there is no FAB for XDR2 . SONY could use Samsung's though . I think Samsung has some facilities for that . But yea if they can use XDR 2...damn we are in for a ride
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
vg247-PS4: new kits shipping now, AMD A10 used as base, final version next summer
- Thread starter Globox_82
- Start date
there is no FAB for XDR2 . SONY could use Samsung's though . I think Samsung has some facilities for that . But yea if they can use XDR 2...damn we are in for a ride
XDR3 you mean. XDR2 was long ago and fell by the way side.
This year's mobile parts will be rebadged yesteryear parts. I don't see why they wouldn't be binned though?
edit: Though I will admit that there is reason to question this age old belief.
systemfehler
Member
I only found XDR2 on the Rambus site - but I don't know anything about availability, price, etc. and since it was announced "long" ago I doubt that this is a good sign.
xdr3
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Rambus-Shows-World-s-Best-RAM-Technology-292885.shtml
weird timing innit?
Huh. They'd have to have had that tech running about a year ago to actually wind up in the PS4, though. Would be interesting if they did.
Somebody brought it up out of the blue in an earlier post.
On point: they're shopping for orders now. The article suggests there are no exclusive deals there now. Looks like the outside bet to be honest. Very very unlikely. Wouldn't they have gone through with NDA or something if it was ps4?
On point: they're shopping for orders now. The article suggests there are no exclusive deals there now. Looks like the outside bet to be honest. Very very unlikely. Wouldn't they have gone through with NDA or something if it was ps4?
systemfehler
Member
Sorry but I doubt that Rambus and Sony will work together. XDR2 was shown in late 2012 and now only one site reports that Rambus already has another - even better product ready?
Brad Grenz
Member
We got actual specs for the Vita at its announcement. The only thing they didn't disclose was the clockspeeds and RAM amounts. But we knew how many of what kind of cores for CPU and GPU. Plus everything about the screen, inputs, networking, etc.
eh? We most definitely will have most, if not all specs on the 20th. This frees Sony up to actually show games at the conference instead of spending a bunch of time photo-opping with the hardware.
True but by then we knew what exactly the competition of vita was capable of. The specs showing was just an attempt to showcase an advantage they had hardware wise imho..so I doubt we will see the same for PS4
Brad Grenz
Member
At this point we pretty much know Orbis has an advantage over Durango, too. And Sony has better corporate intel than any of us. They have nothing to gain by holding back anymore. They can announce first. Release spec first. Show games first. And MS will be stuck trying to spin their less powerful machine in some kind of positive light.
Sony is already going to have a jam packed E3. Waiting til then to talk about specs will just take a ton of time away from showing their lineup of actual games. Plus they'll have PS3 and Vita stuff to talk about. If they're gonna hold all the real Orbis info until E3 they'd need 5 hours to go through everything.
Sony is already going to have a jam packed E3. Waiting til then to talk about specs will just take a ton of time away from showing their lineup of actual games. Plus they'll have PS3 and Vita stuff to talk about. If they're gonna hold all the real Orbis info until E3 they'd need 5 hours to go through everything.
This. And let's not forget that Microsoft should already have a lock on final specs if they plan to enter production any time soon.
What on earth are you talking about? Bro, do you even Google?
http://www.rambus.com/in/technology/solutions/
With Rambus stating it has twice the bandwidth as compared to GDDR5, I'd love to know what on earth you think XDR3 could realistically bring to the table.
jeff_rigby
Banned
Design for both was locked by Oct 8 2012 and the proof is the HWinfo.com update Oct 8, 2012 listing Thebe and Kryptos. AMKOR is now assembling "projects" with interposer and stacked wide IO RAM. There is a picture of a finished chip and it's not a mobile package....it likely is representative of Thebe or Kryptos or both (internal design may be different but packaging and footprint/interconnect to interposer would be identical).
