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AMD to sell a cut down version of Sony's PS4 APU

Exentryk

Exentryk

Member
CHIP DESIGNER AMD will offer a cut down version of the APU chip that will be in Sony's Playstation 4 later this year...

...Now AMD has said that a cut down version of the same APU will be available to consumers, albeit without Sony's technology.

While Sony revealed some information about the AMD APU that will power the Playstation 4, the details that were made public were all about AMD's technologies. AMD told The INQUIRER that the APU used is a custom A-series part that has a mix of AMD and Sony technology.
However John Taylor, head of marketing for AMD's Global Business Units, said that a version of the same chip without Sony's technology will be available for consumers later this year.
Taylor told The INQUIRER that the AMD branded APU chip will not have the same number of cores or the same computing capability as Sony's part.

He said, "Everything that Sony has shared in that single chip is AMD [intellectual property], but we have not built an APU quite like that for anyone else in the market. It is by far the most powerful APU we have built to date, it leverages [intellectual property] that you will find in our A-series APUs later this year, our new generation of APUs but none that will quite be to that level of sheer number of cores, sheer number of teraflops."
AMD is scheduled to launch its third generation APUs this year, but what is interesting is that the firm can effectively take part of a consumer chip and customise it for customers such as Sony.

Taylor said that this is all part of AMD's "flexible system on chip strategy", but what the upcoming A-series parts will show is just how much work Sony put into the chip that is found in the Playstation 4.
Click to expand...

For full article, hit the Inquirer
 
S

specialguy

Banned
seems a misleading headline

it leverages [intellectual property] that you will find in our A-series APUs later this year, our new generation of APUs
Click to expand...

standard marketing speak stuff

but what the upcoming A-series parts will show is just how much work Sony put into the chip that is found in the Playstation 4
Click to expand...

this is interesting, but i'd think it unlikely amd would be taking sony's work and profiting off it in the desktop ,market, unless they pay sony for it...i also doubt sony has the technical know how to deliver much that amd would find useful, given that amd's business is high performance cpu's and gpu's and sony's well, isn't.
 
C

CrashPrime

Member
Why bother? It isn't like 8 cores @ 1.6ghz and graphics capable of >2tflops is even impressive in the PC gaming world. If anything AMD should be building a MORE powerful APU for the PC market.

Yes, the PS4 is impressive for (in theory) >$500 console, but when you're talking about it's specs on a Windows PC, it's very much middle of the road, and dare I say ... dated.
 
M

markot

Banned
Sounds like they are just trying to cash in.

Was there any doubt? I mean they are essentially using off the shelf parts.
 
S

spwolf

Member
CrashPrime said:
Why bother? It isn't like 8 cores @ 1.6ghz and graphics capable of >2tflops is even impressive in the PC gaming world. If anything AMD should be building a MORE powerful APU for the PC market.

Yes, the PS4 is impressive for (in theory) >$500 console, but when you're talking about it's specs on a Windows PC, it's very much middle of the road, and dare I say ... dated.
Click to expand...

yeah, biggest SoC and APU to date are dated...
very definition of dated: go where nobody has been before.
 
O

onQ123

Member
basically Inquirer making a headline story out of nothing this is basically AMD saying we will have APU's with jaguar cores & our new GPUs.
 
R

rdrr gnr

Member
CrashPrime said:
Why bother? It isn't like 8 cores @ 1.6ghz and graphics capable of >2tflops is even impressive in the PC gaming world. If anything AMD should be building a MORE powerful APU for the PC market.

Yes, the PS4 is impressive for (in theory) >$500 console, but when you're talking about it's specs on a Windows PC, it's very much middle of the road, and dare I say ... dated.
Click to expand...
Dated?
 
Exentryk

Exentryk

Member
I read some articles saying the PS4 APU tech can't be gotten for PCs etc. What does this mean for current non unified PC RAMs? Can PCs get unified RAM? Will it be a more efficient design?
 
T

TheExodu5

Banned
Exentryk said:
I read some articles saying the PS4 APU tech can't be gotten for PCs etc. What does this mean for current non unified PC RAMs? Can PCs get unified RAM? Will it be a more efficient design?
Click to expand...

PCs with onboard GPUs tend to use physically unified RAM, but it will still always be logically separated through the operating system. I doubt you'll ever see completely unified memory on PC, at least not without a major architecture shift.
 
A

Angelus Errare

Banned
He said, "Everything that Sony has shared in that single chip is AMD [intellectual property], but we have not built an APU quite like that for anyone else in the market. It is by far the most powerful APU we have built to date.
Click to expand...

