Are the next gen consoles the realization of AMDs HSA dream?

[psoomah]

I remember all the IBM hype from the time, it sounds a lot like the hype we read now of Jaguar in the PS4. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Maybe this time will be different though.

Remember how developers were tripping over their drooling tongues in praise of the programing wet dream the PS3 was like they are now drooling over the PS4?

Hello? ... ... Bueller? ... ...

 

[grimpr]

Remember how developers were tripping over their drooling tongues in praise of the programing wet dream the PS3 was like they are now drooling over the PS4?

Hello? ... ... Bueller? ... ...

No comparison this time, now its x86 space with vast & mature software ecosystem.

 

[psoomah]

I seriously doubt devs who port to PC will fail to make the game run well on the vast majority of systems that have Intel CPU and a discrete card. Additionally, if I understand correctly, amd fx line would show no benefit either. So considering hsa is implemented in the consoles, and that is carried over to the PC, we are at best looking at some unknown level of enhancement for apus . Could help at the low end. Problem is an apu in the PC will not come close to matching the level of the consoles or that of a mid/high gaming PC.

If developers can include already written HSA optimized code in their PC ports targeted for AMD"s upcoming HSA APUs and GPUs for little additional cost, why wouldn't they? Notice nearly every AAA PC game now carries AMD's Gaming Evolved logo. AMD is clearly sitting at the head of the table with developers across the boards. Developers have every incentive to optimize for AMD's HSA APUs, the better their games run on cheap entry level and low end computers, the more games they sell. Including code already developed for Sony and Microsoft console APUs in their PC ports to maximize the gaming potential of AMD's Kaveri and beyond is a no brainer.

Nvidia has no piece of the consoles whatsoever. Over time their share of developers time and attention will steadily shrink as developers increasingly focus their attention on optimizing for AMD HSA APUs, which will provide by far the best gaming experience for the money -> AMD APUs will become the gamer's go to chip of choice.

 

[psoomah]

No comparison this time, now its x86 space with vast & mature software ecosystem.

True.

 

[HisDivineOrder]

If developers can include already written HSA optimized code in their PC ports targeted for AMD"s upcoming HSA APUs and GPUs for little additional cost, why wouldn't they? Notice nearly every AAA PC game now carries AMD's Gaming Evolved logo. AMD is clearly sitting at the head of the table with developers across the boards. Developers have every incentive to optimize for AMD's HSA APUs, the better their games run on cheap entry level and low end computers, the more games they sell. Including code already developed for Sony and Microsoft console APUs in their PC ports to maximize the gaming potential of AMD's Kaveri and beyond is a no brainer.

Nvidia has no piece of the consoles whatsoever. Over time their share of developers time and attention will steadily shrink as developers increasingly focus their attention on optimizing for AMD HSA APUs, which will provide by far the best gaming experience for the money -> AMD APUs will become the gamer's go to chip of choice.

You act as though PC's won far outstrip console performance by the end of next year, if not before. The scenario you describe might work out for AMD with their APU's IF they can manage to create an APU that has the performance advantage to make up for the system overhead and DX overhead that is included in a Windows PC combined with the performance advantages of the optimizations that may not even be carried over to PC due to sheer lack of systems that can take advantage of them.

Some things will favor AMD GPU's, but how is that any different than last year or years before when nearly every multiplatform console game was developed first and foremost for the AMD GPU in the Xbox 360? That didn't lead to superior performance for AMD GPU's. It led to nVidia ramping up its marketing machine and building up a relationship with publishers where they basically did a lot of the QA/QC/optimization work for free.

Right now, AMD has money to spend because they stalled their next gen update until the end of this year, having their driver team refocus on making their drivers tip-top for frame latency and Crossfire stutters (instead of making drivers for a new line of cards), and so with all the money they saved for the time being, they're shoving it at publishers to win them over to make fantastic bundles. And they really are fantastic bundles and great wins for "Gaming Evolved."

But don't make the mistake of thinking just because AMD is doing a great job of marketing and paying these companies lots of money to win their support. Publishers will support the GPU maker that pays them the most money. For the longest time, AMD didn't even try in this realm. Now they are and so they're competing heavily for something nVidia's just not used to having to work at. No doubt, this has caught nVidia off guard in the marketing department. And no doubt, they'll redouble their efforts, too.

It's all come together like a perfect storm. AMD needs big releases, big news, they need to look like they have a future given all the things they've done recently (ie., fired huge amounts of R&D, stalled CPU and GPU deliveries, changing product maps willy-nilly, losing the high end CPU and GPU markets definitively). They are likely selling Sony and MS their console's APU's for below cost just to get the word of mouth. They time that to go with a huge push on games and make the case they're the company focused on games.

