jeff_rigby
Banned
I was shocked when I read that Sony would be using PS3 hardware for PS Now. I assumed PC Hardware with titles recompiled to run on a PC. Modern PC hardware is power efficient and forward compatible. What could be the reason for using PS3 hardware? Sony likely has power efficient and cheaper PS3 hardware coming soon.
Mentioned in articles on Playstation Now are two observations I find compelling:
1) The PS3 is not as end of life as expected. China opening up to game consoles supports this.
2) It's highly unlikely that stock 45nm Cell and 40nm RSX as well as XDR memory and southbridge are in Playstation now servers. Running a AAA game on the known latest PS3 hardware exceeds 71 watts and 68 watts idle. 8 sets of of these in the server board mentioned in the Digital Foundry article would be 544 to 568 watts plus the energy spent removing the heat from a server room; this is highly unlikely from a power and multiple use standpoint.
So what is possibly in these server boards? 22nm Cell and 28nm RSX have been mentioned as coming for a PS3 refresh. But a 22nm Cell still can't be power gated as needed so it's all on or all off. Same for the RSX which by today's standards is horribly inefficient (power use would be from to 240 - 400 watts). So if using a 22nm Cell and 28nm RSX, it's not a HSA design and would need two separate banks of memory or would it? And here is where patent searches might help us understand what's possible.
MPA Cell and Stacked memory with a two speed interface.
Edit: TSVs are necessary to support the number of IO pins with Wide IO stacked memory. TSVs start with 20nm at Global foundries. Further, the smaller microbump connections between chip and 2.5D interposer can't handle large temperature cycles so this limits the TDP.
Edit two: 3DS memory is stacked DRAM from HBM with a different memory controller on the bottom layer. With a custom memory controller it should be able to emulate both GDDR3 and XDR which is the thrust of the patent.
Edit on Edit:
Second a memory patent that could be used with a 22nm Cell and 28nm RSX as well as a more power efficient 22nm MPA Cell and AMD GPU and/or ARM encoder and GPU.
Power gating and scaling would drop power to about (guess for a board that has 8 PS3 systems) min 40 watts and max 250 watts.
The problem with a more modern design that uses less power and has the features mentioned below is that game compatibility will be difficult. Whatever is in the Playstation Now server boards is likely going to be in PS3 refreshes which are likely this year. It will include h.264 hardware encode and decode. It likely will require the game to run with a 60 Hz frame rate to reduce latency. Low resolution PS3 games upscaled to 720P would probably be streamed at the lower resolution and upscaled at the client rather than in the server. Low resolution PS3 games are an advantage with the current state of the internet.
There is a MSftNerd rumor on a refreshed Xbox 360 to release in 2014 that I find supported by features that will be common starting 2014. I expect a refreshed PS3 to have the same features; Diskless and remote Gaikai like play.
1) Home Gateways, Xbox1 and Windows 8.1 platforms will be supporting Network drive access so local drives in game consoles are not required. Most coming Home Gateways offered by Cable companies (required by the FCC to support DLNA CVP2) will support user content on a user attached drive or network drive as well as DVR saving of TV media.
2) To support Video chat, Twitch, RVU in the CEA-2014 paper since depreciated to use HTML5 for UIs in CEA2014B (DLNA CVP2) but still part of the standard as Games and scrolling screens are mentioned as supported (remote view/play), game consoles will have a h.264 hardware encoder and decoder. This is likely ARM IP and would require a ARM buss and ARM trustzone which is also required for a secure Playready (trusted boot and secure memory). The ARM IP generally will use a wide slower interface with 4 memory controllers like seen in the XB1.
The above also supports remote play like Gaikai over the home network as mentioned in the rumor below.
Really good Gaikai article from 7/2013. It uses java and the browser stack. Some of the goals for Gaikai in this article are touted for the PS4 and XB1. Gaikai as a sales demo then when the game is purchased it still plays as a h.264 video but starts downloading the game and seamlessly transfers from h.264 video to traditional local game play before the game is fully downloaded. The PS4 goal is to download a game and start gameplay before the game is fully downloaded.
The Samsung and LG Smart TVs mentioned in the article have bluetooth 4.0 support and browsers.
Cable Labs Reference Implementation for Linux and Windows will align with DLNA CVP2 and includes:
Java
GLib – utility library.
Gstreamer / HDHomerun / VLC– tuner control.
GStreamer – media decoding and presentation.
wxWidgets – user interface.
Net-SNMP – Master Agent.
Mentioned in articles on Playstation Now are two observations I find compelling:
1) The PS3 is not as end of life as expected. China opening up to game consoles supports this.
2) It's highly unlikely that stock 45nm Cell and 40nm RSX as well as XDR memory and southbridge are in Playstation now servers. Running a AAA game on the known latest PS3 hardware exceeds 71 watts and 68 watts idle. 8 sets of of these in the server board mentioned in the Digital Foundry article would be 544 to 568 watts plus the energy spent removing the heat from a server room; this is highly unlikely from a power and multiple use standpoint.
