Will PS4/Xbox One increase the need of Cores?

[Schmide]

The cores reserved to the OS will not do any game work. Else it would be pointless to reserve them. And they will have plenty of other tasks.

??? They're are either doing game work or basically idle. The reason you reserve cores is to keep code and data in cache. Typical OS housekeeping takes about 1-10% of a modern core, it's not like messages, timers, and thread management are CPU hogs. I'm sure the XBone is doing kinect, networking, D3D background tasks, sound, input, output, etc. Same equivalent for the PS4. This is all game work!

They wouldn't reserve a whole core, let alone 2, for typical OS operations.

And decode graphics? What are you talking about? Reread the post you quote again please.

Your quote inferred two things. The ARM core was there for encoding/decoding and a Jaguar was not powerful enough for that task!

Explain please.

 

[2is]

Hasnt been locked down refers to the number of cores reserved (not the fact that there will be CPU reservation). PS4 is expected to have only 1 out of 8 cores reserved at some point (more mature devkits?), not 2 out of 8 like the current devkit.

"at least" means it could also be 7 or all 8 cores available. Then there's the opening sentence that says "all" if there was no doubt as to the core reservation, they would have said "games will have access to UP TO 7 out of 8 cores" which means 7 or less which leaves no doubt that at least 1 core is reserved. That's not what it said.

 

[Sweepr]

"at least" means it could also be 7 or all 8 cores available. Then there's the opening sentence that says "all" if there was no doubt as to the core reservation, they would have said "games will have access to UP TO 7 out of 8 cores" which means 7 or less which leaves no doubt that at least 1 core is reserved. That's not what it said.

Do you really think a Sony first-party studio would explicitly say that despite there's 8 CPU cores inside their brand new console developers cant use all of them for games? It would be very stupid from a pre-launch marketing point of view. Their performance analysis tool right there shows 6 cores available for devs in the current devkit and thats what they are working with in Killzone Shadow Fall development. Its not like this is something new for them, in PS3's Cell 1 SPE is locked to improve yields and 1 is reserved, leaving 6 to developers. If they needed CPU reservation then (and there are 2 cores reserved in current PS4 devkits) what makes you think they wouldnt now (especially with all the new in-game multimedia features these new consoles will bring)?

 

[2is]

The fact you're making assumptions is further evidence there is still doubt.

 

[Sweepr]

The fact you're making assumptions is further evidence there is still doubt.

About the number of cores reserved? Sure, and as a future PS4 owner I hope its not more than one. About CPU, RAM, HDD reservation existence? Nope.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

With all the emphasis on the social networking aspects of these consoles why do you all think that the OS core/thread is not going to do work for the actual game? It will be the thread that is advertising all your achievements, screenshots, and video's to your friends. It's not actual "game" work per se, but this is where game development is going. I would imagine that is what the always background OS on the reserved core is going to be handling.

One interesting thing is that you could see implementations like Battlelog becoming the norm on these new consoles. BF4 could have battlelog running on the console OS in a web browser and instantly launch into your mutliplayer games. It would save them a boatload of cash on UI design being able to use the same web based systme for xbox, ps3, and PC.

 

[wlee15]

So you rather choose to deal with this:

When going from 4 to 8 threads with extra debugging and development time/cost if you had the chance to stay with 4 at twice the speed for a faster endproduct?

Except the focus isn't really on making a existing Xbox 360 or PS3 run at 300 fps, but to provide better AI, and better effects, and larger environments.

 

[Vesku]

6 threads for the main game 1 thread for OS and 1 thread for misc tasks

That's a pretty solid layout from a software developer standpoint. Wonder if MS chose the same core count for similar reasons or whether AMD, having already started design work, talked up an 8 core part.

4-1-1 would also be fine if the individual cores were correspondingly faster, but it appears the Jaguar TDP curve starts to get pretty steep past 2GHz (Quad 1.5GHz 15W TDP, Quad 2GHz 25W TDP).

