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

robjoh

Member
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.

I thought the goal with HSA was that APUs would use unified memory?
 

teo72

Neo Member
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,

Typically Sony to keep secrets from us. I guess they do that because they don't want MS to know the full potential of the PS4. If MS found out this, then they could change the specs and make the Ps4 seem obsolete. I guess the same goes for MS, keeping secrets is common sence. It's going to be interesting to see what they've been up to. come E3. Obviously both MS and Sony are hard at work sqeezing everything they can out of their respective hardwares. Exciting times :)
 
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.

Typically Sony to keep secrets from us. I guess they do that because they don't want MS to know the full potential of the PS4. If MS found out this, then they could change the specs and make the Ps4 seem obsolete. I guess the same goes for MS, keeping secrets is common sence. It's going to be interesting to see what they've been up to. come E3. Obviously both MS and Sony are hard at work sqeezing everything they can out of their respective hardwares. Exciting times :)

I guess Microsoft don't care abot PS4 power, their hardware works for what they want.
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
That's without taking into account that both the PS3 and Xbox 360 had multi-core CPUs, a rarity among PCs of the time.

And for good reason, there was next to no multi-core aware software, much less software that would not just be aware but take significant advantage of multiple cores.

On top of that individual core speeds on multi-core processors were significantly lower than on single-core processors, yielding a platform that was a poor choice for most software out there, especially games. I saw so many people buy Q6600-based systems because they absolutely had to have multicore only to end up disappointed and ultimately upgrade to dual-core systems with higher individual core speeds.

Multi-core isn't the universal boon people make it out to be. Software is catching up, slowly.
 
Yeah, that's exactly the question people should be getting from this, not whether or not Xbox360 was better than PCs at the time of its release... :)

I was waiting for someone to underline that part of the quote. It is strange, maybe there will be more surprises in the future.
 

Vaporak

Member
And for good reason, there was next to no multi-core aware software, much less software that would not just be aware but take significant advantage of multiple cores.

On top of that individual core speeds on multi-core processors were significantly lower than on single-core processors, yielding a platform that was a poor choice for most software out there, especially games. I saw so many people buy Q6600-based systems because they absolutely had to have multicore only to end up disappointed and ultimately upgrade to dual-core systems with higher individual core speeds.

Multi-core isn't the universal boon people make it out to be. Software is catching up, slowly.

The Q6600 was a better buy if you were in it for the long haul. I'd much rather have the Q6600 instead of a dual core CPU these days, but I was on a tight budget and couldn't afford it at the time.
 

onQ123

Member
what is the Sony tech inside?. The custom silicon to make downloads in the background?. The Cell?.


Special Vector Processing Unit?


PS1 , PS2 & PS3 all had Vector Processing Units


http://www.secularcafe.org/showthread.php?p=441954


The original Playstation (1994):
CPU: 30-MHz MIPS R3000, a vector unit for 3D graphics
GPU: 2D instructions, 1 megabyte VRAM
RAM: 2 megabytes

Playstation 2 (2000):
CPU: "Emotion Engine": 300-MHz MIPS R5900, some vector units for 3D-graphics polygon setup and the like
GPU: 3D-graphics polygon fill
RAM: 32 megabytes

Playstation 3 (2006):
CPU: IBM Cell: 3.2-GHz PowerPC, 7 vector units
GPU: based on Nvidia GeForce 7
RAM: 256 megabytes


I think it will be kinda weird for Sony to go from the 7 SPEs on the Cell to only the Jaguar

(yeah I know the GPGPU but I wonder if there will be a Vector co processor on the SoC?)
 

mrgreen

Banned
Lol, that bullshit has been disproved right there in the OP.
PS4 is a fucking beast, teraflops don't mean shit when it comes to coding for a closed, windows OS-free system.

Dated, my arse.

