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Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

reuters.com

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Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#101

Post by sangnoir »

ksec wrote: post #71
Danieru wrote: post #37

No one appears to have mentioned the important meta game going on: Intel bidding as a credible alternative supplier. For Intel, by bidding they get to undercut AMD's profits. For Sony, they get a credible alternative which they can pretend would be a viable choice. Thus forcing a slightly better deal from AMD. We saw similar articles related to the Switch 2. That time it was AMD acting as spoiler to Nvidia. Nvidia re…

Adding a bit more context. Nvidia got the bid for Switch when they were basically dumping those unwanted Tegra to Nintendo for an incredibly low price. Xbox and Playstation dont earn AMD much profits at all. AMD had this Custom Processor segment to barely keep them surviving, people may forget AMD was only worth ~$3B market cap in 2016. They are now at ~$250B. On the subject of software compatibility though, one thin…

> Xbox and Playstation dont earn AMD much profits at all

It doesn't cost them much either. Lisa Su, in an interview that was posted to HN a few months ago, said it is a deliberate strategy to repackage IP AMD has already developed. They are willing to pull designs from the shelf and customize it to meet partners needs. Having a long tail of products adds up, and sets you up to get first dibs on higher margin partnerships in the future.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#103

Post by philistine »

kmeisthax wrote: post #72
mdasen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with choosing Nvidia is that they can't make an x86 processor with an integrated GPU. If you're looking to maintain backward compatibility with the Playstation 5, you're probably going to want to stick with an x86 chip. AMD has the rights to make x86 chips and it has the graphics chips to integrate. Nvidia has graphics chips, but it doesn't have the CPUs. Yes, Nvidia can make ARM CPUs, but they haven't be…

Emulating x86 would be an option - though given Sony's history, I doubt they'd consider it seriously. For context... - PS1 BC on PS2 was mostly hardware but they (AFAIK?) had to write some code to translate PS1 GPU commands to the PS2 GS. That's why you could forcibly enable bilinear filtering on PS1 games. Later on they got rid of the PS1 CPU / "IO processor" and replaced it with a PPC chip ("Deckard") running a MIP…

Considering how the wins are blowing, I'm going to guess the next consoles from Sony and Microsoft are the last ones to use x86. They'll be forced to switch to ARM for price/performance reasons, with all x86 vendors moving upmarket to try and maintain revenues.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#104

Post by philistine »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #70
toast0 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a PS6 needs to play PS5 games, or Sony will have a hard time selling them until the PS6 catalog is big; and they'll have a hard time getting 3rd party developers if they're going to have a hard time with console sales. I don't think you're going to play existing PS5 games on an ARM CPU unless it's an "amazing" core. Apple does pretty good at running x86 code on their CPUs, but they added special modes to make…

I mean, the PS4 didn't play PS3 games and that didn't hurt it any. Backwards compatibility is nice but it isn't the only factor.

We're not in 2012 anymore. Modern players don't only want a clean break to play the new AAA games every month, they also want access to a large indie marketplace, they also want the games they play every day, they also want to improve the performance of the games they already have.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#105

Post by philistine »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #73
langsoul-com wrote: post #61

Why did amd win the console business? It seems that even though they weren't number 1, they were always on most consoles.

I believe x64 won the PS4 era because games devs were deeply sick of targeting a special purpose architecture for the console and also x86 for the PC game port. At the time all desktop computers for games were x86 based IBM clone things. I don't know why AMD ended up with the PS4 and the xbox as opposed to Intel getting either, but x86 was probably inevitable. I wonder if these days something architecturally similar…

> [..] something architecturally similar to the mac arm systems would be a reasonable alternative.

It's called the Nintendo Switch, and its the second best selling console of all time.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#106

Post by someNameIG »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #73
langsoul-com wrote: post #61

Why did amd win the console business? It seems that even though they weren't number 1, they were always on most consoles.

I believe x64 won the PS4 era because games devs were deeply sick of targeting a special purpose architecture for the console and also x86 for the PC game port. At the time all desktop computers for games were x86 based IBM clone things. I don't know why AMD ended up with the PS4 and the xbox as opposed to Intel getting either, but x86 was probably inevitable. I wonder if these days something architecturally similar…

ARM would be a reasonable alternative. Unity/UE5 already support it due to mobile and Nintendo Switch, and consoles are usually more power/thermally constrained than desktops, so AMR in many ways would be a better alternative than x64.

