Design Article
Sony PS4 to feature AMD X86 processor
Junko Yoshida
2/21/2013 12:25 AM EST
Differentiating PS4 from others
Cerny laid out five characteristics that the company hopes will differentiate PS4 from its own previous PlayStation platforms as well as those by its competitors. Namely, by making it simple, immediate, social, integrated and “personalized.”
By immediate, Cerny means not only the speed of the custom hardware but also the immediacy required for suspend/resume operation in game play. The PS4 will also come with a secondary custom chip responsible for downloading and processing games in the background.
By social, Cerny talked of PS4’s “always-on video compression and decompression hardware.” It will make “sharing video popular” while a gamer interacts with his friends, he explained. It enables popular “spectating” function simpler and easier, since all users have to do is to push a “share” button for real-time sharing of game play on the remote, second screen, he said.
PS4 is expected to be used far beyond the living room, said Cerny, as its use will be “integrated” with other devices including smartphones, tablets, PlayStation Vita (mobile gaming platform) and the Web. The idea is to let people play PS4 games on multiple platforms even while they are away from the PS4 game console in a living room.
PS4 will also offer personalized services by predicting kinds of games a user prefers and pre-loading it for him, Cerny said.
Lessons learned from PS3
Many industry observers who attended the press conference here were generally impressed by the energy and confidence Sony and its developer partners brought to the event.
More encouraging is that Sony’s PS4 team appears to be taking to heart the lessons they learned from the PS3. In particular, by embracing the X86-based platform, they believe that Sony could address what turned out to be fatal issues of product delay and the lack of content PS3 faced. Sierra Media’s Dipert, recalling the PS3 launch, noted that “the CELL processor ended up being a nightmare to program.” Further, when coupled with the late-design-cycle add of a Nvidia GPU in PS3, it led to “a dearth of compelling game content not only at the introduction of PS3 but also for a long time afterward,” he said.
Then, there is also an issue of a comparative launching schedule.
The PS3 was one year later than the Wii and the Xbox 360, giving both of these other platforms a big market lead. "Consumers had already bought the big-ticket-item console," Dipert said. "They were assembling game content libraries. Therefore, they were reluctant to buy yet another hardware platform.”
This time around, though, Nintendo’s Wii U hasn’t taken off on the market, and the next generation of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is not out yet.
It remains unclear how Sony plans to proceed with the migration of native PS4 games to other platforms (when connected to smartphones, tablets or Vita), or converting currently available PS3 games to x86. One obvious way to solve this is to do software emulation. Dipert called it “a really really hard problem.”
However, with PS4, there's a heavy reliance on 'cloud'-delivered content. Dipert noted, “It's conceivable that Sony could convince developers (at least its own game studio) to create x86-compiled versions of existing PS3 games, which could then be downloaded to the PS4, thereby providing a no-cost or some-cost 'bridge' for potential customers with lots of existing PS1, PS2 and PS3 content," he said.
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Cerny laid out five characteristics that the company hopes will differentiate PS4 from its own previous PlayStation platforms as well as those by its competitors. Namely, by making it simple, immediate, social, integrated and “personalized.”
By immediate, Cerny means not only the speed of the custom hardware but also the immediacy required for suspend/resume operation in game play. The PS4 will also come with a secondary custom chip responsible for downloading and processing games in the background.
By social, Cerny talked of PS4’s “always-on video compression and decompression hardware.” It will make “sharing video popular” while a gamer interacts with his friends, he explained. It enables popular “spectating” function simpler and easier, since all users have to do is to push a “share” button for real-time sharing of game play on the remote, second screen, he said.
PS4 is expected to be used far beyond the living room, said Cerny, as its use will be “integrated” with other devices including smartphones, tablets, PlayStation Vita (mobile gaming platform) and the Web. The idea is to let people play PS4 games on multiple platforms even while they are away from the PS4 game console in a living room.
PS4 will also offer personalized services by predicting kinds of games a user prefers and pre-loading it for him, Cerny said.