 

[galego]

Therefore, the rumour about reserved cores continues being a rumour...

In any case it is a moot point. It does not matter if 8 cores are split between the OS and the game (never 8 cores are used for the game alone) or if 6/7 are used by the game and 2/1 by the OS.

As explained before next gen games are already using 6 cores/threads and will favour AMD FX 6xxx and 8xxx chips over i3/i5 (4 threads).

 

[Vesku]

I wouldn't say favor, as a quad has the potential to perform better than a hexa on 6 threads if the quad cores are much faster.

Instead I'd say, with the introduction of the new consoles we should expect games to better utilize the resources provided by the FX 6 and 8 series.

 

[galego]

I was comparing the FX-6 to the i3 and the FX-8 to the i5.

 

[UaVaj]

game will still run on 2.5 cores. those 6/8 core is all marketing for the console buyer to buy and brag about. nothing more.

 

[Vesku]

game will still run on 2.5 cores. those 6/8 core is all marketing for the console buyer to buy and brag about. nothing more.

Well, a game developer was already showing a game that had a thread for each of 6 cores.

 

[2is]

As explained before next gen games are already using 6 cores/threads and will favour AMD FX 6xxx and 8xxx chips over i3/i5 (4 threads).

That may be true if 1 Intel core = 1 AMD core. But it's more like 1 Intel core = 2-2.5 AMD cores. i5's will be just fine and will outperform a 6xxx series from AMD more often than not. I'd gladly bet you money on this if you're so confidant.

 

[galego]

That may be true if 1 Intel core = 1 AMD core. But it's more like 1 Intel core = 2-2.5 AMD cores. i5's will be just fine and will outperform a 6xxx series from AMD more often than not. I'd gladly bet you money on this if you're so confidant.

Read #111

 

[jeff_rigby]

The Encoding/Decoding part is done with VCE and UVD. The secondary chip is the primary operating system processor and it appears on both the Xbox One and the Playstation 4.

The PS4 is not using AMD's UVD. The second custom chip contains (probably) Imagination Hardware codecs in addition to a second GPU for UI screens and low power XTV/browser & compute (NUI).

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=622186

Cited is a Llano AMD Fusion APU PDF.

1) UVD is a discrete component (separate from GPU and CPU) with it's own power gating and connected to the Memory buss. Internally it's probably still Mips.

2) Page 21 shows leakage (temp) of the entire APU at 0 clock with various sections gated off. It shows even with zero clock that there is still leakage until the GPU components are gated off. This should put an end to the claims that Idle current is negligible. Long GPU Idle automatically turns off the GPU to save leakage current.

3) Page 14 shows an application player - UVD - Rest of GPU. Page 20 shows power gating for the UVD is separate. UVD can be off when the GPU is active but the UVD requires the GPU to be active. X86 CPU can be off when UVD and GPU are on....playing video? What CPU is being used for the Application player? The Trustzone processor if HSA design is connected to the memory buss and can be used as the IPTV player just as well as a X86 CPU.

Both UVD and GPU had to be on in AMD APUs to IPTV stream. This was one of the issues and why IPTV had a Energy Star reg of 50 watts for IPTV...

RVU is always IPTV streaming when the TV is on and can not afford UVD plus GPU active at the same time! It works for small GPUs (2CUs) in Kabini but is too much wasted power with larger GPUs like the PS4's 18CU GPU.

RVU support dictates the PS4 design. This is an easy to understand point, RVU is IPTV streaming when the TV is on....2-6 maybe 8 or more hours a day. 2-4 watt IPTV using the hardware codec in the second custom chip vs a AMD UVD and GPU for 40+ watt for IPTV streaming. 4 watts vs 40 watts for 6 hours a day 365 days a year.

APUs with small GPUs are all AMD sells but a semi-custom game console APU has a large GPU. What works (using the GPU shaders for IPTV) for APUs with smaller GPUs is not viable from a power use point of view with a larger GPU in the APU.