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AMD Details Jaguar; Preps Chip for PlayStation 4

J

JohnnySasaki86

Member
375961-amd-isscc-jaguar-vs-bobcat.jpg


Lock if old, but I did a quick search and did not see this posted.

AMD formally unveiled the Kabini processor at CES last month, but this week's presentation disclosed many more details. Jaguar is what AMD calls an "accelerated processing unit" (APU), meaning it includes both CPU and graphics capabilities on a single chip. In the presentation, AMD stressed the improvement Jaguar offers over the Bobcat core used in the company's existing "Brazos" platform. Jaguar has four CPU cores instead of two, it doubles the size of Level 2 cache to 2MB, and it makes the cache shareable among all the cores. This is made on TSMC's 28nm process and the difference makes each core notably smaller than the Bobcat core, which was made on a 40nm process.
Click to expand...

Jaguar is also at the heart of the AMD chip inside the PlayStation 4. The PS4 uses a semi-custom AMD APU, which includes eight CPU cores built on the Jaguar design, along with the company's Radeon graphics. The combination is said to deliver nearly two teraflops of performance. In other words, AMD took the same basic components of the chips it designs for notebooks and tablets (CPU cores, graphics cores, and other specialized features, such as video decoders and memory and display control) and combined them to create a special chip for Sony. The company has been widely rumored to be working on similar concepts for other gaming machines.
Click to expand...

It seems the main difference was the move down to 28nm and doubling to 4 cores, but it does look like Jaguar cores do offer a significant performance gain over the Bobcat cores. Close to 20% more flops per core. I don't know what a lot of this stuff means, but it looks like the information came from these slides. They go into a lot more detail about the Jaguar processor. I was hoping that someone with more technical know how could go through them and see if there's anything noteworthy. How many gflops is 194490?

It seems like Sony and AMD just took two of these things and duct taped them together. We probably wont know what other customization's may or may not been done until we can get a die shot of it. I'd really like to know how this CPU will compare to Xenon.

http://www.hardware.fr/marc/ISSCC2013-Final-v5.pdf

http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/none/308360-amd-details-jaguar-preps-chip-for-playstation-4
 
Oppo

Oppo

Member
They didn't take 2 Jag cores and duct tape them together.

It's much more akin to a hot glue type situation.

Jokes aside, I find the balance of these machines to be fascinating. It's like the old guard x86 merging with custom-console land.
 
J

JBuccCP

Member
I just hope it has enough processulator matrix functions to handle all of ps4s rambobulon calculations. Otherwise we could end up with a bottleneck on the anterior bus rail.
 
I

i-Lo

Member
JohnnySasaki86 said:
I guess people only care about discussing RAM powers in the PS4, discussing the processing power is meaningless these days. :(
Click to expand...

Well many here have written off the CPU as very weak but more to the point, for me, RAM is easier to understand than this detailed analysis of Jag. I am sure if I understood what those increase meant and what their real world implications are, I would appreciate it much more.

As it is, thanks for posting this.

Edit: Also, is this "Jag" the same one going in PS4 or is this is basic one without customization since the one in both PS4 and XB3 are to have 8 cores.
 
U

Unknown Soldier

Member
Kazuma Kiryu said:
i remember that chart from other threads, it's been discussed already, and we've also known for a while that these CPU's a step "backwards".
Click to expand...

Compared to Intel Core i3/5/7 CPUs, they are absolutely several steps backwards. However Intel was probably going to charge MS and Sony both arms and a leg for their CPUs, so they went with AMD instead.
 
J

JohnnySasaki86

Member
JBuccCP said:
I just hope it has enough processulator matrix functions to handle all of ps4s rambobulon calculations. Otherwise we could end up with a bottleneck on the anterior bus rail.
Click to expand...

headexplodes.gif

Nerfgun said:
They didn't take 2 Jag cores and duct tape them together.

It's much more akin to a hot glue type situation.
Click to expand...

I seriously LOL'ed.

i-Lo said:
Well many here have written off the CPU as very weak but more to the point, for me, RAM is easier to understand than this detailed analysis of Jag. I am sure if I understood what those increase meant and what their real world implications are, I would appreciate it much more.