Lessons learned from PS3
Many industry observers who attended the press conference here were generally impressed by the energy and confidence Sony and its developer partners brought to the event.
More encouraging is that Sony’s PS4 team appears to be taking to heart the lessons they learned from the PS3. In particular, by embracing the X86-based platform, they believe that Sony could address what turned out to be fatal issues of product delay and the lack of content PS3 faced. Sierra Media’s Dipert, recalling the PS3 launch, noted that “the CELL processor ended up being a nightmare to program.” Further, when coupled with the late-design-cycle add of a Nvidia GPU in PS3, it led to “a dearth of compelling game content not only at the introduction of PS3 but also for a long time afterward,” he said.
Then, there is also an issue of a comparative launching schedule.
The PS3 was one year later than the Wii and the Xbox 360, giving both of these other platforms a big market lead. "Consumers had already bought the big-ticket-item console," Dipert said. "They were assembling game content libraries. Therefore, they were reluctant to buy yet another hardware platform.”
This time around, though, Nintendo’s Wii U hasn’t taken off on the market, and the next generation of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is not out yet.
It remains unclear how Sony plans to proceed with the migration of native PS4 games to other platforms (when connected to smartphones, tablets or Vita), or converting currently available PS3 games to x86. One obvious way to solve this is to do software emulation. Dipert called it “a really really hard problem.”
However, with PS4, there's a heavy reliance on 'cloud'-delivered content. Dipert noted, “It's conceivable that Sony could convince developers (at least its own game studio) to create x86-compiled versions of existing PS3 games, which could then be downloaded to the PS4, thereby providing a no-cost or some-cost 'bridge' for potential customers with lots of existing PS1, PS2 and PS3 content," he said.
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chanj
2/21/2013 2:16 PM EST
Two big lessons that Sony has learned from launching PS3.
1) Time to market: Game console has become a congested market. The delay launching PS3 was a big deal for Sony to timely making the development cost of PS3.
2) Game availability and time to market: Cell processor was superior in many way. The graphic quality and performance were incomparable in the early time of PS3. With the same game available in both PS3 and XBox 360, the one on PS3 was so much better. However, gamers are willing to live with 720p with an early availability of the game. The development cost (time and developers) of PS3 game was known to be really pricy.
With all these experience, it is not difficult to understand the direction that Sony has taken. However, I think it is very important for Sony to understand why Microsoft has chosen PowerPC on XBox360 instead of continuing the direction of using X86 as in XBox.
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junko.yoshida
2/21/2013 3:12 PM EST
Or not...the rumor has it that the next generation Xbox 360 will switch back to X86 architecture, although it is unconfirmed at this point.
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MikeSmith2011
2/21/2013 5:46 PM EST
The game console folks have no loyalty to any specific architecture. Sony itself used MIPs, then moved to Cell and now x86. Xbox uses custom powerPC cores from IBM and may also move to x86 or ARM. Whoever gives them the lowest cost chip wins. In this instance AMD gave them the APU with both the CPU and more importantly the graphics processing.
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junko.yoshida
2/21/2013 7:58 PM EST
While I understand that switching to a different architecture could happen on the game console, I am not sure if the cost of the CPU/GPU is the only reasons that motivate game console guys to do so.
Considering the headache of dealing with backward compatibilty issues of their game titles, I don't think this is a decision that they take it lightly.
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MikeSmith2011
2/22/2013 12:03 PM EST
Agree. IBM had designed the processors for all the 3 big game console providers and I suspect it was not able to provide a roadmap for them.
Reminds me of the decision by Apple to move away from IBM/Motorola to x86 for the same reason.
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DMcCunney
2/22/2013 3:35 PM EST
How much should they actually care about backwards compatibility?
Yes, they could encourage developers to port older PS3 games, or try to do a software emulation layer.
But the people who would want to play the old games already have a PS3. They might get a PS4, but will the PS3 simply be thrown out/sold/passed along, or will it be kept around for older games while the PS4 gets used for new content?
Backwards compatibility may not be that critical, if the PS4's performance on new stuff is compelling enough.
