7 ms·

Will we see the next-generation of consoles running this instead of x64?

by ArkanExplorer 6y ago

wmf 6y ago
If I were MS or Sony I'd choose the GPU first and take whatever CPU comes with that GPU.
- monocasa 6y ago
  Microsoft's public comments at Hot Chips and The Platform Security Summit suggest that they did exactly that for the past two generations.
- ArkanExplorer 6y ago
  That might be an Nvidia GPU - with DLSS - but who would manufacture the CPU? Or, could we see Nvidia (since it has acquired ARM) jumping into the console space? A suite of three consoles ranging from mobile/portable, to 1080p/TV, to 4K/Desktop quality could be very appealing, especially if the top-end model could also use a mouse and keyboard and dual-boot into ARM Windows. Nvidia would just need to design a Linux game OS and storefront. If they offered a 10% developer commission and paid for some big exclusives, they could have a very compelling product.
  - jayd16 6y ago
    You should look at their Tegra/Shield offering as well the Switch. They're way ahead of you.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      Sort of. They appear to be in a bit of a holding pattern, having not released a competitive SoC in that space for some years. The rumor is that the Switch contract only came because Nvidia had a firesale on those older chips that they expected to make their way into flag ship Android devices, but instead sat in inventory for years. Maybe after the ARM acquisition goes through (if it does), they'll start looking down that line again.
      - my123 6y ago
        NVIDIA was involved in the Switch since even before the Tegra X1 was even announced. Those rumours aren’t true. (You can take a peek at LinkedIn for example, of former Nintendo engineers, which makes the timeline more clear)
        monocasa 6y ago
        Can you give some more pointers? There's a lot of former Nintendo engineers. I find it very difficult to believe that contrary to the rumors, Nintendo had been sitting on a SoC for many years without releasing a product or even pushing for a die shrink. Like, the Tegra X1 was announced in 2014, and released into products by 2015, and the Switch didn't come out until 2017. Turning off an entire core complex also points to it not being designed for them. Nintendo isn't known for paying for gates they aren't using.
        my123 6y ago
        For example: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eyhchen https://www.linkedin.com/in/eyhchen from the NVIDIA side "Gave a power consumption related demo to Nintendo team during sales process" (for his Jul 2013-Dec 2014 period of employment) https://www.linkedin.com/in/gyferic https://www.linkedin.com/in/gyferic from the Nintendo side "Benchmark parallel processing - OpenMP stress test on SoC Nvidia Tegra X1" (for a Sept 2014-Mar 2015 period of employment)
  - wmf 6y ago
    If you want an Nvidia GPU you might as well let Nvidia design the whole SoC so they're going to use ARM cores that they're familiar with. Xavier and Orin are designed for cars but you can imagine how they could be modified into console SoCs.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    > Nvidia (since it has acquired ARM) The Nvidia Arm acquisition is very far from being a done deal, and may not happen at all (e.g. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/01/tech-investors-predict-nvidias-arm-acquisition-will-be-blocked.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/01/tech-investors-predict-nvidi... and https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/12/qualcomm-objects-to-nvidias-40-billion-arm-acquisition.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/12/qualcomm-objects-to-nvidias-...).
vbezhenar 6y ago
Is there any public supplier of ARM chips comparable to x64? Apple M1 is awesome, but Apple's not going to sell them.
- rwmj 6y ago
  There are loads of high performance Arm chips, but they're pretty much all in the server space, ie power hungry. But does any of that matter for a console? The Switch seems to be phenomenally successful and yet is powered by a very modest 64 bit Arm chip (4 x Cortex A57, an 8 year old microarchitecture).
  - wk_end 6y ago
    Since the Wii Nintendo has been successful occupying a different niche than Microsoft/Sony. The Xbox and the Playstation both sell based on top-of-the-line (console) performance; the Switch sells for other reasons. I doubt either Microsoft or Sony are going to change tack and try to fight Nintendo (and probably lose) on Nintendo's home turf.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Exactly, Nintendo never went for last generation hardware, they rather focus on gameplay.
      - m4rtink 6y ago
        Still at least compared to the DS/3DS or Vita the Switch is very powerful, not to mention using a muchnmore sane architecture (especially compared to the DS devices).
        saagarjha 6y ago
        I mean, ARM9/ARM11 isn’t that strange…
        pjmlp 6y ago
jayd16 6y ago
Nintendo Switch is already Arm. If nVidia lands another console, it would probably be Arm.
shaggie76 6y ago
I'm not sure what convinced MS and Sony to both go x64 last-gen but I wonder if part of it was that it made porting to desktop easier (and visa-versa in theory). I'm not entirely sure that the same argument makes sense for Arm making ports to mobile easier because the controls for a console game aren't as easy to map to a phone so the games tend to be different. Frankly, having worked on consoles for 20 years and been through multiple architecture changes, I'd be perfectly happy to have another generation or two on x64 no matter how crusty it is -- devil you know and all.
- fomine3 6y ago
  I think they choose AMD, rather than x86-64. They can design high performance SoC easily by borrowing PC arch.
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  > I'm not sure what convinced MS and Sony to both go x64 last-gen Which generation are you referring to with 'last-gen'? If you mean PS4 / Xbox One then what else was on the high-performance CPU market other than x86 in 2012-2014? The POWER family had moved deep into HPC specialization. POWER7 was a bit old by 2013 and POWER8 wasn't quite there, but neither would make for a good gaming CPU with the heavy multithreading focus (4-way SMT on POWER7 & 8-way SMT on POWER8), and both would require substantial design changes to be scaled down to what a console would want. The ARM CPU of the time was the Cortex-A15, which was a fine mobile CPU but wasn't pushing any boundaries to make laptop or desktop CPUs nervous (and you'd have to substantially invest it its IO capabilities - there weren't really any ARM CPUs + PCI-E x16 + SATA SoCs laying around at the time) If you mean the PS5/XSX generation then I think it's simply a why not Zen 2 & keep backwards compatibility? It's not like there's anything else you can buy that's a clearly better CPU offering anyway.
kllrnohj 6y ago
PS5 & Xbox Series X are both still largely considered "next generation" and both are x86. Next-next generation, or rather whatever happens in 7 years, is going to be hard to predict.

