41 replies to this topic

[fireside]

This is what I gather from rumors. Sony didn't say anything about their hardware, but rumors are it's an x86, AMD chip. Should make porting easier and be good for AMD since games will be optimized for their GPU.

[Reedbeta]

Sony did release the tech specs for the PS4. It is indeed an x86 (64-bit) AMD chip. It's an AMD GPU as well and the CPU and GPU are all together on one chip.

I wouldn't be surprised if the new XBox is also using a system-on-a-chip (what AMD calls an "APU"). The fact that AMD offers these all-in-one chips, and NVIDIA doesn't, might have been the deciding factor in the new consoles going with AMD (this is just a guess; I have no special knowledge of this). There are a lot of benefits to systems-on-a-chip - lower power requirements (hence also less heat generated), lower-latency communication between CPU and GPU, it's easier to use a unified memory architecture since the memory only has to talk to one chip, and it takes up less space in the device.

[tyree]

this is good for both amd and sony. but its strange with the ps4 soon to be released. no price drops for the ps3, 360 is now 99 but on craiglist one could be purchased for 40 dollars. for the past 2 years. there are ps3 still being sold for 300. hopefully sony wont make this new console so future proof. they end up pricing it beyond most reach

[rouncer]

consoles are for the younger generation, us old guys should just stick with our pc's, theyll always be the cheapest and fastest.

[tyree]

rouncer if you can. you should try one of the consoles, get a cheap one. never having to be concerned with if a game will work is a main draw for consoles.

at this point, there is no shortage of games for any of them

[Stainless]

@rouncer My laptop cost me..... well the company .. the best part of £2000

You can buy a hell of a lot of consoles for that

Hell you could put together a console farm for that

[rouncer]

but the performance you get for the price?

[Vilem Otte]

The price/performance will always have PC as a winner, also you can't change GPU/CPU/whatever in console, you can't just add this or that, because it doesn't allow you... should I continue? There is like a TON more things you can't do with console and honestly there is no thing you can do with console but you can't do with PC.

Their tech specs isn't anything so shining. First of all AMD CPUs are a lot behind Intel's ones right now (not just in performance, but also in technology) - their 8-core systems have hard time beating Ivy Bridge i5's ... although I like their idea "Need more cores!", it doesn't work if they won't scale the rest of stuff accordingly (see Bulldozer epic fail with caches).
Using graphics memory instead of standard memory is not as clever idea as it seems to be. Okay it will work for graphics, but doing wild allocations/delocations on GDDR5 is a lot worse thing that doing it on DDR3. Running some fully managed code on this might be a bit of hell (especially at time when garbage collector comes in) - of course it probably won't be problem number 1 for games, but it can be problem in few years when they'll be running ... peak bandwidth also doesn't say that much.
1.84 TFlops gpu doesn't say a ****. And I mean it, peak TFlops rate are measured as "how much MADD operations can we make in one second" and multiply this number by 2. So it sounds nice, but unless they say what specific model is, it's information with value of 0.

[fireside]

I don't have a console, but I like the idea of putting a freeze on hardware specs instead of forcing constant upgrades and unknown hardware to run games. It's topped out a lot since the old days anyway. We're playing 3d games on tablets and phones and not seeing much difference anymore. The only reason I don't have one is because I can't write games with it and the price of games doesn't drop as fast. I'd rather just use old hardware on a pc and play old games. I am due for a new machine, though. This also helps even if you own a pc because the games are made to run on older hardware to satisfy porting to consoles. I'll either be getting a laptop with an AMD chip or an Intel with discrete graphics next time around because prices have dropped enough.

[TheNut]

tyree said:

there are ps3 still being sold for 300

Probably because Sony is still paying off its research contribution funding for the cell architecture No doubt the execs are kicking themselves hard on that one.

I read about AMD's fusion, or APU brand for desktop PCs a while back. The benchmarks were horrid, on par with integrated chips. I just did some recent checks on AMD's new "Trinity" brand and the benchmarks have improved, but are still lacking when rendering 1080p. I've always liked the idea of simplifying the architecture into a single chip, but if performance is important then sticking to a dedicated card is the way to go for now. Though I do imagine in a couple years, like what happened with sound cards, video cards will become obsolete. Now if they can make those chips small enough for phones... profit!

[Vilem Otte]

#fireside - but honestly thats not problem with hardware, but with game developers (and sometimes drivers - but it's less common, most likely a lot of developers doesn't read standards and expect some driver to behave differently than how it's written) - most of them can't standardize their game and use "wild" libraries changing specs now and then. Not even mentioning Java or C# that is horribly dependent on version of your VM (where is even some portability)? Isn't it better to write in native C, or C++ (without stl, or generally ugly C++ standard - because it's over-complicated, large and not even mention portability) - using TinyStl (or another open-stl standard that is clean and simple), and some heavily standardized libraries (preferably open sourced) that doesn't change iface every 2 years is a lot better way.

