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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

#121

Post by lxgr »

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…

In what sense would you say the Xbox 360 was more "PC-like" than "console-like"?

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#122

Post by MBCook »

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…

You’re right they didn’t want to target weird things like the PS3 anymore, that was a huge pain.

But you have to remember the other side: there were no other options than x86.

ARM wasn’t powerful enough for one of the high-end consoles at the time. Trying to have such a chip designed would be a lot more expensive than just choosing a premade design and tweaking at a little. It worked for Nintendo but they had different goals. I’m not sure ARM could’ve been used it for the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.

The previous supplier, IBM PowerPC, had basically given up. Apple switched off them for the same reason. It wasn’t getting much faster and IBM only really seemed interested in server chips. I think it’s reasonable to assume they wouldn’t have tried very hard to win a chance to make a faster console chip.

If you don’t want to design your own, that’s all the major players. x86-64 is all that’s left.

Which is not to say that was a bad option. Developers are extremely familiar with it, there’s a metric ton of tools available, it makes game porting to and from PCs easier, it was the highest performance option, and there are two big suppliers that you can play against each other. So even if you went with Intel and something happened you could switch to AMD.

When IBM decided they didn’t care about the market, you just had to leave the PowerPC.

Why AMD over Intel? They were probably hungrier since they were in second place. They had a competitive GPU business, which Intel didn’t. Single supplier + they could do everything on one chip. And if AMD makes both parts they can help optimize the hell out of it.

Microsoft got screwed by nVidia on the XBox. I don’t think they’d want to do that again. Sony would absolutely know that happened and be wary.

Honestly it’s not clear to me that nVidia cared too much. But maybe I’m just reading it wrong. Nintendo went with them because they had and all in one system on a chip they were willing to dump for cheap that thanks to its mobile heritage developers were already familiar with.

Also since AMD was the little guy (compared to Intel) they could really use the sales and the revenue. It would be a bigger percentage of their total income than Intel, meaning it was more important to win that contract.

So in the end I think it makes a lot of sense that PlayStation and Xbox ended up in AMD land.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#123

Post by MBCook »

someNameIG wrote: post #106
JonChesterfield wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But were there fast/powerful enough ARM chips to be competitive with what ended up in the PS4/XBox One?

They certainly exist today. But could Sony and Microsoft have chosen them or would they have had to have them developed?

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#124

Post by etempleton »

wmf wrote: post #52
neighbour wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all true. Xbox always threatens to leave their current vendors only to end up signing a renewal at the final hours of the contract. >As a gamedev I have a different perspective: Sony and Nintendo would be fools to give up backwards compatibility just for savings on chips. In your view, is this issue worse with modern consoles now that the Playstation (and possibly Nintendo) online store purchases persist acro…

Microsoft maintained backwards compatibility across Intel+Nvidia, IBM+ATI, and AMD+AMD so it's possible. Sony hasn't invested as much in compatibility, instead just keeping the same architecture for PS4/5.

Most games were not backwards compatible between Xbox and Xbox 360. They had to do work to make game work and prioritized the most popular games, most notably Halo. With that said, there were certain features that did not work properly. There was a Halo 2 map they took out of the online pool because it used a heavy fog effect that would not render on 360.

From 360 to Xbox One there was a similar situation where they would patch individual games to work, but because it was at least partially emulated, publishers had to sign off on allowing their game to be backwards compatible.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#125

Post by MBCook »

philistine wrote: post #105
JonChesterfield wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was also targeting a very different capability level from the PS4/XBox One.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#126

Post by nxobject »

MBCook wrote: post #114
fhdsgbbcaA wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is from the horses mouth, and reliable as such. However, it does give the impression that they weren’t sufficiently interested to think more creatively about cost optimization, because they were riding the gravy train of Wintel ruling the world. So I think root comment isn’t too far off.

Right. It’s an accurate quote but that doesn’t mean it’s an accurate analysis. Not only did they not seem to understand the possibilities in front of them, their chips were not well positioned at all to win. They were too hot and too power-hungry because Intel didn’t care much about efficiency at the time. They were taking the “shrink a big chip” path. Apple, using ARM from Samsung then their own , ended up taking th…

I'm surprised they didn't learn the same lesson from the P4/NetBurst vs. Pentium M/Banias fiasco: the smaller but scalable architecture somehow always wins – first in power/perf, and then more generally.