Will we see the next-generation of consoles running this instead of x64?

wmf 6y ago

If I were MS or Sony I'd choose the GPU first and take whatever CPU comes with that GPU.

monocasa 6y ago
Microsoft's public comments at Hot Chips and The Platform Security Summit suggest that they did exactly that for the past two generations.
ArkanExplorer 6y ago
That might be an Nvidia GPU - with DLSS - but who would manufacture the CPU? Or, could we see Nvidia (since it has acquired ARM) jumping into the console space? A suite of three consoles ranging from mobile/portable, to 1080p/TV, to 4K/Desktop quality could be very appealing, especially if the top-end model could also use a mouse and keyboard and dual-boot into ARM Windows. Nvidia would just need to design a Linux game OS and storefront. If they offered a 10% developer commission and paid for some big exclusives, they could have a very compelling product.
- jayd16 6y ago
  You should look at their Tegra/Shield offering as well the Switch. They're way ahead of you.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    Sort of. They appear to be in a bit of a holding pattern, having not released a competitive SoC in that space for some years. The rumor is that the Switch contract only came because Nvidia had a firesale on those older chips that they expected to make their way into flag ship Android devices, but instead sat in inventory for years. Maybe after the ARM acquisition goes through (if it does), they'll start looking down that line again.
    - my123 6y ago
      NVIDIA was involved in the Switch since even before the Tegra X1 was even announced. Those rumours aren’t true. (You can take a peek at LinkedIn for example, of former Nintendo engineers, which makes the timeline more clear)
      - monocasa 6y ago
        Can you give some more pointers? There's a lot of former Nintendo engineers. I find it very difficult to believe that contrary to the rumors, Nintendo had been sitting on a SoC for many years without releasing a product or even pushing for a die shrink. Like, the Tegra X1 was announced in 2014, and released into products by 2015, and the Switch didn't come out until 2017. Turning off an entire core complex also points to it not being designed for them. Nintendo isn't known for paying for gates they aren't using.
        my123 6y ago
        For example: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eyhchen https://www.linkedin.com/in/eyhchen from the NVIDIA side "Gave a power consumption related demo to Nintendo team during sales process" (for his Jul 2013-Dec 2014 period of employment) https://www.linkedin.com/in/gyferic https://www.linkedin.com/in/gyferic from the Nintendo side "Benchmark parallel processing - OpenMP stress test on SoC Nvidia Tegra X1" (for a Sept 2014-Mar 2015 period of employment)
- wmf 6y ago
  If you want an Nvidia GPU you might as well let Nvidia design the whole SoC so they're going to use ARM cores that they're familiar with. Xavier and Orin are designed for cars but you can imagine how they could be modified into console SoCs.
- kelnos 6y ago
  > Nvidia (since it has acquired ARM) The Nvidia Arm acquisition is very far from being a done deal, and may not happen at all (e.g. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/01/tech-investors-predict-nvidias-arm-acquisition-will-be-blocked.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/01/tech-investors-predict-nvidi... and https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/12/qualcomm-objects-to-nvidias-40-billion-arm-acquisition.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/12/qualcomm-objects-to-nvidias-...).