Yes and it should be obvious when you look what is possible on PS3. (And the fact that mega powerful PCs still have crappy frame rates on the latest games, often.) I'm getting quite sick of PC owners derailing threads that have nothing to do with them, only to gloat about their superior PC.
 
Special Vector Processing Unit?


PS1 , PS2 & PS3 all had Vector Processing Units





I think it will be kinda weird for Sony to go from the 7 SPEs on the Cell to only the Jaguar

(yeah I know the GPGPU but I wonder if there will be a Vector co processor on the SoC?)

Remember Eurogamer: Paired up with the eight AMD cores, we find a bespoke GPU-like "Compute" module, designed to ease the burden on certain operations - physics calculations are a good example of traditional CPU work that are often hived off to GPU cores. We're assured that this is bespoke hardware that is not a part of the main graphics pipeline but we remain rather mystified by its standalone inclusion, bearing in mind Compute functions could be run off the main graphics cores and that devs could have the option to utilise that power for additional graphical grunt, if they so chose.

I think VGleaks mixed it all with the 14+4.

The 4 extra ALUs perfectly could be 4 SPEs.
The true is that SPURSengine II or whatever, that is already designed to talk via drivers to a x86 CPU is a very good candidate. SPURSengine I in 65 nm was 10-20 watts. In 28 would be 5-10?.
 
PS4 is a fucking beast

No, it isn't by any stretch of the imagination. It's not bad, that's as far as I would go.

I'm getting quite sick of PC owners derailing threads that have nothing to do with them, only to gloat about their superior PC.

Ooh, I have a lot of questions to ask you since you seem so knowledgeable in these matters.

a) You say that this thread has nothing to do with PC gamers. Yet the OP mentions the release of a new AMD APU... for PC. Care to explain?

b) Have you considered that PC gamers are forced to intervene because other users are expressing uninformed, false or even biased opinions as facts?

c) What is possible on PS3 is not an accurate metric of the PS4's power in relation to the PC. Some PCs may struggle to play certain games because a) the PC versions are offering vastly better image quality and b) because they're likely running these games at four times higher resolution. Do you understand any of this? What is your reply?
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
this would be a weird PC. Budget CPU and nicely performing GPU. Its disproportionate in the power balance considering it would need to work as a general purpose computer.

might make a great steambox though..
 

Perkel

Banned
Remember Eurogamer: Paired up with the eight AMD cores, we find a bespoke GPU-like "Compute" module, designed to ease the burden on certain operations - physics calculations are a good example of traditional CPU work that are often hived off to GPU cores. We're assured that this is bespoke hardware that is not a part of the main graphics pipeline but we remain rather mystified by its standalone inclusion, bearing in mind Compute functions could be run off the main graphics cores and that devs could have the option to utilise that power for additional graphical grunt, if they so chose.

I think VGleaks mixed it all with the 14+4.

The 4 extra ALUs perfectly could be 4 SPEs.
The true is that SPURSengine II or whatever, that is already designed to talk via drivers to a x86 CPU is a very good candidate. SPURSengine I in 65 nm was 10-20 watts. In 28 would be 5-10?.

Eurogamer article fits PS4 GPU being GCN+ or GCN 2.0

VG leaks article 14+4 may be old info where maybe GCN+ would only include 4 CU instead all of them or those 4 would be customized other way.

Right now what we know is that official spec PDF is still vague.

edit:

Or both articles may be right so 18CU are GCN+/GCN2.0 and 4 of them are further customized.
 

onQ123

Member
Remember Eurogamer: Paired up with the eight AMD cores, we find a bespoke GPU-like "Compute" module, designed to ease the burden on certain operations - physics calculations are a good example of traditional CPU work that are often hived off to GPU cores. We're assured that this is bespoke hardware that is not a part of the main graphics pipeline but we remain rather mystified by its standalone inclusion, bearing in mind Compute functions could be run off the main graphics cores and that devs could have the option to utilise that power for additional graphical grunt, if they so chose.