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=47332573&postcount=7792
Not discussed seriously here and for those discussing Durango in other threads, the Memory controller/interconnect Fabric as well as security might be different from what we are used to with PCs...My belief is that the game console designs are based on handheld designs. Do a search for wide IO memory and look at examples of the more efficient controllers and interconnects. Oh, there are a few here and on SemiAccurate who are digging up information and are convinced that AMKOR is packaging Thebe/Oban and will use Wide IO memory.
So we are talking about wide DDR3 for Durango and wide DDR4 for Orbis? If the answer is yes, then how wide are we talking about?
jeff_rigby
Banned
Wide IO DDR3 for both and good question as to how wide; it can be 512 bit and 1024 bit wide. The Sony lectures and Yole speculation built on that lecture was 512 bit wide but I now think that was a Min (5X PS3 memory bandwidth and 10X GPU). If you are going to use a fine pitch interposer and yield is not an issue then why not go 1024 bit.
With 512 bit wide (100 GB/sec) you are still starving the GPU and would need eDRAM for the GPU, with 1024 (200GB/sec) you likely don't need eDRAM.
The AMKOR PDF states "2,508 bumps per memory die" so it looks like 1024 bit wide IO memory can be supported.
I think we are getting information from both the Durango and PS4 camps that apply to both. The special Sauce move engine mentioned in Durango may just be the Memory controller/fabric interconnect in both. The fabric interconnect may be configured differently and may be the major difference between both consoles.
Speculation still stands - they go with GDDR5, purely for the sake of bandwidth, now and then switch to wide IO DDR4 later for long term efficiency and cost benefits. Seems the most rational situation. All depends on what the final development units are comprised of
jeff_rigby
Banned
This might be true if Wide IO was not ready but the AMKOR PDF proves it is ready and "projects" are being assembled.
The reasoning behind wide IO DDR3 in a console is not as obvious as in a handheld for battery life.
Both Sony and Microsoft will be supporting XTV/IPTV/RVU and that requires a always on when the TV is on design. GDDR5 would use 2-5 times more power than all the other components combined. Last year's figures and there are lots of variables:
DDR3..................7 watts...........68GB/sec (256 bit)
GDDR5............. 40 watts.........200GB/sec (you can reduce power by going higher than 256 bit and reducing the clock speed)
WideIO DDR3......2 watts.........200GB/sec (1024 bit)
The above can be reduced by turning off banks, slower clocks in special modes or using smaller node (20nm) memory.
The point is power use will be regulated in the above modes. GDDR5 can't be used! Roku boxes and Apple TV use on the order of 5 watts. You can even have a USB stick that plugs into a TV that supplies Android/IPTV functionality and is powered by the USB port.
No, both have the same feature targets so both have the same design goals. BOTH should be using wide IO memory. It is possible to have a cheaper design with DDR3 and a eDRAM cache but the Sony lecture stated 5X PS3 memory bandwidth (100GB/sec) to support 5 (300FPS) video streams and 4 video streams @ 1080P are needed to support glassless 3D on a 4K TV. That can't be supported by the current Durango DDR3 (68GB/sec & 7 Watt) speculation. Microsoft will want to support glassless 3D on a 4K TV also so wide IO 512 bit is a MINIMUM for both consoles.Ravage said:
At the same time in supporting glassless 3D on a 4K TV, the added bandwidth also allows multi-stream Augmented Reality support for 2 head mounted camera and S3D glasses as well as a S3D TV at the same time. Also EyeFinity can be supported (Supporting multiple independent display outputs simultaneously).
If Durango does not support Wide IO memory then only one pair of S3d glasses AND ONLY 2D on the TV and no glassless S3D support on a 4K TV. Look at the accessories already announced, the whole room video overlay projector and think about video bandwidth....Microsoft is finding uses for the Wide IO bandwidth.
This requires more bandwidth than can be supplied by just DDR3, it requires wide IO DDR3:
In that case you have the latency issue - DDR4 has lower latency than GDDR5 so Sony would have to find a way to gimp DDR4 latency (bring it down to GDDR5 levels) in order to avoid later iterations of PS4 performing better than the first version.
IIRC, DDR4 has latency comparable to DDR3 so what Jeff is saying could be possible (although all rumors point to GDDR5).