(Actually, I need to check the timing of whether the "oh shit" moment for NetBurst happened before or after the development of the iPhone...)

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#127

Post by soganess »

deaddodo wrote: post #68
senkora wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. An important non-obvious detail for AMD is that they (at least in the past, I assume for this as well) have kept the instruction timings similar from generation to generation of consoles. Different x86 micro-architectures benefit from writing the machine code in slightly different ways. Games are highly optimized to the specific micro-architecture of the console, so keeping that stable helps game developers optim…

> Different x86 micro-architectures benefit from writing the machine code in slightly different ways. Games are highly optimized to the specific micro-architecture of the console, so keeping that stable helps game developers optimize for the console. While that can be true, very few gamedev companies these days optimize to that degree. They almost all use off-the-shelf middleware and game engines that are built to su…

Asking this as an open ended (if leading) question: I assume enough people are doing it otherwise PS5 Pro makes no sense... Right?

They (AMD/Sony) shoehorned the RDNA 3/3.5 GPU architecture onto an older Zen 2 core, with a different process node, because... they felt like making a frankenAPU? Especially since the APUs are usually monolithic (vs chiplet) in design and share a memory controller. Surely it would have been easier/cheaper to put in 8 zen 4c/5c cores and call it a day.

I'm pretty sure I'm just missing something obvious...

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#128

Post by someNameIG »

MBCook wrote: post #123
someNameIG wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But were there fast/powerful enough ARM chips to be competitive with what ended up in the PS4/XBox One? They certainly exist today. But could Sony and Microsoft have chosen them or would they have had to have them developed?

I'm not sure, the Jaguar CPUs in them were pretty underpowered at the time too, they were tablet/netbook level. I think they were in some ways a bit of a downgrade in CPU performance compared to the Cell in the PS3.

Biggest issue at the time would have been an ARM CPU with a decent GPU if they wanted a SoC instead of having them separate dies

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#129

Post by kcb »

windowsrookie wrote: post #81
Scramblejams wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their iGPU performance is actually getting good now. I've only been waiting for Intel to ship a compelling iGPU since, I dunno, their "Extreme Graphics" in 2001? What on earth have their iGPU teams been doing over there for the last 20+ years? I guess the OEMs were blinkered enough not to demand it, and Intel management was blinkered enough not to see the upside on their own.

The Intel Iris Pro graphics from about 10 years ago were actually ok. I believe they were matching the lower-end dedicated laptop GPUs of that era. The problem was Apple was the only company willing to pay for the Iris Pro Chips.

The other problem is Intel's graphics drivers for 3d gaming are a distant 3rd place. Games just haven't historically targeted their GPUs. We've had like 2 decades of games that for the most part have tested compatibility with Nvidia and AMD.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#130

Post by MBCook »

nxobject wrote: post #126
MBCook wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. It’s an accurate quote but that doesn’t mean it’s an accurate analysis. Not only did they not seem to understand the possibilities in front of them, their chips were not well positioned at all to win. They were too hot and too power-hungry because Intel didn’t care much about efficiency at the time. They were taking the “shrink a big chip” path. Apple, using ARM from Samsung then their own , ended up taking th…

I'm surprised they didn't learn the same lesson from the P4/NetBurst vs. Pentium M/Banias fiasco: the smaller but scalable architecture somehow always wins – first in power/perf, and then more generally. (Actually, I need to check the timing of whether the "oh shit" moment for NetBurst happened before or after the development of the iPhone...)

The Core line (2006), when they started to swing back away from “make fast furnaces” was just one year before the iPhone (2007). So the NetBurst debacle had already happened.

But that was desktops. I wonder if they really realized how much a problem that was in mobile. I also think I remember a discussion of that quote from a few weeks ago where someone said the real problem for Intel in the iPhone wasn’t heat but power draw.

I don’t think they ever really got the religion. Apple’s M1 sort of seems like a repeat of this whole thing. Intel still didn’t get it at that point. Still too hot. Still not efficient enough.

The switch from NetBurst to Core seems more like a direction switch because they hit a wall, not a recognition of what the problem actually was. A change from ultra-fast single core to fast multi-core.

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