So what is possibly in these server boards? 22nm Cell and 28nm RSX have been mentioned as coming for a PS3 refresh. But a 22nm Cell still can't be power gated as needed so it's all on or all off. Same for the RSX which by today's standards is horribly inefficient (power use would be from to 240 - 400 watts). So if using a 22nm Cell and 28nm RSX, it's not a HSA design and would need two separate banks of memory or would it? And here is where patent searches might help us understand what's possible.
MPA Cell and Stacked memory with a two speed interface.
Edit: TSVs are necessary to support the number of IO pins with Wide IO stacked memory. TSVs start with 20nm at Global foundries. Further, the smaller microbump connections between chip and 2.5D interposer can't handle large temperature cycles so this limits the TDP.
Edit two: 3DS memory is stacked DRAM from HBM with a different memory controller on the bottom layer. With a custom memory controller it should be able to emulate both GDDR3 and XDR which is the thrust of the patent.
Edit on Edit:
First a MPA Cell (Multi Processor Architecture) which consists of two separate sub cell designs (1PPU and 3 or 4 SPUs) with L2 cache that work similar to the AMD CPU packages with each attached to a Crossbar in a APU. The two CPU packages can be powered individually and the PPU mentioned in the patent is a newer design with a higher Instruction per Clock and lower latency closer to a SPU. This needs a narrow and FAST memory interface.http://nwlogic.com/products/docs/HBM...oller_Core.pdfThe core is delivered fully integrated and verified with the target DDR PHY.
Controller/PHY die from Northwest. Put HBM into it, get whatever type of DDR interface you require out of it.
Stacked HBM memory can have a custom memory controller on the bottom that could be used with a PS3 to emulate XDR (or Cell Memory controller updated to GDDR5) or GDDR3 or both at the same time following this Sony patent..
Basically, you can get DDR3, DDR4, GDDR5, or just about any sort of DDR based memory you want, from a single chip sized low power stack.
Second a memory patent that could be used with a 22nm Cell and 28nm RSX as well as a more power efficient 22nm MPA Cell and AMD GPU and/or ARM encoder and GPU.
Power gating and scaling would drop power to about (guess for a board that has 8 PS3 systems) min 40 watts and max 250 watts.
The problem with a more modern design that uses less power and has the features mentioned below is that game compatibility will be difficult. Whatever is in the Playstation Now server boards is likely going to be in PS3 refreshes which are likely this year. It will include h.264 hardware encode and decode. It likely will require the game to run with a 60 Hz frame rate to reduce latency. Low resolution PS3 games upscaled to 720P would probably be streamed at the lower resolution and upscaled at the client rather than in the server. Low resolution PS3 games are an advantage with the current state of the internet.
There is a MSftNerd rumor on a refreshed Xbox 360 to release in 2014 that I find supported by features that will be common starting 2014. I expect a refreshed PS3 to have the same features; Diskless and remote Gaikai like play.
1) Home Gateways, Xbox1 and Windows 8.1 platforms will be supporting Network drive access so local drives in game consoles are not required. Most coming Home Gateways offered by Cable companies (required by the FCC to support DLNA CVP2) will support user content on a user attached drive or network drive as well as DVR saving of TV media.
2) To support Video chat, Twitch, RVU in the CEA-2014 paper since depreciated to use HTML5 for UIs in CEA2014B (DLNA CVP2) but still part of the standard as Games and scrolling screens are mentioned as supported (remote view/play), game consoles will have a h.264 hardware encoder and decoder. This is likely ARM IP and would require a ARM buss and ARM trustzone which is also required for a secure Playready (trusted boot and secure memory). The ARM IP generally will use a wide slower interface with 4 memory controllers like seen in the XB1.
The above also supports remote play like Gaikai over the home network as mentioned in the rumor below.
http://www.vgleaks.com/microsoft-xbox-roadmap-2013/ said:The “Xbox Mini” is not a 360 add-on, it is a stand alone product that contains Xbox 360 functions for gaming, and alone it is meant to compete with Apple TV. Since it is likely it will not have a disc drive, it is being designed with “always online” in mind, and with internet being required for Live functions. Xbox 360 Games can be played on it by purchasing Games on Demand on Xbox Live (for new purchases) or if already purchased, simply download it. This also applies to music and movies. To further clarify, the Durango will also have these (TV) functions, just with next-genration gaming hardware instead of Xbox 360 at a higher price.
When used with Durango, it offers connectivity with it for backwards compatibility with both disc based and On Demand games, and it’s no more different than what Sony will be doing with Gaikai for playing PS3 games on PS4, only with Xbox it will be done locally and not through the cloud.
Really good Gaikai article from 7/2013. It uses java and the browser stack. Some of the goals for Gaikai in this article are touted for the PS4 and XB1. Gaikai as a sales demo then when the game is purchased it still plays as a h.264 video but starts downloading the game and seamlessly transfers from h.264 video to traditional local game play before the game is fully downloaded. The PS4 goal is to download a game and start gameplay before the game is fully downloaded.
The Samsung and LG Smart TVs mentioned in the article have bluetooth 4.0 support and browsers.
Cable Labs Reference Implementation for Linux and Windows will align with DLNA CVP2 and includes:
Java
GLib – utility library.
Gstreamer / HDHomerun / VLC– tuner control.
GStreamer – media decoding and presentation.
wxWidgets – user interface.
Net-SNMP – Master Agent.