The 3770k has 1.4 BILLION transistors. The number of transistors an A9 cortex is only 26 million. Granted in say a apple A5 they stick a few of those together but you are still talking 1/10 the transistor count. So of course its a ton slower.

So if NIVIDA wanted to they could license the architecture from ARM (its very cheap) and go ahead and produce 64 bit arm chips and combine that with their GPUs. That's how they could 'compete' with AMD.

Now maybe Sony wasn't impressed with NVIDIA and felt they couldn't do a bang up job. Maybe NVIDIA felt they wouldn't make enough money to take on such a project etc etc. Who knows - but let's be clear the processor architecture really doesn't matter.

Other companies that could have stepped in would be IBM (I think they still have some fabs too), and intel (they would have to design a better graphics part of the chip - but they could do it)..

AMD winning the contract is good news for consumers. With AMD circling the drain maybe it helps them a little. But lets not think that other companies COULDN'T do the job. They just might not WANT too for the price Sony is offering.

Its probably easiest for AMD because they already offer chips with beefy GPUs and mediocre CPUs on one die.
 
Hehehe... This continuing talk about an arm CPU in a next gen game console really funny... :D

I still say arm would work in Sony's Walkman revival though.
 
A game engine can easily be adapted from a big thread working on many variables to eight smaller threads updating the same number of variables
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I have always been told the exact opposite. Why do you think so many games today still don't use more than 2-3 cores max, a few notable exceptions (BF3) aside? If it was so easy to write multithreaded game engines that would leverage more cores, why aren't we seeing it?

It's just not that simple.
 
I wonder if the cost of a PS4 will be cheaper. I like the concept of APUs and they have their purpose, but I'll stick with a dedicated graphics card.
 
Has anyone thought that by going x86 based, Sony is trying to unify code compiling and structuring for their games?

Remember when everyone was bitching that "oh that game is just a console port". Well, maybe by going x86 and not some proprietary architecture, that "console ports" (at least PS4 ports) may not be as bad as people think. Same relatively arch, means that crossover games will probably be easier/more efficient/ more similar across PS4 and PC.

Just a thought...
 
crazjayz said:
Has anyone thought that by going x86 based, Sony is trying to unify code compiling and structuring for their games?

Remember when everyone was bitching that "oh that game is just a console port". Well, maybe by going x86 and not some proprietary architecture, that "console ports" (at least PS4 ports) may not be as bad as people think. Same relatively arch, means that crossover games will probably be easier/more efficient/ more similar across PS4 and PC.

Just a thought...
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I had the same thought; let's keep our fingers crossed. I'm really hoping that between much more similar architectures, and (at least for now) less delta between performance levels, we could see a fantastic new era in gaming.
 
I thought it was because nVidia wouldn't provide the tech for the s#!@ty figure they were given?
 
crazjayz said:
Has anyone thought that by going x86 based, Sony is trying to unify code compiling and structuring for their games?

Remember when everyone was bitching that "oh that game is just a console port". Well, maybe by going x86 and not some proprietary architecture, that "console ports" (at least PS4 ports) may not be as bad as people think. Same relatively arch, means that crossover games will probably be easier/more efficient/ more similar across PS4 and PC.

Just a thought...
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When i see a game as a "crappy console port," has a lot more to do with the interface of the game, not the underlying architecture. When a PC game can't utilize a mouse in a menu, for example, and insists you use keys (and perhaps not even re-assignable keys) to select things, when it would be easier on a PC to use a mouse, then it is a shitty console port. At least in my opinion.
 
Rizen said:
I have always been told the exact opposite. Why do you think so many games today still don't use more than 2-3 cores max, a few notable exceptions (BF3) aside? If it was so easy to write multithreaded game engines that would leverage more cores, why aren't we seeing it?

It's just not that simple.
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Two reasons: the Xbox360 (also known as the primary console of the US gaming market) only has 3 cores, secondly, everyone and their dog are still using dual-cores on the PC front (not enthusiasts, but NORMAL people: check the steam survey)

Now that new PCs are starting to make quad-core a standard and the consoles will be 8-core+, we'll see a huge change in that opinion.
 
You run into all kinds of race conditions and you have to use locks and such when you program for 8 cores. Developers never did it before because its HARD. Graphics respond well to mutli-cores - but game logic does not.
 
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