Commence faux panic over Durango specs.
 
Exentryk

Exentryk

Member
TheExodu5 said:
PCs with onboard GPUs tend to use physically unified RAM, but it will still always be logically separated through the operating system. I doubt you'll ever see completely unified memory on PC, at least not without a major architecture shift.
Click to expand...

Would it be a better design for PCs, to go unified, talking hypothetically? More efficient, faster, cooler?
 
M

mugurumakensei

Member
Exentryk said:
Would it be a better design for PCs, to go unified, talking hypothetically? More efficient, faster, cooler?
Click to expand...
No. Certain applications like games need high bandwidth memory like you would find in a graphics card. Other applications like office, browsers, etc need low latency memory like DDR3.
 
Y

|ync

Member
CrashPrime said:
Why bother? It isn't like 8 cores @ 1.6ghz and graphics capable of >2tflops is even impressive in the PC gaming world. If anything AMD should be building a MORE powerful APU for the PC market.

Yes, the PS4 is impressive for (in theory) >$500 console, but when you're talking about it's specs on a Windows PC, it's very much middle of the road, and dare I say ... dated.
Click to expand...

It might not stack up to what you can get in a desktop gaming rig these days, but it could have some interesting implications for laptops/netbooks.
 
S

specialguy

Banned
onQ123 said:
basically Inquirer making a headline story out of nothing this is basically AMD saying we will have APU's with jaguar cores & our new GPUs.
Click to expand...

yup. said what i couldnt put into words.

It might not stack up to what you can get in a desktop gaming rig these days, but it could have some interesting implications for laptops/netbooks.
Click to expand...

yes, as an apu liverpoll is far far beyond anything amd has so far shipped. the best amd apu's currently have 384 sp's i believe, while liverpool has 1152. of course the power envelope is why you wouldn't put liverpool in a laptop anytime soon.
 
J

JNappula

Neo Member
MuseManMike said:
Dated?
Click to expand...

Well, my two year old desktop PC has an i5-2500k @4GHz and a HD6970 (~2.7 TFLOPS). When the 360 was introduced in 2005 it had a top tier GPU and a very fast CPU. Compared to that this new console generation is looking to be a disappointment...
 
I

itxaka

Defeatist
JNappula said:
Well, my two year old desktop PC has an i5-2500k @4GHz and a HD6970 (~2.7 TFLOPS). When the 360 was introduced in 2005 it had a top tier GPU and a very fast CPU. Compared to that this new console generation is looking to be a disappointment...
Click to expand...

Bu but but ddr5!
 
A

artist

Banned
The article is implying that AMD APU with 12-18CU graphics engine will be available for the desktop space as well. But the marketing speak is mixing up, this is Sony tech but what we will sell is our tech bumble jumble.

JNappula said:
Well, my two year old desktop PC has an i5-2500k @4GHz and a HD6970 (~2.7 TFLOPS). When the 360 was introduced in 2005 it had a top tier GPU and a very fast CPU. Compared to that this new console generation is looking to be a disappointment...
Click to expand...
Nope ..

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=48145238&postcount=192
 
K

kitch9

Banned
CrashPrime said:
Why bother? It isn't like 8 cores @ 1.6ghz and graphics capable of >2tflops is even impressive in the PC gaming world. If anything AMD should be building a MORE powerful APU for the PC market.

Yes, the PS4 is impressive for (in theory) >$500 console, but when you're talking about it's specs on a Windows PC, it's very much middle of the road, and dare I say ... dated.
Click to expand...

I know, I mean why would we want a low power using, comparatively high performance and good value chip?

Are they fucking completely stupid?
 
M

michaelius

Banned
Supermarkets must be rubbing their hands :) 8 core dirt cheap APUs to fool people into buying that junk when any i3 will faster ;)
 
U

Uhyve

Member
As people have already said, they're probably just talking about Kabini or Temash:

screenshot2012-02-01apwodr.png
Click to expand...
I've always thought that Kaveri would be a good candidate for a Steambox.
 
A

antic604

Banned
Interesting everyone reads something else from this.

The things that caught my eye:

"While Sony revealed some information about the AMD APU that will power the Playstation 4, the details that were made public were all about AMD's technologies. AMD told The INQUIRER that the APU used is a custom A-series part that has a mix of AMD and Sony technology."

"Everything that Sony has shared in that single chip is AMD [intellectual property], but we have not built an APU quite like that for anyone else in the market. It is by far the most powerful APU we have built to date, it leverages [intellectual property] that you will find in our A-series APUs later this year, our new generation of APUs but none that will quite be to that level of sheer number of cores, sheer number of teraflops."