#TheNut - I don't think it's great idea to pack 2 chips into 1 like this. There still is gpu -> and thats still horrible. Gpus are a big bunch of mess, don't get me wrong now - I use OpenCL and CUDA - but these languages are bloody mess compared to standard C, working with them feels like scratching with toe on left feed at your right ear (and I don't even mention debugging, where most useful is the printf function - because debugger is garbage compared to anything on standard CPU). So honestly I believe more into Intel Xeon Phi or such platform.

[Reedbeta]

Vilem Otte, on 21 February 2013 - 11:51 AM, said:

there is no thing you can do with console but you can't do with PC.

I disagree. There is plenty you can get up to on a fixed-hardware platform with low-level APIs, that you simply can't do on a PC where you have to work with an abstraction of the hardware and a D3D/OpenGL driver that you don't control, that you don't know what it's doing and it doesn't know what you're doing. I could give a lot of examples of this on PS3. We're still getting the hang of the PS4 HW, but I'm sure in a couple years there will be a lot of examples on it too.

[Vilem Otte]

Oh... that is though possible - but I'd say that named OpenGL/D3D isn't the best example here, because you want to stick with them on console (for portability).

On the other hand you actually "can" (in really REALLY strong brackets) do the same on PC, but you have to do it for each piece of hardware out there (or at least those that you're going to support). It isn't worth it for a game project, but F.e. some driver project with standardized interface (open source drivers for AMD are out there and quite useful). But this is more-likely because situation in GPU is very messy, F.e. in CPU part you can work with assembly because there are some solid standards supported by vendors ... so it's more likely problem of GPU vendors on PC.

[Reedbeta]

Vilem Otte, on 21 February 2013 - 07:34 PM, said:

I'd say that named OpenGL/D3D isn't the best example here, because you want to stick with them on console (for portability).

Only if you care about portability. But OpenGL/D3D aren't even available on consoles; they use custom APIs. They are broadly similar to OpenGL/D3D (after all, it's the same hardware underneath) but different enough that porting is not trivial. And, as mentioned, the console APIs give you access to lower-level stuff like memory management and command buffers that would be hidden behind the driver in OpenGL/D3D.

Vilem Otte, on 21 February 2013 - 07:34 PM, said:

On the other hand you actually "can" (in really REALLY strong brackets) do the same on PC, but you have to do it for each piece of hardware out there...(open source drivers for AMD are out there and quite useful)

Yes, I haven't looked at the open-source Linux drivers, but it would definitely be interesting to see what you could do by taking over some of the driver responsibilities in your own app. I suspect it's still not quite as much control as on a console though, since in a PC environment you have to allow for multitasking. On consoles, you still have to cooperate with the OS (it will take up some memory and compute resources, has a hook to render stuff over your frame, etc.) but it's a limited amount of interference.

[Vilem Otte]

When you're writing a driver (any kind of driver), it's up to you how much control you're going to give to your users. As for Driver <-> OS communication we're getting a lot into OS, and I think that a simple post is definitely not enough to cover the whole thing.

There are different kinds of multitasking implementation, there are different OS kernel implementations (and so different ways to communicate with drivers and thus devices), etc. - and basically this will be based on specific OS. You actually *could* give user full control over hardware, but implementing this in driver can also be bloody mess, and it will most likely kill a vision of having somehow "portable and usable driver" without rewriting it from scratch on another OS, and writing a little more abstract api for using it. Also the question is, would most users use the functionality? Because building such applications for few users out of large user base is definitely not worth it.

Basically it isn't caused by multitasking, it is caused by high complexity and generality of modern operating systems (and not just modern ... all general operating systems*). It is better to follow the way OpenGL actually does - build some kind of (not entirely high-level, neither entirely low-level) abstraction over drivers, and "force driver developers" to implement needed functionality. The result is more usable than giving user full access to device without any abstraction (also this gets really messy with more hardware, because you can end with lots of ugly ifdefs in code).

* I'm though not blaming OS developers, I and my friend once (few years ago) tried to roll my own operating system, ended with very simple Unix/Linux clone. Even though it just was able to run simple elf_i386 binaries and use some standard libraries (smaller variant of libc), it could use SSE/MMX instruction sets and of course mutlitasking (it ran several command lines switchable through F1-F12, because I haven't implemented any graphics interface ) - and this bare minimum is really BIG and bloody mess. It was for educational purpose of course.
I wrote a simple graphics driver for it too, you could just switch text mode resolutions, clear screen, write character, change character settings (color) or move carriage. Note that in standard generic gfx drivers you give user like 1000 times more control that I gave him through my driver, even though OS gave me ability to do anything to hardware from driver - like changing text mode to grahics mode (but not from user application).