I think VGleaks mixed it all with the 14+4.

The 4 extra ALUs perfectly could be 4 SPEs.
The true is that SPURSengine II or whatever, that is already designed to talk via drivers to a x86 CPU is a very good candidate. SPURSengine I in 65 nm was 10-20 watts. In 28 would be 5-10?.

Also This Patent show a Vector Processing Unit in what I believe to be the PlayStation 4

08384721-1+small.jpg



08384721-2+small.jpg
 

Zarx

Member
this would be a weird PC. Budget CPU and nicely performing GPU. Its disproportionate in the power balance considering it would need to work as a general purpose computer.

might make a great steambox though..

I wonder if AMD could create a custom board design with a similar APU soldered onto the board with 8GB of GDDR5 and license it to partners for Steamboxes. Maybe even swap out the Jaguar cores for full Bulldozer cores. I imagine it would be rather expensive without the volume and supply chain of Sony, but it could be an interesting platform. Tho the high latency of GDDR5 may pose some issue for some PC applications I imagine.
 
I wonder if AMD could create a custom board design with a similar APU soldered onto the board with 8GB of GDDR5 and license it to partners for Steamboxes. Maybe even swap out the Jaguar cores for full Bulldozer cores. I imagine it would be rather expensive without the volume and supply chain of Sony, but it could be an interesting platform. Tho the high latency of GDDR5 may pose some issue for some PC applications I imagine.

Or, they could just wait until DDR4 comes out...
 

TheD

The Detective
Lol, that bullshit has been disproved right there in the OP.
PS4 is a fucking beast, teraflops don't mean shit when it comes to coding for a closed, windows OS-free system.

Dated, my arse.

The CPU would not be a good fit for a PC, having strong cores is far more desirable.


Yes and it should be obvious when you look what is possible on PS3. (And the fact that mega powerful PCs still have crappy frame rates on the latest games, often.) I'm getting quite sick of PC owners derailing threads that have nothing to do with them, only to gloat about their superior PC.

I am sick of insecure playstation "fans" coming into a PC thread and attacking people for talking about PCs!

And BTW, Any powerful PC that is having crappy frame rates in a game would be running the game at far higher settings than what the PS3 does!

I wonder if AMD could create a custom board design with a similar APU soldered onto the board with 8GB of GDDR5 and license it to partners for Steamboxes. Maybe even swap out the Jaguar cores for full Bulldozer cores. I imagine it would be rather expensive without the volume and supply chain of Sony, but it could be an interesting platform. Tho the high latency of GDDR5 may pose some issue for some PC applications I imagine.

And the fact that Bulldozer is not that crash hot.
 
The CPU would not be a good fit for a PC, having strong cores is far more desirable.
From the comparo posted in another GAF thread (can't remember which one ATM), it would seem Jaguar is actually pretty 'strong'. The poster quoted a test between the Temash A6-1450 (1.4 GHz) and the Trinity A10-4600M (2.3 GHz). The A10 had twice the performance, but drank 7 times the power (5 W TDP for the Temash vs. Trinity's 35). From a perf/Watt p.o.v. this cat is pretty tough.
 
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.

So are you saying HSA is dated in comparison with PCIe?
 

ActionMan

Member
Seems we can't have any PS4 related news without someone mentioning how "dated" and underpowered it is compared to a good PC. I remember the exact same thing happening.. oh, I don't know, EVERY SINGLE generation.
 

Biggzy

Member
Seems we can't have any PS4 related news without someone mentioning how "dated" and underpowered it is compared to a good PC. I remember the exact same thing happening.. oh, I don't know, EVERY SINGLE generation.

A console will never be able to be as powerful as a PC because a PC doesn't operate in the same thermal envelope as a console and a PC can scale linearly with the advancement in technology.
 