Meanwhile, nVidia is trying to make inroads in mobile and keeps hitting the fabrication problems that prevent any high end CPU maker (no matter what type) from getting to where they want to be, which leaves them out of position while they try to coast on what they got in the GPU market since AMD is not launching anything new. Even the Titan is just the scraps from the Compute market repackaged.

Yet none of this really means AMD is going to actually have an advantage because unfortunately for AMD, Intel is out there, raining on their parade. No PC game is going to leverage the added capabilities of AMD APU's since no other system could take advantage, so there'd be a very limited audience for such an optimization. Even if they did, would they outweigh the sheer brute force of high performance Intel and nVidia/AMD discrete?

No. By the time any company would even remotely consider using such a technology since the market would have grown, you'll see computers have become so much faster that it won't even matter. They'll so far outstrip the APU that it'll be like arguing about fixed function T&L versions programmable shaders. By the time those APU advantages catch up, the middle and mid-high and high end will all be well outperforming it.

Leaving APU's to take up the bottom rungs where Intel seems rather strongly positioned to catch up in no time with its rather large, consistent leaps in iGPU performance every year. Meanwhile, AMD is having execution problems and has been delaying releases for the last few months.

If I had to bet, I'd bet money that Intel will take the low end and discrete will continue to dominate the high end for some time to come. Where in all that will AMD position the APU?

 

[galego]

Additionally, if I understand correctly, amd fx line would show no benefit either.

It would benefit from the existence of highly multithreaded games. The development kit for the PS4 includes an eight-core FX chip.

 

[Idontcare]

It would benefit from the existence of highly multithreaded games. The development kit for the PS4 includes an eight-core FX chip.

Jaguar cores are not CMT (they are CMP) and each has a full-blown FPU (for a reason, otherwise it would not have been included and it would be a CMT model).

Not sure how well the optimizations for Jaguar will tranfer to Steamroller.

 

[galego]

Jaguar cores are not CMT (they are CMP) and each has a full-blown FPU (for a reason, otherwise it would not have been included and it would be a CMT model).

Not sure how well the optimizations for Jaguar will tranfer to Steamroller.

I did not even mention architecture, only optimization at thread level which would also benefit intel 8-core chips.

I don't wait Jaguar's optimizations to be transferred to SR, but compensated by stronger chips {*}.

{*} Although some game developer already announced that some of its games will run slower on the PC: "The PS4 will run the game faster than a PC" (Jonathan Blow).

 

[cytg111]

I did not even mention architecture, only optimization at thread level which would also benefit intel 8-core chips.

I don't wait Jaguar's optimizations to be transferred to SR, but compensated by stronger chips {*}.

{*} Although some game developer already announced that some of its games will run slower on the PC: "The PS4 will run the game faster than a PC" (Jonathan Blow).

"“[RAM] really helps in shuttling graphics resources around, and since it’s not running a heavyweight operating system like Windows that gets in the way of your graphics,” Blow says. “Rendering stuff through Windows has an impact on performance. Since a console is just about games, that doesn’t happen, and the equivalent game will run faster. And if you can target to specific hardware you can make it run faster, too.”"

That sounds alot like what carmack has allready stated..
Again, I cannot wait for the benchmarks and reviews to hit the streets

 

[Idontcare]

I did not even mention architecture, only optimization at thread level which would also benefit intel 8-core chips.

I don't wait Jaguar's optimizations to be transferred to SR, but compensated by stronger chips {*}.

{*} Although some game developer already announced that some of its games will run slower on the PC: "The PS4 will run the game faster than a PC" (Jonathan Blow).

You said "FX" which to me means bulldozer and piledriver, that is what I thought you meant anyways. At any rate I understand what you mean now.

 

[zlatan]

It's all about market share - devs will develop for the windows PC (completely different to the PS4 whatever cpu is in that PC), and they will develop to cover the largest market which basically means intel cpu's + maybe a discrete gpu.

The big question is how? The PS4 will open up a lot of new possibilities. For exapmle talk about accelerated rigid bodies. Nowadays you can only see this in techdemos. And there is a reason why, because the current APIs require the application to explicitly copy all input and output memory. This will lead to a very big performance penalty, because copying the data can easily takes longer than processing it on the CPU cores. You need very expensive computations to benefit from GPGPU. The PS4 is the ideal system for accelerated physics, because the new APU technically enable to use GPGPU for any algorithm with good parallelism. The iGPU and the CPU address the same memory space so you don't need to worry about latency and data copy. The iGPU will efficiently process a decent amount of objects and still be much faster than the CPU alone, and also free up the CPU to do other work at the same time. This is also true for accelerated soft bodies in a complex scene. You need to process a volume hierarchy for collision detection on the CPU, and than the iGPU will process the transversal of vertices. You can't do this with a dGPU, because the data copy will kill the performance. You need an APU for this with unified address space and shared memory.
These are just two simple examples, and I hope you see the problem. The PS4 (and the new Xbox) don't have the CPU resources to calculate complex physics and AI simulations, so all the data parallel workloads must be offloaded to the iGPU. If these affects the gameplay, then the PC port must be redesigned.