As it is, thanks for posting this.
Click to expand...

Same here. That's why I posted it, in the hope someone knew what all these increases mean in real world terms. To the bolded, I think that could be a mistake. Who knows though. It does seem clear that Sony put more into beefing the GPU, and added additional enhancements for compute on the GPU to maybe compensate for the weaker CPU. But I'd like to know if it indeed should be written off as week. And more specifically how it compares to Wii U's and 360's CPU.
 
J

JohnnySasaki86

Member
Kazuma Kiryu said:
i remember that chart from other threads, it's been discussed already, and we've also known for a while that these CPU's a step "backwards".
Click to expand...

theres a lot more info in those slides than whats in that chart. I don't know if anyone dissected that yet. I just didn't know what any of meant or what was significant to put in the OP. In the article, which was posted 2 days ago, which was post they mention that AMD went over a lot more details at the event last week. I don't know if these slides were from that event though.
 
D

Dreams-Visions

Member
Don't you guys love these specs that we have no real, meaningful way to quantify?

It's just...information. I'm struggling to not just say, "cool story, bro" when reading this kinda stuff at this point.
 
B

Biggzy

Member
Unknown Soldier said:
Compared to Intel Core i3/5/7 CPUs, they are absolutely several steps backwards. However Intel was probably going to charge MS and Sony both arms and a leg for their CPUs, so they went with AMD instead.
Click to expand...

Also I would guess that it would easier to combine the GPU and CPU into a SOC if they are from the same manufacture.
 
A

aeolist

Banned
Upshot is devs will finally be programming game logic to use more than 2 threads

Someone might actually take advantage of my i7
 
I

i-Lo

Member
amstradcpc said:
2 each 4-core module,so 4MB total.By the way there are also rumors of not being only Vanilla for PS4 neither.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

JohnnySasaki86 said:
Same here. That's why I posted it, in the hope someone knew what all these increases mean in real world terms. To the bolded, I think that could be a mistake. Who knows though. It does seem clear that Sony put more into beefing the GPU, and added additional enhancements for compute on the GPU to maybe compensate for the weaker CPU. But I'd like to know if it indeed should be written off as week. And more specifically how it compares to Wii U's and 360's CPU.
Click to expand...

From what I remember learning from other members (like StevieP) the CPU is definitely orders of magnitudes better than WiiU's CPU but it is an apparent downgrade from the 4-core Steamroller Sony had originally planned for PS4. In addition to that, during the recent press conference, Cerny spoke about the 18 CUs in GPU are being customized so that developers can assign general purpose tasks to however many CUs they want. So in effect, it will aid the CPU when and if necessary (according to underlying programming of course).

Finally, the stock spec is supposed to be clocked at 1.6GHz and we have yet to learn whether the one in the PS4 will have the same speed.
 
J

JohnnySasaki86

Member
updated the OP with some quotes from the article. Stuff on PS4 and the implication that their doing something similar for the next Xbox is already known though.
 
J

JohnnySasaki86

Member
i-Lo said:
From what I remember learning from other members (like StevieP) the CPU is definitely orders of magnitudes better than WiiU's CPU but it is an apparent downgrade from the 4-core Steamroller Sony had originally planned for PS4. In addition to that, during the recent press conference, Cerny spoke about the 18 CUs in GPU are being customized so that developers can assign general purpose tasks to however many CUs they want. So in effect, it will aid the CPU when and if necessary (according to underlying programming of course).

Finally, the stock spec is supposed to be clocked at 1.6GHz and we have yet to learn whether the one in the PS4 will have the same speed.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. I wonder what type of performance increases it will receive based on the fact its on an APU. I remember reading that MS had to "downclock" the CPU/GPU when they did this in the 360 revision to keep its performance in with the past consoles.

If I'm not mistaken Durango isn't rumored to have its CPU/GPU on one SoC is it?
 
A

amstradcpc

Member
i-Lo said:
Thanks.