vbezhenar 6y ago

Is there any public supplier of ARM chips comparable to x64? Apple M1 is awesome, but Apple's not going to sell them.

rwmj 6y ago
There are loads of high performance Arm chips, but they're pretty much all in the server space, ie power hungry. But does any of that matter for a console? The Switch seems to be phenomenally successful and yet is powered by a very modest 64 bit Arm chip (4 x Cortex A57, an 8 year old microarchitecture).
- wk_end 6y ago
  Since the Wii Nintendo has been successful occupying a different niche than Microsoft/Sony. The Xbox and the Playstation both sell based on top-of-the-line (console) performance; the Switch sells for other reasons. I doubt either Microsoft or Sony are going to change tack and try to fight Nintendo (and probably lose) on Nintendo's home turf.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Exactly, Nintendo never went for last generation hardware, they rather focus on gameplay.
    - m4rtink 6y ago
      Still at least compared to the DS/3DS or Vita the Switch is very powerful, not to mention using a muchnmore sane architecture (especially compared to the DS devices).
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        I mean, ARM9/ARM11 isn’t that strange…
      - pjmlp 6y ago

jayd16 6y ago

Nintendo Switch is already Arm. If nVidia lands another console, it would probably be Arm.

shaggie76 6y ago

I'm not sure what convinced MS and Sony to both go x64 last-gen but I wonder if part of it was that it made porting to desktop easier (and visa-versa in theory). I'm not entirely sure that the same argument makes sense for Arm making ports to mobile easier because the controls for a console game aren't as easy to map to a phone so the games tend to be different. Frankly, having worked on consoles for 20 years and been through multiple architecture changes, I'd be perfectly happy to have another generation or two on x64 no matter how crusty it is -- devil you know and all.

fomine3 6y ago
I think they choose AMD, rather than x86-64. They can design high performance SoC easily by borrowing PC arch.
kllrnohj 6y ago
> I'm not sure what convinced MS and Sony to both go x64 last-gen Which generation are you referring to with 'last-gen'? If you mean PS4 / Xbox One then what else was on the high-performance CPU market other than x86 in 2012-2014? The POWER family had moved deep into HPC specialization. POWER7 was a bit old by 2013 and POWER8 wasn't quite there, but neither would make for a good gaming CPU with the heavy multithreading focus (4-way SMT on POWER7 & 8-way SMT on POWER8), and both would require substantial design changes to be scaled down to what a console would want. The ARM CPU of the time was the Cortex-A15, which was a fine mobile CPU but wasn't pushing any boundaries to make laptop or desktop CPUs nervous (and you'd have to substantially invest it its IO capabilities - there weren't really any ARM CPUs + PCI-E x16 + SATA SoCs laying around at the time) If you mean the PS5/XSX generation then I think it's simply a why not Zen 2 & keep backwards compatibility? It's not like there's anything else you can buy that's a clearly better CPU offering anyway.

kllrnohj 6y ago

PS5 & Xbox Series X are both still largely considered "next generation" and both are x86. Next-next generation, or rather whatever happens in 7 years, is going to be hard to predict.