Even if AMD released PS4 chips for the PC (which is probably impossible due to the differences) they would only have a tiny market share and not worth the devs time.

Kaveri will support exactly the same features as PS4. Some devs already have a prototype hardware. Sadly there will be many next-gen console games without a PC port.

 

[sontin]

The big question is how? The PS4 will open up a lot of new possibilities. For exapmle talk about accelerated rigid bodies. Nowadays you can only see this in techdemos.

Batman:AC supports accelerated rigid bodies with GPU-PhysX.

The PS4 is the ideal system for accelerated physics, because the new APU technically enable to use GPGPU for any algorithm with good parallelism. The iGPU and the CPU address the same memory space so you don't need to worry about latency and data copy.

Nonsense. The data are not on the die. They need to communicate with the memory pool.

The iGPU will efficiently process a decent amount of objects and still be much faster than the CPU alone, and also free up the CPU to do other work at the same time. This is also true for accelerated soft bodies in a complex scene. You need to process a volume hierarchy for collision detection on the CPU, and than the iGPU will process the transversal of vertices. You can't do this with a dGPU, because the data copy will kill the performance.

And yet nVidia is doing it since 2008. The data copy is so small. The problem is latency. And you can easily solve this problem: Increase the workload.

You need an APU for this with unified address space and shared memory.
These are just two simple examples, and I hope you see the problem. The PS4 (and the new Xbox) don't have the CPU resources to calculate complex physics and AI simulations, so all the data parallel workloads must be offloaded to the iGPU. If these affects the gameplay, then the PC port must be redesigned.

Hawken shows that you don't need a iGPU to bring GPU physics (accelerated rigid bodies) to the market.

 

[zlatan]

Batman:AC supports accelerated rigid bodies with GPU-PhysX.

Um... No. It's just use multithreading, when the GPU PhysX option turned on. But I must admit that the marketing works.

Nonsense. The data are not on the die. They need to communicate with the memory pool.

I don't understand what are you saying. Who said the data is on the die? Sure there will be caching, but the advantage is the unified address space and the shared memory.

And yet nVidia is doing it since 2008. The data copy is so small. The problem is latency. And you can easily solve this problem: Increase the workload.

They mostly sell CPU-based PhysX workloads (rigid body, soft body, etc.) and saying that these are GPU accelerated. As I said the marketing works, but no, these are not accelerated.
Particle simulation and cloth (not in all games) are accelerated.

Hawken shows that you don't need a iGPU to bring GPU physics (accelerated rigid bodies) to the market.

I heard this many time in the past, and when I analyze the game with "accelerated" rigid body PhysX, than I always find out that only the "marketing was accelerated", but not the physics. But thanks for the tip, I will analyze Hawken when I have some time.

 

[galego]

You said "FX" which to me means bulldozer and piledriver, that is what I thought you meant anyways. At any rate I understand what you mean now.

I mentioned "FX" because frozentundra123456 asked about the "amd fx line". See the quote above.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I did not even mention architecture, only optimization at thread level which would also benefit intel 8-core chips.

I don't wait Jaguar's optimizations to be transferred to SR, but compensated by stronger chips {*}.

{*} Although some game developer already announced that some of its games will run slower on the PC: "The PS4 will run the game faster than a PC" (Jonathan Blow).

The statement about a PS4 game running faster than on a PC is really quite vague and tells us nothing. What kind of PC is he talking about? An off the shelf system with an igp? A midrange gaming system? A high end gaming system?

There is such a wide range of PC hardware that this is obviously true, but tells us nothing about the true performance level. My feeling is that the PS4 at least initially will probably be faster than a mid range PC, but can still be bested by a top end gaming PC. As PC hardware progresses, the PS4 relatively speaking, could drop back somewhat.

 

[galego]

The statement about a PS4 game running faster than on a PC is really quite vague and tells us nothing. What kind of PC is he talking about? An off the shelf system with an igp? A midrange gaming system? A high end gaming system?

There is such a wide range of PC hardware that this is obviously true, but tells us nothing about the true performance level. My feeling is that the PS4 at least initially will probably be faster than a mid range PC, but can still be bested by a top end gaming PC. As PC hardware progresses, the PS4 relatively speaking, could drop back somewhat.

