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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

#81

Post by windowsrookie »

Scramblejams wrote: post #21
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...

> 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.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#83

Post by windowsrookie »

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…

Intel made ARM chips, then sold that portion of the company in 2006, shortly before the iPhone was announced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale

It was incredibly bad timing. If intel had continued making ARM chips they could be in an entirely different position today.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#84

Post by senkora »

mikepavone wrote: post #59
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…

> 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 a…

I did some more research and I was wrong.

My source was an AMD tech talk from years ago where they mentioned keeping instruction timings the same for backwards compatibility reasons.

I believe they were talking about this for the XBox One X: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/microsoft/scorpio_engine#Overvi... (and a similar chip for the PS4 Pro)

So basically, they upgraded and lightly enhanced the Jaguar architecture, shrunk the process (28nm -> 16nm), but otherwise kept it the same. AMD Zen was released around this time and was far superior but they decided to stick with Jaguar in order to make sure that instruction timings were kept the same.

I guess that they didn't want two hardware revisions of the same console generation running on different micro-architectures, but they were okay switching the micro-architecture for the next console generation.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#85

Post by DaoVeles »

Scramblejams wrote: post #21
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...

> 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.

I think what they have been doing is focusing on what 95% of people use these things for. Just basic utility based things. The most complex thing most people will render is Google Earth. I would not be surprised if that is probably the most like focus of performance for metrics Intel is using the iGPU for.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#86

Post by wmf »

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.

I don't think my TV can display 120 fps and I'm not buying a new one. But they promise 4K 60 (with upscaling) on the PS5 Pro, so they have to have something beyond that for PS6.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#87

Post by netcoyote »

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.

This is just a hypothesis, but I wonder if it’s simply that AMD was willing to accept lower margins to keep their business going, where INTC wasn’t willing to compete because they’re comparing the contract to the higher margin sales they made in the PC business?

I mean, sure, technical issues and such too, but mature businesses have a hard time accepting lower margins because it hurts their stock market metrics.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#89

Post by j_maffe »

xcv123 wrote: post #63
deelowe wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's very likely next gen consoles will feature AI hardware. The PS5 pro is already touting it.

The GPU is "AI hardware", and current PS5 already has it.

Custom architecture optimized for ML is a thing.

Re: Intel lost the Sony Playstation business to AMD

#90

Post by j_maffe »

Narishma wrote: post #79
MBCook wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And with the PS5 Pro announced we know the PS5 is basically dead inside Sony’s engineering organization. Other than a die shrink or chip reduction or something there’s not much else to do. The designs are basically done. So all hardware work would currently be focused on the PS6. At least for the home console line.

The PS5 is definitely not dead, it's their main console. The Pro is a niche machine targeted at wealthy enthusiasts. It will only do a fraction of the regular PS5 sales numbers.

I think GP means dead as in there'll be no more design efforts targeted at it.
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