Oh wow, had no idea there was such a big power difference, these are figures for 4GB?
Oh really...
How about you read links given on this very page?
And maybe wiki xdr2.. Too.
Brad Grenz
Member
If we believe the rumored specs. Were MS going to enjoy the bandwidth benefits of WideI/O and staking they wouldn't have wasted all that silicon on embedded memory and special "Move Engines" because they would be redundant.
jeff_rigby
Banned
Yeah, you see that also. All that "special sauce" are rumors trying to explain rumors <sigh>. Likely wide IO ram controller designs are paired with interconnect fabric designed for handhelds but running at higher clocks. IF you start reading through Handheld designs, they use accelerators rather than CPUs for features because the accelerators are more efficient and save battery life. In a console, accelerators; hardware video encoder and decoder, Zlib compression and more will be used to reduce TDP and allow more features. With accelerators, background streaming to a handheld or DVR functionality would likely take very little from a running game. Accelerators also reduce the special mode power requirements and allow video compression/decompression when sending/receiving WiFi to handhelds and head mounted glasses.
jeff_rigby
Banned
Sony Education Ambassador (SEA) community
OLPC games
Supported by the PS4 in the home too? Remember OLPC One Laptop Per Child and the Vita/WiiU having features taken from the OLPC Sugar interface.http://www.cogonews.com/sne-tech-news-sony-corporation-adr-nysesne-advanced-micro-devices-inc-nyseamd/122455/# said:
OLPC games
jeff_rigby
Banned
I discovered OLPC when using keyword searches Cairo and Gstreamer which were in the Sony SNAP website and used in Sony blu-ray players and TVs. Found Vita using the same OLPC Neighborhood interface and speculated that Sony would, when going casual, support educational and Fun kid games on the PS3, Vita and even some on blu-ray players. That hasn't happened yet a year later and it appears that Google is spearheading this round of casual educational APPs.
The OLPC was using Gnome Mobile native libraries which are also used to support GTKwebkit so it's possible to support similar OLPC games on the PS3. WebGL also can support these low overhead games. Gnome Mobile's Mono= PS Mobile
I'm guessing that Gnome 4.0 will be the Linux that will be provided for the PS4 and maybe the PS3 March 2014.
jeff_rigby
Banned
So Microsoft has an always on mode with wake on Voice. They must do this and still comply with Power mode regulations. This is probably going to be a new mode beyond standby which is currently on the order of a watt or less.http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/7/3958546/new-xbox-speech-recognition-like-siri said:
How will they do this and what is going to be the regulated power mode name and watts allowed. Can everyone now see a need for VERY efficient memory in an always on Game console. Will Sony do the same? Voice recognition is very memory and CPU intense. This might be a reason to need more memory.
These could be ON:
One jaguar package which includes 4 jaguar CPUs and 2 megs of L2 cache.
Powered Kinect or possibly just the Mics feeding the USB port
DSP chip converting audio to digital
Comparing digitized audio to samples in memory, possibly a subset with only a few key words for power on.
Then the Xbox 720 wakes with a snapshot boot from the 16 gigs of SSD ram that is supposed to be in the PS4 and likely Xbox 720. Or main memory is active all the time which seems likely with the large amount that is rumored.
Yeah it could have a ARM SOC to do the above, kinda expensive for just that feature though. Things like this are going to be fun learning how they are accomplished.
And anyway you look at it there will have to be another Standby mode defined, the above is going to take watt(s) right?
I remember a rumor many months ago about the PS4 running off a rechargeable battery. I suspect there was a misunderstanding but the warning messages about turning off the PS3 when the drive light is flashing is not an idiot proof design. I suspect that there will be a graceful power down feature even if power is interrupted and that will require a small battery. The small rechargeable battery could keep memory refreshed too.
Idiot proof for casual users is also a design criteria besides supporting mandated power modes.