People have been comparing the PS4 with a high-end gaming pc, but some game developer has said recently that the PS4 is much more

http://www.edge-online.com/news/ps4-isnt-just-a-high-end-pc-says-guerrilla-games/

 

[Sleepingforest]

I don't believe that the PS4 is more powerful, only (possibly) more power efficient and more tightly integrated. I guarantee that a 7970 or certainly a Titan can calculate faster, but won't necessarily do as well in games because games are badly optimized for the PC when compared to a console (hundreds of thousands of parts combinations vs 3 modern consoles). Power-wise, I doubt the thing is actually stronger than a 7850 (on the GPU) and a Trinity (on the CPU) or it would cost far too much to sell effectively.

 

[frozentundra123456]

People have been comparing the PS4 with a high-end gaming pc, but some game developer has said recently that the PS4 is much more

http://www.edge-online.com/news/ps4-isnt-just-a-high-end-pc-says-guerrilla-games/

One of the designers of the PS4, now there is a real objective commentator.

 

[SetiroN]

Some people overestimate the advantage from redirecting parallel workloads to the iGPU to implausible levels.

It can provide huge benefits for certain workloads, but a game as a whole isn't one of them; HSA is certainly not the future of computing, just part of it, one of many improvements. Think of it as an additional instruction set.

Even if right now every single parallel calculation was magically executed on an infinitely powerful unit inside the CPU, the difference for the single user of a gaming PC (which still needs a dedicated graphics card and always will, for the foreseeable future) would be marginal. Now if I think about the actual, real word implementation... hm yeah, not staying awake at night. If I was into satellite imaging that'd be different, but I believe we're talking about content consumption usages here.

 

[Idontcare]

People have been comparing the PS4 with a high-end gaming pc, but some game developer has said recently that the PS4 is much more

http://www.edge-online.com/news/ps4-isnt-just-a-high-end-pc-says-guerrilla-games/

wow that guy talks a bit of smack in the article, not exactly professional of him

 

[galego]

I don't believe that the PS4 is more powerful, only (possibly) more power efficient and more tightly integrated. I guarantee that a 7970 or certainly a Titan can calculate faster, but won't necessarily do as well in games because games are badly optimized for the PC when compared to a console (hundreds of thousands of parts combinations vs 3 modern consoles). Power-wise, I doubt the thing is actually stronger than a 7850 (on the GPU) and a Trinity (on the CPU) or it would cost far too much to sell effectively.

I don't believe that Titan is faster. Even if you ignore the bad optimization for PCs, there are several hardware (8-core APU + 8 GB GDDR5) and software improvements (10x faster API calls) on the PS4 side don't available on PCs.

 

[galego]

One of the designers of the PS4, now there is a real objective commentator.

Nope. The PS4 has been designed by AMD and Sony.

What happen is that Sony asked to all game developers: what do you want for the next console? And game developers gave Sony their requirements and hopes. What is wrong with that?

And the Guerrilla Games guy is not alone. You can find lots of game developers praising the new console. Carmack said the hardware choice was "wise", Epic Games says that "It's like giving you the world's best PC"...

 

[ShintaiDK]

I don't believe that Titan is faster. Even if you ignore the bad optimization for PCs, there are several hardware (8-core APU + 8 GB GDDR5) and software improvements (10x faster API calls) on the PS4 side don't available on PCs.

The execution overhead on DirectX is certainly not enough to even let a PS4 overtake a HD79xx card.

The 8 cores are still 8 very weak cores.

Also only 7GB will be availiable to the game.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Nope. The PS4 has been designed by AMD and Sony.

What happen is that Sony asked to all game developers: what do you want for the next console? And game developers gave Sony their requirements and hopes. What is wrong with that?

And the Guerrilla Games guy is not alone. You can find lots of game developers praising the new console. Carmack said the hardware choice was "wise", Epic Games says that "It's like giving you the world's best PC"...

Did you even read the article that you linked? Is says clearly that he was "heavily involved in the creation of the PS4 architecture".

Edit: I think it will be a very good gaming platform. But there is a lot of hyperbole flying around. For instance the statement tat it is like the worlds best PC. It is not even a PC at all, it is a specialized gaming device. I also seriously doubt it will come close to matching a high eng PC even in gaming.

 

[galego]

The execution overhead on DirectX is certainly not enough to even let a PS4 overtake a HD79xx card.

The 8 cores are still 8 very weak cores.

Also only 7GB will be availiable to the game.

I don't know any HD79xx or Nvidia GTX with 20 TFLOPS.

The specs/performance of the 8-cores are not revealed. However, game developers already showed demos where the PS4 is able to compete with a PC based on an i7 (ivy Bridge), which is not usually considered a weak cpu. Moreover, the PC was running 16 GB RAM.

How many memory is available for games under windows?