Sony will leverage AMD Ryzen tech in the PS5 suggests report

[HEXUS]

And PlayStation boss, John Kodera, admits that the PS4 is nearing the end of its lifecycle.

Read more.

[ETR316]

Up coming NIVIDA would have been the better choice. imo

[afiretruck]

Up coming NIVIDA would have been the better choice. imo

Why?

[DanceswithUnix]

Why?

To make it harder for Nintendo to make a traditional STB style console again is the only reason I can think of, given the Switch is an Nvidia chip so an updated Nvidia SoC could use the existing Nintendo development ecosystem.

For Sony or MS, it would mean a switch from AMD64 to ARM instruction set as well as the switch from AMD to Nvidia graphics cores, and whilst Jaguar would have been fair game I haven't heard of Nvidia making a CPU as fast as Ryzen.

[Tabbykatze]

Up coming NIVIDA would have been the better choice. imo

Seeing as you know next to nothing about the upcoming Nvidia hardware like the rest of us, that's a pretty broad claim. Additionally, Sony/MS would want to stay within the AMD ecosphere so they don't have to rearchitect everything from scratch again and they will be able to do backwards compatibility easily if they stay with AMD. Lastly, they get CPU+GPU from AMD, which far outstrips the Shield technology from Nvidia (except in power consumption), rather than having to settle for sub-par/multiple vendors.

So no, it's highly likely it would not have been a better choice.

[DanceswithUnix]

Lastly, they get CPU+GPU from AMD, which far outstrips the Shield technology from Nvidia (except in power consumption),

I think if you put a Xavier into a console it wouldn't be at all bad. Nvidia ARM designs aren't slow, the die size at 14nm is the same as a PS4 used at 28nm so crams a lot of transistors, and that is an awfully wide RAM interface it has.

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-drive-xavier-soc-detailed/

So whilst I agree it doesn't make sense for Sony to use an Nvidia SoC, someone probably will once the orders from car makers for self driving cars fall apart (like they did for car entertainment systems and phones before then, Nvidia always find a way to hack off manufacturers).

[Tabbykatze]

I think if you put a Xavier into a console it wouldn't be at all bad. Nvidia ARM designs aren't slow, the die size at 14nm is the same as a PS4 used at 28nm so crams a lot of transistors, and that is an awfully wide RAM interface it has.

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-drive-xavier-soc-detailed/

So whilst I agree it doesn't make sense for Sony to use an Nvidia SoC, someone probably will once the orders from car makers for self driving cars fall apart (like they did for car entertainment systems and phones before then, Nvidia always find a way to hack off manufacturers).

That's a fair point, I seem to have found that the majority of articles about Tegra require a lot of code optimisation to the bare metal which is not altogether a bad thing, it just sounds like the effort/return is very low. Whereas building off a known x86 platform means you have everything coming out your ears ready to rock and roll.

[ik9000]

That's a fair point, I seem to have found that the majority of articles about Tegra require a lot of code optimisation to the bare metal which is not altogether a bad thing, it just sounds like the effort/return is very low. Whereas building off a known x86 platform means you have everything coming out your ears ready to rock and roll.

yup ready to rock and roll and meltdown.

[Tabbykatze]

yup ready to rock and roll and meltdown.

Only if it's Intel

*shots fired*

(Meltdown joke...vulnerability...I'll see myself out)

[Xlucine]

I think if you put a Xavier into a console it wouldn't be at all bad. Nvidia ARM designs aren't slow, the die size at 14nm is the same as a PS4 used at 28nm so crams a lot of transistors, and that is an awfully wide RAM interface it has.

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-drive-xavier-soc-detailed/

So whilst I agree it doesn't make sense for Sony to use an Nvidia SoC, someone probably will once the orders from car makers for self driving cars fall apart (like they did for car entertainment systems and phones before then, Nvidia always find a way to hack off manufacturers).