[Stainless]

I've written a couple of OS's, they all started out small and with unique features, then as people started to use them we had to add this or that and they got big and complicated.

Taos started out on transputers, it could work out network topology in a couple of seconds and optomise itself on the fly.

It feature binary portability and you coded in a custom assembler like language called VP. (virtual processor)

Most of you will have used it at some time, without knowing about it. We wrote a java vm in vp that ran 140 times faster than Sun's so it was bought for lot's of devices.

But in the end we didn't have enough money to deal with the growing numbers of cpu's appearing and we couldn't get the big boys to realise that Taos was the way forward. Imagine a world when you never had to port anything, it just ran on any device.

That didn't fit with what the big boys wanted. They wanted differentiation between devices. They want product that you can't get on any other platform.

So we went bust.

Now as the market starts to merge, as TV's stop being simply a display and start to become interactive, as the difference between a computer and a domestic device becomes smaller and smaller people are starting to realise that we need something. So we are now doing Antix Game Player.

Antix Game Player gives you the binary portability that Android tried to provide and failed.

The bad thing about this is that you have to have a high level graphics API, and Opengles has become the standard. Note not Opengl. OpenGLes

The first two version of opengles were flawed, 1 was fixed function pipeline, 2 had shaders, but was missing things like render to texture.

Opengles 3 is looking very good, I should be getting my first es3 device in a few months. Going to be fun.

D3D is dieing. Microsoft have already started pulling support for it, MVP's have been told they are no longer required, which only leaves us with Opengl

When you write for a PC you have all sorts of problems. The test department at Pure had 24 PC's with different hardware configurations, and all of them had removable hard drives so we could swap OS versions as well. Even then we had issues with some end users machines.

The PC market is a nightmare, when was the last time you walked into a shop and saw a rack full of pc games? Around here you are lucky if there is a single shelf in the whole store.

Rack after rack of XBOX and PS3 games though. So many you struggle to find what you are looking for.

I would not be suprised at all if the big developers started dropping the PC as a viable platform.

[Vilem Otte]

I'd like to post something longer (e.g. I will later - right now I got just a minute of time) - I must oppose to Stainless, I live in Czech Republic and consoles aren't too popular here, people are playing on PC and there are racks full of PC games, and smaller racks with Xbox/PS3. I can confirm that it is same in other central european states, so basically I'd say that it also depends on location (consoles are popular in US/Japan, but not so much in Europe).

[fireside]

Quote

I would not be suprised at all if the big developers started dropping the PC as a viable platform.

I think that was a stage games went through for a while, but it's been changing lately because of Steam. Mostly, they were tired of piracy which Steam has taken care of and most customers are happy because they can get reasonable prices and don't need it. Most games I care about or want come out for the PC, some are ported later, which I don't care about because they are too expensive when they first come out anyway.

[TheNut]

Vilem Otte, on 22 February 2013 - 12:05 PM, said:

I'd like to post something longer (e.g. I will later - right now I got just a minute of time) - I must oppose to Stainless

Haha... You made my day today Vilem

Stainless said:

The PC market is a nightmare, when was the last time you walked into a shop and saw a rack full of pc games?

I believe a lot of that has to do with the fact that PC gaming has evolved to online purchases and digital downloads. Sony even addresses this with their PS4. This will more or less be the future of digital consumerism.

Stainless said:

That didn't fit with what the big boys wanted. They wanted differentiation between devices. They want product that you can't get on any other platform.

It's interesting how it turned out though. Their business model was proprietary technology. Lock people in and rake in the profits. Since the market and competition was small back then, it was a viable choice. As the competition and number of platforms grew, business costs soared just to support all these platforms. Now the new business model is the opposite. More and more businesses are creating their APIs to allow cross-platform development. The demand for open and clean standards is becoming very vocal. I don't anticipate next gen consoles to follow through just yet, but they will eventually have to capitulate. Sony's shift from their cell architecture to x86-64 is a clear indicator of this. The money has and always will be in the software, not the hardware.

[tyree]

downloading has most certainly changed the way games are distributed. and mobile developers will be glad to know the ps4 controller has a touchscreen. its a traditional controller, but it does have a touchscreen. and the ps4 is supposed to interface with more than just the vita but tablets and phones. times have indeed changed

the nut your exactly right about sony using existing tech instead of creating new tech. that should make it easier in pretty much every aspect from cost to development