So, they say that:
- there are custom changes / additions Sony made to the SoC,
- those changes / additions were not revealed yet,
- they make it "by far the most powerful (that AMD had built)" and I'm sure he's aware they also make SoC for Durango, so that's quite telling and confirms the rumors from other threads,
 
J

JohnnySasaki86

Member
CrashPrime said:
Why bother? It isn't like 8 cores @ 1.6ghz and graphics capable of >2tflops is even impressive in the PC gaming world. If anything AMD should be building a MORE powerful APU for the PC market.

Yes, the PS4 is impressive for (in theory) >$500 console, but when you're talking about it's specs on a Windows PC, it's very much middle of the road, and dare I say ... dated.
Click to expand...

ummm...for an APU it is.
 
O

onQ123

Member
antic604 said:
Interesting everyone reads something else from this.

The things that caught my eye:

"While Sony revealed some information about the AMD APU that will power the Playstation 4, the details that were made public were all about AMD's technologies. AMD told The INQUIRER that the APU used is a custom A-series part that has a mix of AMD and Sony technology."

"Everything that Sony has shared in that single chip is AMD [intellectual property], but we have not built an APU quite like that for anyone else in the market. It is by far the most powerful APU we have built to date, it leverages [intellectual property] that you will find in our A-series APUs later this year, our new generation of APUs but none that will quite be to that level of sheer number of cores, sheer number of teraflops."

So, they say that:
- there are custom changes / additions Sony made to the SoC,
- those changes / additions were not revealed yet,
- they make it "by far the most powerful (that AMD had built)" and I'm sure he's aware they also make SoC for Durango, so that's quite telling and confirms the rumors from other threads,
Click to expand...


Even if the Xbox 3 APU was more powerful he would still say the same thing because he can't speak on the Xbox 3 APU yet so when he say to date the Xbox 3 APU isn't include.
 
A

artist

Banned
Vaporak said:
You really should check your dates. The Xbox360 launched 1 year before the GF8800. The GPU in the 360 was state of the art at release.
Click to expand...
You really should check what I said, the G80 comparison was done by some one else. Regardless of that conpare Xenos raw power to R520.
JNappula said:
Well, The 8800GTX was released a year later than the 360 IIRC. The ATI R520 based cards were the best PC cards when the 360 was released, the top of the line Radeon X1800 (XT?) might have been slightly faster than the 360 GPU, both were released in late 2005.
Click to expand...
Slightly is putting it mildly. The filtrate, shading power, men bandwidth for Xenos were all still pretty tame in comparison. The gap between top end PC GPU and console GPU is similar for the previous as well as the upcoming cycle and not like some people like to think.
 
C

CrashPrime

Member
kitch9 said:
I know, I mean why would we want a low power, comparatively high performance and good value chip?

Are they fucking completely stupid?
Click to expand...

Why would you want a low power, low performance desktop? As someone mentioned, the tech in a laptop makes sense, but we are talking desktop components. In the linked article, it's mentioned the APU will be sold to consumers. Last time I checked, consumers didn't build their own laptops.

Certainly there are better alternatives for HTPC's, the goto reason for low power.

I just don't see a market for a castrated PS4 chip with so many powerful alternatives.

tl;dr -- Laptops? Tablets? Yes. Desktops? No.
 
K

kitch9

Banned
CrashPrime said:
Why would you want a low power, low performance desktop? As someone mentioned, the tech in a laptop makes sense, but we are talking desktop components. In the linked article, it's mentioned the APU will be sold to consumers. Last time I checked, consumers didn't build their own laptops.

Certainly there are better alternatives for HTPC's, the goto reason for low power.

I just don't see a market for a castrated PS4 chip with so many powerful alternatives.

tl;dr -- Laptops? Tablets? Yes. Desktops? No.
Click to expand...

Laptops and Tablets? So there is a massive, market for them? I thought you said there wasn't?

This will be better than their current APU's and they are already a decent all rounder for the money so I'm not sure what your issue is?
 
A

alexandros

Banned
artist said:
The gap between top end PC GPU and console GPU is similar for the previous as well as the upcoming cycle and not like some people like to think.
Click to expand...

I think you are wrong. Here's why:

http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=381205

Last time the Xbox had a GPU that was comparable to a $400 PC GPU. This time the PS4 has a GPU that is comparable to a $150-200 GPU. That's without taking into account that both the PS3 and Xbox 360 had multi-core CPUs, a rarity among PCs of the time.
 
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