Lots of neural-network fat to trim on xavier before it'll make a good console. Only 512 graphics cores is less than a 1050, whereas PS4 pros should outperform a 1060! If directX13 adds support for AI-assisted graphics then it'd make sense (You make up textures on the fly for infinite texture compression, or use the image analysis parts to recreate the eyetoy)

[DanceswithUnix]

Lots of neural-network fat to trim on xavier before it'll make a good console. Only 512 graphics cores is less than a 1050, whereas PS4 pros should outperform a 1060! If directX13 adds support for AI-assisted graphics then it'd make sense (You make up textures on the fly for infinite texture compression, or use the image analysis parts to recreate the eyetoy)

Fair cop, looking over the numbers I hadn't appreciated quite how AI targeted that chip is. According to https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/nvidia/drive/xavier it can manage 1.3TFLOP single precision. So yes, it would need Nvidia's next gen to be interesting assuming they will do a gaming part next (it seems about time).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The whole point of using x86 in a console was to make cross platform development easier in the first place.

[DanceswithUnix]

The whole point of using x86 in a console was to make cross platform development easier in the first place.

Anyone who can't cope with swapping from amd64 to armv8 should step away from the compiler and let a programmer take over. The things that bite you like data alignment on a risc chip tank your performance on PC chips so you should care deeply about them anyway.

Sony have a reputation for having bonkers hardware in their consoles which are hard to program, but they could just as easily add those extensions to an x86 based machine, throw in a wacky memory layout, make 80% of the x86 cores unable to access main memory and voila we have a new x86 based PS3 or PS2. I can't see how it was ever about the instruction set. Stuff like graphics API is going to be wway more important.

It could be argued that having an ARM chip with a console that looks like an Android platform complete with Vulkan libraries would be more relevant to modern platforms.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Anyone who can't cope with swapping from amd64 to armv8 should step away from the compiler and let a programmer take over. The things that bite you like data alignment on a risc chip tank your performance on PC chips so you should care deeply about them anyway.

Sony have a reputation for having bonkers hardware in their consoles which are hard to program, but they could just as easily add those extensions to an x86 based machine, throw in a wacky memory layout, make 80% of the x86 cores unable to access main memory and voila we have a new x86 based PS3 or PS2. I can't see how it was ever about the instruction set. Stuff like graphics API is going to be wway more important.

It could be argued that having an ARM chip with a console that looks like an Android platform complete with Vulkan libraries would be more relevant to modern platforms.

It still does not change the fact that its cheaper to have pcs and consoles being as close as possible together in hardware and actually talking to a dev who developed cross platform games on the Xbox,ps4 and pc it was easier this gen.

Even MS ditched its ESRAM with their latest console,so everything hints at them simplifying things to the extent the consoles are more like PCs built to only run games on.


Going arm is pointless in this case as it will cost more money since you are using unproven cores,and adds more hurdles especially since cores like Zen are still faster than anything in large scale deployment on the arm side especially since they are low frequency designs.

Sony learnt its lesson so all the hardware enthusiasts will probably be whining again when the ps5 probably will be essentially a midrange PC.

Given the choice between tried and tested hardware and an unproven CPU core,especially with the history of Nvidia overstating their CPU performance I can see more chance of an Intel chip being in a high performance console.

[kalniel]

The whole point of using x86 in a console was to make cross platform development easier in the first place.

Not really - the performance was just better for the price this time around since designs weren't so different from an existing product stack. Cross platform development is a minor plus but it's not one the console makers treat as a priority. Ease of development is good, but cross platform compatibility is just one route to achieve that.

[DanceswithUnix]

Sony learnt its lesson so all the hardware enthusiasts will probably be whining again when the ps5 probably will be essentially a midrange PC.

No more than the Dreamcast was built much like a midrange PC, albeit with an SH4 cpu in it. The barrier to easy porting is Windows and the fact you might have to contend with Intel integrated graphics. The PC isn't really a standard, it is just a collection of parts made by companies that detest each other.

If you go back and read my post #4 you can see I am quite OK with the idea that Sony should use Ryzen, it is a good choice. But that is on merit of silicon area vs performance, not because it runs amd64 instructions. Indeed if AMD had gone ahead with their version of Ryzen that ran ARMv8 instructions then the cleaner instruction set would probably have made it smaller and faster and a better choice, but history has robbed us of that so Intel compatible it is.

Having written commercial code that runs on all major and most minor computing platform operating systems and processors it is really just Windows that has been the thorn in my side. HP-UX sucked pretty majorly, but Windows is the killer. Right now I am writing code for 64 bit Linux on the PC which also runs in 32 bit Linux on ARM, as a programmer they are just Linux so there is really zero friction moving between the two.