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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

#161

Post by klelatti »

tester756 wrote: post #42
johnklos wrote: post #38

And they rightly deserve to lose the business to AMD. Intel to Apple: "We're too big to deliver what you want for cell phones." Apple: "Ok. We'll use ARM." Intel to Sony: "We're too big to commit to pricing, compatibility and volume." Sony:" Ok. We'll keep using AMD." It's interesting that Intel keeps trying to ship "features", some of arguable utility but others that are decently helpful, like AVX-512, that now AMD…

>Intel to Apple: "We're too big to deliver what you want for cell phones." Apple: "Ok. We'll use ARM." Reality: “We ended up not winning it or passing on it, depending on how you want to view it. And the world would have been a lot different if we’d done it. The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do… At the end of the day, there was a chi…

Otellini was not a dispassionate observer at the time he said this and there are very good reasons to believe that isn’t an accurate portrayal of what happened - including the fact that Otellini had just sold Intel’s smartphone SoC business and no x86 design was remotely suitable.

https://thechipletter.substack.com/p/how-intel-missed-the-ip...

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#162

Post by polar »

silvestrov wrote: post #149
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.

> no one knew what the iPhone would do When you are the CEO of Intel you should be able to see/forecast what smartphones would do in the market. The iPhone wasn't completely new. Nokia already had some "little smart" phones on the market already. The only real surprise was Apple's ability to get a US phone company on board with selling the iPhone and losing grip on what software that was installed on the phones.

> Nokia already had some "little smart" phones on the market already.

So did other hardware/software vendors, and many of them were a lot smarter than the iPhone.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#163

Post by dathinab »

bangaladore wrote: post #5

Maybe I'm misinformed, but I could never see Intel getting this contract. AMD has extensive experience with high-performing APUs, something Intel, at least in my memory, does not have. The chips on modern high-end consoles are supposed to compete with GPUs, not with integrated graphics. Does Intel even have any offerings that would indicate they could accomplish this? Intel has ARC, which presumably could be put in a…

> Intel has ARC, which presumably could be put in a custom "APU"; however, their track record with that is not stellar.

I wouldn't exactly agree with that. ARC GPUs aren't really bad, sure when they where new there was for quite some time quite some driver issues but they have been mostly ironed out and where more in the "expected issues with first non iGPU" territory then "intel being very bad at their job" territory.

Also GPUs in consoles (ignoring switch) are at the lower mid-class area today and that it's unlikely to change with future consoles, so that is a segment intel should be able to compete with. I mean console GPUs are more like big iGPS then dedicated GPUs.

The main issue would be that weather it's intel, nvidea or amd their drivers have subtle but sometimes quite important differences in performance characteristics meaning that sometimes optimizations for one are de-optimizations for the other and similar interoperability issues. And they seem more likely with Intel as there is just much less history between the larger game engines and ARC GPUs.

So IMHO Intel would have to offer a smaller price to be viable to compensate for more issues with backward compatibility, but if they where in a much better financial situation atm. I believe they would have had a high chance of getting it by subventioning it a bit so that they get a foothold on the marked and can compete without drawback next generation.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#164

Post by dathinab »

coder543 wrote: post #18
pknomad wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto. AMD also reliably delivered on CPUs for the past 2 iterations of both Xbox and PS. AMD feels like the only choice for consoles at this point.

Well, Nvidia has powered a much more popular console... the Nintendo Switch, and Nvidia looks set to power the Switch 2 when it launches next year. So, AMD is clearly not the only choice.

> much more popular console

which isn't a useful metric because "being a good GPU" wasn't at all why the switch became successful, like you could say it became successful even through it had a pretty bad GPU. Through bad only in the perf. aspect as far as I can tell back then amd wasn't competitive on energy usage basis and maybe not on a price basis as the nvidea chips where a by product of Nvidea trying to enter the media/TV add on/handheld market with stuff like the Nvidea Shield.

But yes AMD isn't the only choice, IMHO in difference to what many people seem to think for the price segment most consoles tend to target Intel is a viable choice, too. But then we are missing relevant insider information to properly judge that.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#165

Post by smcl »

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…

I'm not convinced, this feels like those "actually this is good for bitcoin" replies that are popular with cryptobros anytime some bad news hits. Intel have lost out on a big, high-profile contract - this cannot be something they are happy with and any explanation to the contrary is, as the kids say, "cope"

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#166

Post by jeroenhd »

epolanski wrote: post #6

Not sure the title has the right framing. It's hard to compete with AMD which is the only tech company to offer both x86 and a solid GPU technology that comes with it. On top of that you have backwards compatibility woes and the uncertainty around Intel being able to deliver on its foundry. All in all, this win would've been a great deal for Intel's foundry in PR, but money wise those were never going to be huge sums…

Intel's Arc GPUs are quite competent (especially with the highly necessary driver updates). If Battlemage fixed the hardware scheduling design flaw, Intel has a decent shot at competing with AMD.

If AMD continues to lose ground on the desktop market and Intel continues to advance with Arc, there's a chance the PS6/Xbox Series 360 will run on Intel instead of AMD.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#167

Post by Tuna-Fish »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #57
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…

Yeah, this was rigged from the start. If Sony did want to take up Intel next gen, they'd need to do a lot of work on backwards compatibility with the PS5 on the PS6. Whereas I imagine the PS6 being a "PS5 Pro Pro" at this rate. I suppose it can be seen as controlling rampant greed (especially for Nvidia), but it feels like the consoles dealt the cards here. There would have needed to either be some revolutionary tech…

> Whereas I imagine the PS6 being a "PS5 Pro Pro" at this rate.

I think there will be sufficient time between now and PS6 release that they will be able to support full RTRT.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#168

Post by Yeul »

nottorp wrote: post #152
lxgr wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony has historically invested a lot into backwards compatibility, going as far as shipping the previous gen's GPU and/or CPU with the PS2, initial PS3 models, and the PS Vita. PS3 compatibility on the PS4 was notably absent, though.

Historically. But not presently. They could include a software emulator at least for the PS2 (not PS1 because afaik the drive in the PS5 does not read CDs) on the PS5 and let people use old discs, but they don't and instead sell again old games packaged with the emulator in their online store.

I doubt there is a lot of money in PS2 games. Anyone who really wants to play those games can emulate them on PC.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#169

Post by smolder »

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.

My eyes are not best-of-best but the difference between 60 and 120hz in something first-person is dramatic and obvious. It depends on the content but there are many such games for consoles. Your claim that it's "slight" is one that only gets repeated by people who haven't seen the difference.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#170

Post by Meganet »

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…

Those IPs are bought from expert companies right?

I would assume if intel can make ARM and x86, it can do whatever sony needs.

Or is AMDs architecture THAT special? My assumption is, that the ps3 streaming processor was so different, that it would have mattered but with ps4 and 5?

You could also patch PS5 games if you need to. The ecosystem is closed.

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