TheD

The Detective
From the comparo posted in another GAF thread (can't remember which one ATM), it would seem Jaguar is actually pretty 'strong'. The poster quoted a test between the Temash A6-1450 (1.4 GHz) and the Trinity A10-4600M (2.3 GHz). The A10 had twice the performance, but drank 7 times the power (5 W TDP for the Temash vs. Trinity's 35). From a perf/Watt p.o.v. this cat is pretty tough.

Jaguar is not strong per a core.
That will hurt it badly in a PC.
Having such a low TDP is not important.

And that poster ignores the way more powerful GPU in the A10.
 

z0m3le

Banned
Jaguar is not strong per a core.
That will hurt it badly in a PC.
Having such a low TDP is not important.

And that poster ignores the way more powerful GPU in the A10.

What do you think the TDP for this APU will be? Richland's top end APU is 100watt TDP right? but that is only 384ALUs, this is 1152ALUs and ALUs always eat up more power on the APU than the CPU, I'd imagine it is going to be about 150watt TDP considering that the HD 7850 is 1024ALUs clocked at 860MHz with 130watt TDP, of course that is also GCN and 28nm. 8 Jaguar cores would run 20-24watts right? so 150watt seems like a good estimate, plus at least 40watts for GDDR5, the PS4 will probably end up bigger and louder than the launch PS3.

Considering this article says basically Richland is in the same family as PS4's APU, that would point to GCN and not GCN2.
 
AMD has developed a habit of inflating FLOPS numbers so it would probably be a better idea to compare the PS4 GPU to the Radeon line. the 7970 is rated for 3.8 Tflops, compared to the 1.84 Tflops of the PS4.

I don't understand why you are talking about the PS4 GPU. The PS4 GPU is a customized version that will be used only in the PS4. On PC, AMD can make an APU with a 7970 GPU and they can use a different CPU than jaguar.
 
What do you think the TDP for this APU will be? Richland's top end APU is 100watt TDP right? but that is only 384ALUs, this is 1152ALUs and ALUs always eat up more power on the APU than the CPU, I'd imagine it is going to be about 150watt TDP considering that the HD 7850 is 1024ALUs clocked at 860MHz with 130watt TDP, of course that is also GCN and 28nm. 8 Jaguar cores would run 20-24watts right? so 150watt seems like a good estimate, plus at least 40watts for GDDR5, the PS4 will probably end up bigger and louder than the launch PS3.

Considering this article says basically Richland is in the same family as PS4's APU, that would point to GCN and not GCN2.
They'd never pair a quad Jaguar CPU with a 7790 GPU (or whatever they call the 1152:72:24 config). It's simply too unbalanced. I'm thinking at best quad Jaguar with a 7750-equivalent (512:32:16). And the octa is a custom made-for-Sony design.
 
I don't understand why you are talking about the PS4 GPU. The PS4 GPU is a customized version that will be used only in the PS4. On PC, AMD can make an APU with a 7970 GPU and they can use a different CPU than jaguar.

I'm not saying otherwise. I was just responding to the claim that this gen's graphics capabilities represent the same sort of leap that we saw last time, a conclusion that isn't really supported by any tangible evidence.
 
They'd never pair a quad Jaguar CPU with a 7790 GPU (or whatever they call the 1152:72:24 config). It's simply too unbalanced. I'm thinking at best quad Jaguar with a 7750-equivalent (512:32:16). And the octa is a custom made-for-Sony design.

Yeah, but on PC they can use other CPUs than jaguar. At first, the PS4 was supposed to use a quad core steamroller processor.
 

strata8

Member
They'd never pair a quad Jaguar CPU with a 7790 GPU (or whatever they call the 1152:72:24 config). It's simply too unbalanced. I'm thinking at best quad Jaguar with a 7750-equivalent (512:32:16). And the octa is a custom made-for-Sony design.

Jaguar-based SoCs max out at 25W so you won't see anything close to a 7750 in there.

edit: Nevermind, I think I misunderstood your post.
 