Serving handhelds and XTV: Always on modes require low power efficient designs. This is a MAJOR design criteria. Target audience is also shifting to more casual use and typical consumers which means easy to use, idiot proof features and an eye to fast app load times (consumer impatience, used to handheld instant apps due to always in memory designs).
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=512318
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=47599639&postcount=1
Both consoles are targeting serving handhelds and XTV. 16 gig SSD flash for fast boots (Snapshot boot) and fast application load times also quit and resume games and apps. Battery to provide for a graceful shutdown and protecting HD writes (idiot proof feature).http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/2013/feb13/02-11Xbox.aspx said:
Brad Grenz
Member
You'd think so. It's the perfect feature to lock behind a paywall for MS. Siri and Google Voice Search both do the processing server side. I would have guessed Durango would recognize a few commends locally for smooth responsiveness, but ultimately rely on server side processing for natural language recognition.
vivftp
Member
Just browsing through Sonys new bluray player, I noticed it has something called Super Wi-fi
http://store.sony.ca/webapp/wcs/sto...Id=200&productId=8198552921666519119#features
Anyone have a clue what this actually is? Maybe something we will see in PS4?
http://store.sony.ca/webapp/wcs/sto...Id=200&productId=8198552921666519119#features
Anyone have a clue what this actually is? Maybe something we will see in PS4?
Tripolygon
Banned
Super WiFi is Sony's term for WiFi technology that has a stronger and faster connection speed. You can stream full HD bluray video throughout your home with less lag.
This is pure speculation so appologies in advance.
Jeff's AMKOR pdf speculation has got me thinking. Could it be that Microsoft has had a few different silicon designs being done simutaneously? Each one based on different scenarios depending on what technologies will be available at the time they have to finalise. If the AMKOR stuff does pan out, is it feasible that Microsoft had a silicon design that used stacked DDR3, and they also had a silicon design using standard DDR3\EDRAM.
Could this also be why Sony has had also - a version using expensive\power hungry GDDR5 and another using stacked DDR ram? If the AMKOR manufacturing is now available, then perhaps its feasible that they've both switched to that? Hence Sony's telling developers that that they may be potentially looking at 8GB since the same amount of DDR will be available to both.
Now if that were the case, i don't know what it says about MS tile based tech and EDRAM. Could it be that the EDRAM is no longer required due to the increased bandwidth that stacked DDR3 provides, and therefore means more room for CU's etc? As i say, this could only happen if each company has had different revisions of silicon being developed concurrently.
Jeff, thanks for all your research, i've been reading it for months but have only now got a GAF account.
Jeff's AMKOR pdf speculation has got me thinking. Could it be that Microsoft has had a few different silicon designs being done simutaneously? Each one based on different scenarios depending on what technologies will be available at the time they have to finalise. If the AMKOR stuff does pan out, is it feasible that Microsoft had a silicon design that used stacked DDR3, and they also had a silicon design using standard DDR3\EDRAM.
Could this also be why Sony has had also - a version using expensive\power hungry GDDR5 and another using stacked DDR ram? If the AMKOR manufacturing is now available, then perhaps its feasible that they've both switched to that? Hence Sony's telling developers that that they may be potentially looking at 8GB since the same amount of DDR will be available to both.
Now if that were the case, i don't know what it says about MS tile based tech and EDRAM. Could it be that the EDRAM is no longer required due to the increased bandwidth that stacked DDR3 provides, and therefore means more room for CU's etc? As i say, this could only happen if each company has had different revisions of silicon being developed concurrently.
Jeff, thanks for all your research, i've been reading it for months but have only now got a GAF account.
If ms wanted more CUs in there APU they could have done so irrespective of RAM. It is, logically, more a design decision. The rumoured current 12 CUs likely suit their processing requirements
I wouldn't be so sure. Look at the wii u die pictures that were on gaf a few days ago, EDRAM takes up a huge silicon budget on the chip.
jeff_rigby
Banned
RE: Durango Move engines
I'm assuming the move engines are a 4 channel Memory Manager interfacing to 4 independent external memory channels (Wide IO) rather than the traditional quad-channel memory.
