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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

#51

Post by wmf »

bangaladore wrote: post #20
janice1999 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel has Battlemage [1]. Presumably that would be the basis of the console APU. Their iGPU performance is actually getting good now. [2] [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/embargo-no-p... [2] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/lunar-lake-i...

The "Intel Core Ultra 7 258V" is at least 2-3x slower than the GPU within the PlayStation 5. It is not even close, and that's last gen. Again, the APUs within modern consoles compete with desktop grade GPUs. In the case of the PS5 its roughly comparable to an RTX 2070 or Rx 6700 (better analog).

Multiple commenters here are forgetting about discrete Battlemage.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#52

Post by wmf »

neighbour wrote: post #50
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…

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.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#53

Post by toast0 »

alexjplant wrote: post #46
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…

> Nvidia has graphics chips, but it doesn't have the CPUs. Yes, Nvidia can make ARM CPUs, but they haven't been putting out amazing custom cores. Ignorant question - do they have to? The last time I was up on gaming hardware it seemed as though most workloads were GPU-bound and that having a higher-end GPU was more important than having a blazing fast CPU. GPUs have also grown much more flexible rendering pipelines a…

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 it work, and I don't know how timing sensitive PS5 games are --- when there's only a handful of hardware variants, you can easily end up with tricky timing requirements.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#54

Post by toast0 »

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…

IMO, more interesting than Intel not doing the iPhone is Intel ending atom for phones right before Microsoft demoed Continuum for Windows Mobile 10. That would have been a much different product on an x86 phone, IMHO. Maybe it would have been enough of an exciting feature that Microsoft would have not botched the Windows Mobile 10 release.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#55

Post by fhdsgbbcaA »

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…

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.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#56

Post by whalesalad »

snitty wrote: post #25
whalesalad wrote: post #19

Intel hasn't made a console CPU/GPU since... the original Xbox? AMD has done: Gamecube, Wii, Xbox 360 (gpu, not cpu), Xbox one, PS4, PS5 ...

Just to clarify, GameCube and Wii CPU was an IBM PowerPC chip. GPU was ATI in both, later acquired by AMD.

ya should have clarified gpu-only. I am tacking ATI into AMD.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#57

Post by johnnyanmac »

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 or an outright schism to make a business steer an otherwise smooth ship that way.

>As a gamedev I have a different perspective: Sony and Nintendo would be fools to give up backwards compatibility just for savings on chips.

I agree that both are probably playing it safe this time. But as a devil's advocate: both Sony and Nintendo are not strangers to ditching the previous gen if they don't want to compromise their next gen. At this point Nintendo is skewed towards ditching (SNES/N64/Gamecube/Switch vs. Wii/WiiU).

Sony tried and almost failed hard with the PS3 (kind of before with the whole SKU debacle, and then ditched after) but is otherwise usually consistent on BC. Well, that and the Vita. But I don't think anyone missed the UMD (it was still backwards compatible digitally, though).

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#58

Post by pinewurst »

wmf wrote: post #24
ChocolateGod wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> both x86 and a solid GPU technology that comes with it If only Project Denver had kept its original goal

Transmeta and Denver never had great performance. If you want an x86 CPU it's so much safer to go with AMD.

Plus Denver was constrained in x86 compatibility by Intel patents.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#59

Post by mikepavone »

senkora wrote: post #49
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…

+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…

> 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.

What? The Jaguar-based CPU in the PS4 has both a much lower clock and substantially lower IPC than the Zen 2 based one in the PS5. The timings are not remotely the same and the micro-architectures are quite different. Jaguar was an evolution of the Bobcat core which was AMD's answer to the Intel Atom at the time (i.e. low cost and low-power, though it was at least an out-of-order core unlike contemporary Atoms).

Going from GCN to RDNA on the GPU side is also a pretty significant architectural change, though definitely much less than the going from AMD to Intel would be.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#60

Post by neighbour »

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.

True but if you're referring to the fact that you can play Xbox and Xbox 360 games on newer hardware, I believe Microsoft has a team that has to individually patch these games to work for newer hardware.

Sony does something similar I believe with their new Classics Catalogue as part of their most premium PS Plus tier.

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