Jaguar-based SoCs max out at 25W so you won't see anything close to a 7750 in there.
That's not necessarily a problem. The A10-4600M (with a 384:24:8) is a 35W TDP part, but the Piledriver core is rather power-inefficient compared to the Jaguar. Depending on what frequency they'll run the CPU portion (and what yields they'll get), they might stick a downclocked version in there.
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
"Everything that Sony has shared in that single chip is AMD [intellectual property]"

This the big news here in my opinion (*), Sony doesn't own the IP. Similar situation as with Xbox/NVIDIA, the exact thing Microsoft avoided with 360 by staying in control of the IP - that's the main reason they have been able to do such impressive cost reductions.

Hopefully Sony has done some watertight T&Cs so they don't get screwed.





* Although I would love some of that APU bandwidth goodness in my gaming PC - Titan level GPU combined with i7 level CPU on a single mammoth die!
 

tipoo

Banned
So basically the article is saying AMD won't suddenly cancel the next APUs with the next gen CPU cores and GPU architecture...What does "cut down" mean, how cut down?

An APU with 7850-like power would certainly be impressive though, although I'd wonder about yields with the size of that plus the processor cores. And in the PC space an 8 core low clocked Jaguar wouldn't be so appealing, most would rather have a quad core of a bigger core. And cooling, those two chips jammed together would probably have a high TDP.

However it is kind of exciting, maybe the promise of APUs will start to be realized next round. More and more software is leveraging GPUs for calculations now.

But would the GPU still be stuck with DDR3 despite the chips speed? The bandwidth would limit it. Unless it has an eDRAM like Intels Haswell GPU GT3i will.
 

Respawn

Banned
seems a misleading headline



standard marketing speak stuff



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.
Dude did you even read the article?
 

mrgreen

Banned
No, it isn't by any stretch of the imagination. It's not bad, that's as far as I would go.



Ooh, I have a lot of questions to ask you since you seem so knowledgeable in these matters.

a) You say that this thread has nothing to do with PC gamers. Yet the OP mentions the release of a new AMD APU... for PC. Care to explain?

b) Have you considered that PC gamers are forced to intervene because other users are expressing uninformed, false or even biased opinions as facts?

c) What is possible on PS3 is not an accurate metric of the PS4's power in relation to the PC. Some PCs may struggle to play certain games because a) the PC versions are offering vastly better image quality and b) because they're likely running these games at four times higher resolution. Do you understand any of this? What is your reply?

Your post is just an example of how deluded and arrogant some PC owners are when it comes to their false sense of superiority, in many ways. The post I originally replied to was an example of how PC owners are just plain wrong, often,when they compare what is capable on PC and what is capable with the same, or less, FLOPS, on console.
You will see on PS4 that properly programmed games will achieve good framerates no matter the resolution. PC games never get the most out of their hardware superiority, consoles nearly always do. Do you understand any of this?
 
This the big news here in my opinion (*), Sony doesn't own the IP. Similar situation as with Xbox/NVIDIA, the exact thing Microsoft avoided with 360 by staying in control of the IP - that's the main reason they have been able to do such impressive cost reductions.

Hopefully Sony has done some watertight T&Cs so they don't get screwed.





* Although I would love some of that APU bandwidth goodness in my gaming PC - Titan level GPU combined with i7 level CPU on a single mammoth die!

That´s the key too. Sony has not shared everything then. Things left to share. onQ123 patents is very ilustrative and the date fits.
 

aeolist

Banned
Your post is just an example of how deluded and arrogant some PC owners are when it comes to their false sense of superiority, in many ways. The post I originally replied to was an example of how PC owners are just plain wrong, often,when they compare what is capable on PC and what is capable with the same, or less, FLOPS, on console.
You will see on PS4 that properly programmed games will achieve good framerates no matter the resolution. PC games never get the most out of their hardware superiority, consoles nearly always do. Do you understand any of this?

Oh man thanks I needed a laugh this morning
 
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