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The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony

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Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony

#61

Post by quanticle »

ewzimm wrote: post #12
quanticle wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The XBox One is an x86 architecture as well. Pretty much everything that you said about the PS4 also applies to XBox One. Now, there are differences between the consoles, but fundamentally both of the next-gen consoles are x86 CPUs tied to memory architectures that are designed to stream HD content to the screen as fast as possible.

What does processor architecture even matter to a consumer? Is the Xbox 360 a pre-Intel Mac because it uses PowerPC archictecture? I don't see why so many people mention this. Consoles have always been about custom software, not unique hardware architecture.

It absolutely doesn't matter to the consumer of {XBox One | PS4} games. However, as a PC gamer, I'm excited by the fact that the consoles have x86 architectures, because this removes one of the obstacles preventing PCs from getting console titles.

Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony

#62

Post by ewzimm »

voltagex_ wrote: post #49
ewzimm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony will start streaming eventually. It would be fantastic if they implemented a disc matching policy, allowing you to stream a game with the disc in the drive. Perfect backward compatibility with no software support necessary.

This is not going to work anywhere except the continental US due to latency, unless they manage to provision servers everywhere (to the cloud!)

US speeds are not great compared to some places. But let's see where things are in 5 years. Could be much better. Doesn't matter for me. I stopped buying anything from Sony when they removed OtherOS.

Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony

#63

Post by InclinedPlane »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #52
bradleyjg wrote: post #8

The PS4 may well make for a better video game machine and more profit for Sony, but it's too bad the very interesting and powerful cell processor concept will be relegated to the dustbin.

The Cell design was interesting, but it was obvious that chip multiprocessors would win. The argument is similar to why x86 continues to prevail vs RISC and VLIW: supporting x86 is only a modest constant factor in transistor count but preserves access to the existing software ecosystem. The latter trumps the pennies per part the x86 decoders add. Likewise with chip multiprocessors vs systolic arrays: making a core fu…

The x86 vs RISC debate is a perfect example of how technological advances can confound seemingly simple tradeoffs. There's simply no such thing as a CISC processor anymore. All "x86" processors have RISC internals and use micro-op translation to present an x86 ISA at a software level. As you point out, the same sort of dynamics play out at every level. There's only so much advantage that simplified core designs get you, since the overhead for "legacy" support tends to be small.

It'll be interesting to see how Intel's x86 SoC development pans out. With the Atom they weren't really aiming for the SoC market and only recently have they actually bothered to try to do so. Even with their first generation stuff they've produced pretty competitive, to ARM, results, given Intel's research muscle and their FAB capacity it wouldn't be surprising to see a lot more x86-SoC based smartphones and tablets hitting the market in the coming years.

Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony

#64

Post by ewzimm »

wmf wrote: post #41
Arelius wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The endianess of the Xbox 360 made "already pretty much like developing for Windows" not quite accurate. And causes a lot of problems relating to I/O.

Doesn't the 360 run little-endian?

It does both.

Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony

#66

Post by lelandbatey »

cromwellian wrote: post #56
6ren wrote: post #34

I'm seeing a pattern, a cycle between hubris and humility. When Nintendo ruled, Sony broke in by courting game developers. Then, they became arrogant, and made the best hardware they could, they was difficult to use. Thus, Microsoft won, simply because it was easier for developers. It was then amazing to see how arrogant they had become with the xboxone trying to squeeze everyone, in every way - similar to how they r…

I highly doubt that assertion, it's a handwavy extrapolation. The current GPUs have significantly higher TDP, 3 years ago, state of the art GPUs had 3 Billion transistors and power consumption over 150W. The Playstation 3 is based on 2004 era (cut down G70 )chip designs, so you're talking mobile devices next year catching up with a chip that's almost ten years ago, based on a 90nm processor node. Today's PS4 will be…

Every single time I see someone say "Things in the future aren't going to see huge performance increases like that." I smile, because the beauty of the future is that we don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe in ten years we'll all have crazy brain implants made possible by some new awesome technology, and we'll be watching pinar movies as these devices render them in real time.

Probably not likely, but I'm not going to make any absolute claims about anything.

Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony

#67

Post by nitrogen »

supergauntlet wrote: post #60
criley2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, you'd spend $600-$650 to build a comparable computer. And that's not counting the fact that the PS4's software, both OS and games, are built for a single target. And that's assuming you'll get cheap peripherals and cheap case and stuff. And probably doesn't include the cost of a Windows license either. Specifically video cards don't start passing the PS4 until the $200 range, at least when comparing via syn…

Yeah, this is not true at all. You can get video cards that are better than the PS4's (by enough to counter any initial optimization, if not end-of-life optimization) for $150. Specifically, 7870 GHz editions.

The only thing you can't get in a PC is the high-bandwidth shared memory. You can probably make up for it by having tons of RAM on your PC's video card, but I still think the shared memory architecture will be the most interesting part of the current generation of consoles.

Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony

#68

Post by voidlogic »

Volpe wrote: post #37
voidlogic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster I responded to mapped out why logically PC, Linux and Android is the best combined platform, but then suggested that it is not really true is intangible reasons ("Not everything can be reduced down to specs and numbers"). I was expressing that I follow his logic and think this logic is valid. And not just for techies like me, but lay people as well.

So people who bought iphones and macs just didn't understand the options available to them through linux? I seriously doubt that premise.

I think that many tech people use apple because its what they think hip techies use and that is what they want to be. Its a brand, and image. Apple also has an aesthetic that many people like. I'm not saying people don't have a right to make up their own mind, but I have a right to think they are choosing wrongly.

Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony

#69

Post by voidlogic »

lowkeykiwi wrote: post #44
voidlogic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster I responded to mapped out why logically PC, Linux and Android is the best combined platform, but then suggested that it is not really true is intangible reasons ("Not everything can be reduced down to specs and numbers"). I was expressing that I follow his logic and think this logic is valid. And not just for techies like me, but lay people as well.

So you are saying those intangibles don't exist? Maybe you and your mother just don't value them as much.

I never said that they don't exist, and I would agree I must value them less, that is implied by the choices I have made. There are also intangibles that push in the opposite direction as well, say such as Apple being a comparatively evil tech company in regards to opensource interactions, market tactics, patents and labor/human rights.

Re: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony

#70

Post by johnchristopher »

lelandbatey wrote: post #66
cromwellian wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt that assertion, it's a handwavy extrapolation. The current GPUs have significantly higher TDP, 3 years ago, state of the art GPUs had 3 Billion transistors and power consumption over 150W. The Playstation 3 is based on 2004 era (cut down G70 )chip designs, so you're talking mobile devices next year catching up with a chip that's almost ten years ago, based on a 90nm processor node. Today's PS4 will be…

Every single time I see someone say "Things in the future aren't going to see huge performance increases like that." I smile, because the beauty of the future is that we don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe in ten years we'll all have crazy brain implants made possible by some new awesome technology, and we'll be watching pinar movies as these devices render them in real time. Probably not likely, but I'm not going to…

That "we can't know anything about the future" attitude is way more absolute than what the parent is saying and it doesn't foster any interesting conversations about what could happen, why, how, when and how that could relates to our present and past.
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