From what I remember learning from other members (like StevieP) the CPU is definitely orders of magnitudes better than WiiU's CPU but it is an apparent downgrade from the 4-core Steamroller Sony had originally planned for PS4. In addition to that, during the recent press conference, Cerny spoke about the 18 CUs in GPU are being customized so that developers can assign general purpose tasks to however many CUs they want. So in effect, it will aid the CPU when and if necessary (according to underlying programming of course).

Finally, the stock spec is supposed to be clocked at 1.6GHz and we have yet to learn whether the one in the PS4 will have the same speed.
Click to expand...

Well just found this about the gpu:
I'm hearing that PS4 GCN has 8 ACE's, each capable of running 8 CL's each. I believe Tahiti is 2 per ACE, 2 ACE's.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1712819&postcount=1188

This info,appears also in the sea islans gpu series isa document leaked last week, but refering to an "upcoming device".So gpu seems sea islands but with many more ACEs.This would debunk the 14+4 division as with so many aces and command ques you could divide the cus type of execution threads at your will between rendering/compute tasks.
 
R

Respawn

Banned
BlastProcessing said:
This is the first solid info I have seen that Jaguar is 28mn. This is a good thing.
Click to expand...

Yup. Less heat and good performance. Very customized for what Sony needs to do.

amstradcpc said:
Well just found this about the gpu:
I'm hearing that PS4 GCN has 8 ACE's, each capable of running 8 CL's each. I believe Tahiti is 2 per ACE, 2 ACE's.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1712819&postcount=1188

This info,appears also in the sea islans gpu series isa document leaked last week, but refering to an "upcoming device".So gpu seems sea islands but with many more ACEs.This would debunk the 14+4 division as with so many aces and command ques you could divide the cus type of execution threads at your will between rendering/compute tasks.
Click to expand...

Thats impressive. Quite an increase.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
aeolist said:
Upshot is devs will finally be programming game logic to use more than 2 threads

Someone might actually take advantage of my i7
Click to expand...

Xbox 360 already had six hardware threads. (2x each core, unless you were silly and used XNA, then you only got access to four)

Problem is telemetry will pretty much show a majority of PCs out there are on 2 cores or less. Even the Steam HW survey can't break >50% with their 4-core userbase. So PC devs are content in having shitty multicore support.

I'd like to put my 8-core bulldozer to some real work
even though it's technically actually 8 half-cores. Fuck you AMD, my next computer is an i7
)
 
J

JohnnySasaki86

Member
amstradcpc said:
Well just found this about the gpu:
I'm hearing that PS4 GCN has 8 ACE's, each capable of running 8 CL's each. I believe Tahiti is 2 per ACE, 2 ACE's.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1712819&postcount=1188

This info,appears also in the sea islans gpu series isa document leaked last week, but refering to an "upcoming device".So gpu seems sea islands but with many more ACEs.This would debunk the 14+4 division as with so many aces and command ques you could divide the cus type of execution threads at your will between rendering/compute tasks.
Click to expand...

What is ACE's and CL's? and what does this mean for performance?
 
B

Biggzy

Member
FyreWulff said:
Xbox 360 already had six hardware threads. (2x each core, unless you were silly and used XNA, then you only got access to four)

Problem is telemetry will pretty much show a majority of PCs out there are on 2 cores. Even the Steam HW survey can't break >50% with their 4-core userbase.

I'd like to put my 8-core bulldozer to some real work
even though it's technically actually 8 half-cores. Fuck you AMD, my next computer is an i7
)
Click to expand...

Yep. My i7 2600k is still good for a couple more years.
 
R

RiverBed

Banned
Zoramon089 said:
Less heat and power consumption probably
Click to expand...

But what about capability? I am no pro, but wouldn't a sandy bridge or an AMD's 4 core desktop cpu run circles around any mobile based CPU? After all, these consoles are not mobile devices.

Choice of CPU for next gen systems is the only thing that isn't exciting me all the way. But maybe it is something I am not understanding (hence the question).
 
O

Omega

Banned
Dreams-Visions said:
Don't you guys love these specs that we have no real, meaningful way to quantify?

It's just...information. I'm struggling to not just say, "cool story, bro" when reading this kinda stuff at this point.
Click to expand...
I feel the same.