In addition, the Xbox 720 design has to support everything the PS4 design supports as seen in this: 5 S3D video channels:
AMD was working 1024 bit wide memory in 2007. Below is a picture of an early wide memory flow chart.
History repeats it'self. Read the entire article First GPUs under the AMD name.
The industry is moving to wide IO for both density and bandwidth:
System and Circuit Level Power Modeling of Energy-Efficient 3D-Stacked Wide I/O DRAMs
AMD near future Mobile GPUs will be using Wide IO and that design could be a part of Game consoles. If you look at the feature sets for both consoles it begs for low power efficient designs (Jaguar CPUs, Zero power with 4 CUs split off from the main GPU and powered separately, Wide IO ram).
I'm assuming the move engines are a 4 channel Memory Manager interfacing to 4 independent external memory channels (Wide IO) rather than the traditional quad-channel memory.
The very fast 4 channel memory described by the author to get to the target memory bandwidth would be very expensive and very power hungry generating lots of heat. In addition it's not a good choice for a cable box/XTV/IPTV/RVU box. You could, as has been mentioned, have a separate SoC with it's own memory pool to support those functions but Wake on Voice, voice commands (robust improved local voice recognition) as well as 1080P S3D two camera Skype (needs the AMD video encoder and decoder in the AMD GPU) are going to be part of the feature set (Same for the PS4 and it's target memory bandwidth using GDDR5). The Durango Move engine is, I believe, really a part of an off the shelf AMD GPU and allows efficient multiple simultaneous game and video streaming. Take it one step further with a wide IO memory controller that has 4 separate memory channels and QOS support which is what near future AMD Mobile GPUs will have.http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/147577-xbox-720-gpu-detailed-merely-a-last-gen-radeon said:
In addition, the Xbox 720 design has to support everything the PS4 design supports as seen in this: 5 S3D video channels:
AMD was working 1024 bit wide memory in 2007. Below is a picture of an early wide memory flow chart.
History repeats it'self. Read the entire article First GPUs under the AMD name.
The industry is moving to wide IO for both density and bandwidth:
So both TSMC and AMKOR (used by GF) are assembling wide IO memory from Micron and Hynix with Micron stating in their Stockholder conference call was providing custom memory for the next generation game consoles and Hynix working with AMD to provide HBM.http://semimd.com/blog/tag/micron/ said:
System and Circuit Level Power Modeling of Energy-Efficient 3D-Stacked Wide I/O DRAMs
AMD near future Mobile GPUs will be using Wide IO and that design could be a part of Game consoles. If you look at the feature sets for both consoles it begs for low power efficient designs (Jaguar CPUs, Zero power with 4 CUs split off from the main GPU and powered separately, Wide IO ram).
jeff_rigby
Banned
[url said:
Elpida Develops Faster Wide IO Mobile DRAM Product 11/2011
Micron recently purchased Elpida Memory after they developed Wide IO memory and Micron is producing memory for TSMC and Amkor which are assembling Wide IO memory.
And we have our rumored 2 Gbyte and 4 Gbyte PS4 memory sizes above. 1024 bits wide (512 bits per wide IO chip) with two chips on Interposer. 2 Gigabyte already shipping 6 months ago with maybe 4 Gigabyte ready to upgrade the memory specs.
In time for next-gen consoles, the question still remains
WTF, are those breasts under the 500?
Dead Prince
Banned
unsure if serious
AstroNut325
Member
That's dang cheap! Most enlargements are well north of $10K USD!
Dead Prince
Banned
i see they are catering to furries.
This seems to indicated you would/might be able to turn any flat, tablet-like, surface into a virtual touchpad - perhaps by placing specific strips on them. Like making your own AR cards for vita
That doesn't seem like it'd work very well unless the user was wearing AR glasses... in which case it could be really amazing. edit: Without AR glasses it'll be similar to Wonderbook or Eyepet, having to look at the TV to get visual feedback for what's happening right in front of you. The motion tracking would be more accurate, but a minor upgrade over current-gen adequacy won't do Sony any favors.