Plus PlayStation is big enough that if they went ARM, game devs would have to follow.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#107

Post by MBCook »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #96
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the PS4 didn't play PS3 games and that didn't hurt it any. Backwards compatibility is nice but it isn't the only factor.

The first year of PS4 was pretty dry because of the lack of BC; It really helped that the competition was the Xbox One, which was less appealing for a lot of reasons

At this point people have loved the PS5 and Xbox Series for having full backwards compatibility. The Xbox goes even further through software. People liked the Wii’s backwards compatibility and the Wii U (for those who had it).

And Nintendo’s long chain of BC from the GB to the 3DS (though eventually dropping GB/GBC) was legendary.

The Switch was such a leap over the 3DS and WiiU Nintendo got away with it. It’s had such a long life having no BC could be a huge hit if the Switch 2 didn’t have it.

I think all three intended to try and keep it going forward at this point.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#108

Post by MBCook »

t-3 wrote: post #77
wmf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PS5 had Zen 2 which was fairly new at the time. If PS6 targets 120 fps they'll want a CPU that's double the performance of Zen 2 per thread. You could definitely achieve this with ARM but I'm not sure how new of an ARM core you would need.

Is there a need to ever target 120 fps? Only the best-of-best eyes will even notice a slight difference from 60.

Yes.

You say that, but you can absolutely notice. Motion is smoother, the picture is clearer (higher temporal resolution), and input latency is half what it is at 60.

Does every game need it? Absolutely not. But high-speed action games and driving games can definitely benefit. Maybe others. There’s a reason the PC world has been going nuts with frame rates for years.

We have 120 fps on consoles today on a few games. They either have to significantly cut back (detail, down to 1080p, etc) or are simpler to begin with (Ori, Prince of Persia). But it’s a great experience.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#109

Post by lxgr »

Danieru wrote: post #37

No one appears to have mentioned the important meta game going on: Intel bidding as a credible alternative supplier. For Intel, by bidding they get to undercut AMD's profits. For Sony, they get a credible alternative which they can pretend would be a viable choice. Thus forcing a slightly better deal from AMD. We saw similar articles related to the Switch 2. That time it was AMD acting as spoiler to Nvidia. Nvidia re…

> Sony and Nintendo would be fools to give up backwards compatibility just for savings on chips.

But would they really?

Staying on x86-64 would take care of CPU compatibility (unless there's some exotic AMD-only instruction set extension heavily used by PS4/5 games), and a GPU emulation stack seems at least somewhat plausible.

Sony has pulled this off multiple times before with seemingly completely incompatible architectures:

The PS2 came with the PS1 CPU (repurposed as an IO controller, but fully available for previous-gen games) and emulated the GPU on its own. The PS3 did the reverse in its second iteration (i.e. it included the PS2's GPU and emulated the CPU). The PS Vita's SoC had the PSP MIPS CPU included on-die, which in turn is similar enough to the PS1's to allow running those games too.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#110

Post by anonfordays »

MadnessASAP wrote: post #98
kmeisthax wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emulating x86 would be an option - though given Sony's history, I doubt they'd consider it seriously. For context... - PS1 BC on PS2 was mostly hardware but they (AFAIK?) had to write some code to translate PS1 GPU commands to the PS2 GS. That's why you could forcibly enable bilinear filtering on PS1 games. Later on they got rid of the PS1 CPU / "IO processor" and replaced it with a PPC chip ("Deckard") running a MIP…

> No BC was attempted on PS4 at all, AFAIK. PS3 is a weird basketcase of an architecture, but even PS1 or PS2 aren't BC supported. To Be Faiiiirrrrrr, that whole generation was a basket case. Nintendo with the motion controls. Microsoft with a console that internally was more PC then "traditional" console (and HD-DVD). Sony with the Cell processor and OtherOS™. I do have fond memories of playing around with Linux on…

I remember the hype around cell processors being so high around the release of the PlayStation 3. It was novel for the application, but still fizzled out even with the backing it had.
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