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Frank Eory
2/25/2013 7:01 PM EST
Agreed. In a game console, backward compatibility is actually a bad idea, as long as the developers support the new platform.
When people buy a new console, you want them to buy all new titles as well. The old games they already have were bought to be played on the old console.
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Anonymouse1234567891011121314151617181920
4/5/2013 3:02 PM EDT
If I want backwards compatbility I can live with keeping the old one. I don't need to cripple or drive up the cost of the new console to get compatability.
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Nick.Radonic
2/22/2013 1:30 PM EST
Sounds like this could make the basis for a powerful Windows or Linux box. 8 core and integrated graphics. Let the hacking commence. Oh, I'd like to see support for multiple screens and even 4K video.
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pica
2/22/2013 2:39 PM EST
How much standard AMD64 PC is the PS4? How many changes are needed to make an out of the box Windows 7/8 or Linux or *BSD or ... work on the PS4?
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hazydave
2/25/2013 2:52 PM EST
That's an interesting and kind of important question. One of the problems Microsoft had with the original X-Box was PC compatibility. It was easy to put Linux on it. But Microsoft needed something like five title sales per X-Box just to break even on the hardware.
And given the actual computing demands of most people, the PS4 looks pretty able to replace a regular PC. Sony must have some plan to avoid the "wrong kind" of popularity.
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HS_SemiPro
2/22/2013 10:46 PM EST
Move away from IBM should be easily explained by IBM not installing enough wafer making capacity at 32nm and beyond. GF is IBM mfg partner. But they must have gotten a good deal from AMD , which also make chips at GF, using same tech as IBM.
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snowboard9
2/23/2013 9:44 AM EST
It's the software stupid - something all companies big and small forget. They should have stayed with X86 from the beginning.
The PPC and CELL choices are made by hardware engineers that fall in love with speedy hardware specs, sell it to management and then throw it over the wall for the software community in the "other building"
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Robotics Developer
2/23/2013 10:51 PM EST
I have to agree it is the software and to a lesser extent the hardware. If the games are ready and of high enough quality then who cares what the platform is? On the other hand if the hardware platform can't get out of it's own way then no amount of software can make up for the lack of responsiveness. I am guessing that the X86 tried and true platform with a lot of horsepower will win a lot of software developer support and therefor more/better games!
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nano_meter
2/25/2013 10:39 AM EST
I wouldn't think it was a 32 nm capacity issue at IBM as I believe they have as much 32 nm capacity as they did at 45nm. I believe they still are supplying the newest game processors for Nintendo and Microsoft.
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Brutus_II
2/25/2013 11:42 AM EST
Seems like a well thought out path to follow. Given the relatively long product life cycle of Sony Play Stations. Employing AMD X86 architecture will be well suited for upgrades and enhancements, in particular GDDR6 has my attention, which should be going into production next year (if I remember right, AMD essentially created the GDDR memory standard for what it's worth). It would not be surprising if GDDR5 was skipped in the PS4 platform altogether. I find this news fascinating.
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C VanDorne
2/25/2013 2:29 PM EST
I'm happy for AMD. They could sure use some good press for a change. Hasn't it been years?
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GMilliorn
2/26/2013 12:19 PM EST
"the switch to the X86 CPU should also attract a large installed-base of “extreme PC gamers” to PS4, he added."
This was hilarious - as though PC gamers use a PC because of how much they love the x86 architecture.
Given there's about 0% chance PC games will run on the PS4, the choice of CPU is irrelevant.
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Jack.L
2/26/2013 12:42 PM EST
The comment about PC gamers seems to ignore the why of PC gaming .... continuous hardware upgrades (its a hobby thing), cheaper games, sitting at a desk, versus in front of the TV environment, Skype while gaming, etc., etc.
I think the hardware is well targeted for the price point, but the average PC gamer will be well beyond this a few years into the PS4 life cycle.
I am not putting down the hardware, but if they think they are going to win back PC gamers, they are sadly mistaken.
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dr187
5/1/2013 4:19 PM EDT
This architecture is a prime candidate for a 100 petaflop system.
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