Unless devs take advantage of this stuff it really doesn't matter what the specs are. PS4 reveal shows this isn't going to happen. Everyone is jizzing over KZ and all it did was go from sub-HD to 1080p. Gamers have sent a message, pretty rehashes = STFU N TAKE MY MONIES
 
A

amstradcpc

Member
JohnnySasaki86 said:
What is ACE's and CL's? and what does this mean for performance?
Click to expand...
AMDs new Asynchronous Compute Engines serve as the command processors for compute operations on GCN. The principal purpose of ACEs will be to accept work and to dispatch it off to the CUs for processing. As GCN is designed to concurrently work on several tasks, there can be multiple ACEs on a GPU, with the ACEs deciding on resource allocation, context switching, and task priority. AMD has not established an immediate relationship between ACEs and the number of tasks that can be worked on concurrently, so were not sure whether theres a fixed 1:X relationship or whether its simply more efficient for the purposes of working on many tasks in parallel to have more ACEs.

One effect of having the ACEs is that GCN has a limited ability to execute tasks out of order. As we mentioned previously GCN is an in-order architecture, and the instruction stream on a wavefront cannot be reodered. However the ACEs can prioritize and reprioritize tasks, allowing tasks to be completed in a different order than theyre received. This allows GCN to free up the resources those tasks were using as early as possible rather than having the task consuming resources for an extended period of time in a nearly-finished state. This is not significantly different from how modern in-order CPUs (Atom, ARM A8, etc) handle multi-tasking.

from http://www.anandtech.com/show/4455/amds-graphics-core-next-preview-amd-architects-for-compute/5

So, allows to allocate instructions at your will, compute ones, and the order to be executed.Fine tuning this order manually you could avoid stalls in the alus and improve their efficiency.PS4'S CERNY SAUCE.
 
Z

zoku88

Member
RiverBed said:
But what about capability? I am no pro, but wouldn't a sandy bridge or an AMD's 4 core desktop cpu run circles around any mobile based CPU? After all, these consoles are not mobile devices.

Choice of CPU for next gen systems is the only thing that isn't exciting me all the way. But maybe it is something I am not understanding (hence the question).
Click to expand...

Think of it like this.

What GPU does a Sandy Bridge come with?

Answer: an HD 4000. Why? Because if you put a CPU and GPU on the same chip, you have to think about the combined power usage of both (and therefore, heat.)

If there weren't any concerns with heat (and cost), Intel would just make a bigger GPU and put that in Sandy Bridge/ Ivy Bridge chips.
 
JonathanPower

JonathanPower

Member
i-Lo said:
Well many here have written off the CPU as very weak but more to the point, for me, RAM is easier to understand than this detailed analysis of Jag. I am sure if I understood what those increase meant and what their real world implications are, I would appreciate it much more.

As it is, thanks for posting this.

Edit: Also, is this "Jag" the same one going in PS4 or is this is basic one without customization since the one in both PS4 and XB3 are to have 8 cores.
Click to expand...

How can 8 jaguars be weak? Do you really think you could stand against 8 jaguars?

oncinha.jpg
 
B

Biggzy

Member
RiverBed said:
But what about capability? I am no pro, but wouldn't a sandy bridge or an AMD's 4 core desktop cpu run circles around any mobile based CPU? After all, these consoles are not mobile devices.

Choice of CPU for next gen systems is the only thing that isn't exciting me all the way. But maybe it is something I am not understanding (hence the question).
Click to expand...

Both of these consoles will have TDP limits that Sony and Microsoft have set, and for every W you spend on the CPU is one less you can spend for other components like the GPU. I am sure Microsoft and Sony have thought long and hard about this and both came to the conclusion that jaguar is the best solution.
 
O

Omeyocan

Member
RiverBed said:
But what about capability? I am no pro, but wouldn't a sandy bridge or an AMD's 4 core desktop cpu run circles around any mobile based CPU? After all, these consoles are not mobile devices.

Choice of CPU for next gen systems is the only thing that isn't exciting me all the way. But maybe it is something I am not understanding (hence the question).
Click to expand...

I'm wondering the same thing. Maybe it has to do with heat, power consumption and cost.
 
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