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tidbit on ATi VPUs in next-gen consoles



 
 
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  #1  
Old September 17th 03, 01:39 AM
Radeon350
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Posts: n/a
Default tidbit on ATi VPUs in next-gen consoles

from Deano Calver on Beyond3D:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7875

"Dave is the journo so I let him to the real reporting but there were
a few things that caught my eye/ear. As a non-NDA event the
presentations were public infomation (of course, any gossipping over a
pint isn't for public consumption ).

ATI gave some infomation on video cards market pentration data, and
had a quick gloat about being in both Microsoft's and Nintendo's next
gen console, no real info on them (obviously) except for one tiny
snippet, that we should expect at least Dx9 level shaders on both.
Wether or not its the same basic core being used in both they didn't
say.
Microsoft showed off early version of there new graphics tools. GPA
(Graphics Performance Ananlyser) is a tool that can sample whats going
on in D3D. Its meant for performance monitoring while developing, but
it may also be a handy way of looking inside other D3D applications.
Also a D3D Helper library should make developing easier, by shadowing
the entire D3D state, when debugging you can effectively 'see through'
the COM interface to what D3D is actually doing. Its also includes
stats and simple routines to dump states to screen, warning and
erronous states are checked and generally alot of things to make D3D
nicer to develop with. Also they are about to release the SDK update,
a non-runtime update that includes lots of new documentation, D3DX
functions and exporters. 3D Studio MAX 6 has been upgraded to
integrate into D3D effects closely, combined with a new exporter it
should improve artist work flow.

ATI did more presentations on image-space post-processing. Re-covering
some of the same ground they've done before, it did have some
extensions of Masaki Kawase light steaiking filters and I hadn't seen
the heat haze filters before. Microsoft gave a quick overview to
Precomputed Radiance Transfer and Spherical Harmonics, while the
technology is amazing convincing people to use it in real games seems
to be the real problem. Lots of people were very negative on any
actual non-demo use, personally I can see it being very useful but
initially just the spherical harmonic irradience not the full on
precomputed radiance transfer (though PRT for subsurface scattering
objects would seem to make a lot of sense...). Intel did some talks on
SSE, PNI (Prescott New Instructions) and Hyper threading, Intel were
pushing HT as the way forward. A possible 20% extra performance on HT
P3 today, 30% when Prescott is released, next one after that 40% and
the long term aim is for 2x/4x performance.

The most interesting talk in Beyond3D terms was Mike's very general
talk about the next Direct3D. I'll let Dave do it properly but in
general it was primitive programmability and single resource model
(texture and vertex data interchangable etc)."


also, discussion on Gaming-Age:

http://forums.gaming-age.com/showthr...threadid=56064

So obviously we should expect DX9 3.0-level shaders in both the next
Nintendo and Xbox. Vertex Shader/Pixel Shader 3.0 at least. This does
NOT mean the next Nintendo will use DX9 or any MS API. It means that
the shaders in the next Nintendo will be DX9-level or better. The
Flipper in GameCube was beyond DX7 but somewhat short of DX8, although
Flipper had its own bag of tricks to do some of the things DX8 could
do. I'm guessing the next Nintendo will do anything DX9 3.0 shaders do
and more, but perhaps will not *quite* be upto DX10 like the next
Xbox. That does NOT mean the Nintendo console will be weak. It just
means the two consoles are being designed with different goals. I am
certain that the Nintendo and XBox 2 VPUs (I'll call them Flipper2 and
XB2-VPU) will each have certain strengths over the other, much like
Flipper and XGPU each had their own strong aspects over the other.


I'd still like to see Nvidia involved in one of the consoles, in some
way. if only for the fact that Nvidia has sooo much IP and many
engineers from the best in the industry.
  #2  
Old September 17th 03, 07:05 AM
magnulus
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Posts: n/a
Default

Umm, that's great... but why cross post to a PC newsgroup?

And just remember, XBox helped screw NVidia. All those engineers were put
to work building chips for what would ultimately be low-margin parts for
Microsoft when they could have been trying to make the GeForce FX better.
ATI better watch out, because developing graphics chips for consoles could
easily be a no-win game worthy of Sisyphus.

"Radeon350" wrote in message
om...
from Deano Calver on Beyond3D:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7875

"Dave is the journo so I let him to the real reporting but there were
a few things that caught my eye/ear. As a non-NDA event the
presentations were public infomation (of course, any gossipping over a
pint isn't for public consumption ).

ATI gave some infomation on video cards market pentration data, and
had a quick gloat about being in both Microsoft's and Nintendo's next
gen console, no real info on them (obviously) except for one tiny
snippet, that we should expect at least Dx9 level shaders on both.
Wether or not its the same basic core being used in both they didn't
say.
Microsoft showed off early version of there new graphics tools. GPA
(Graphics Performance Ananlyser) is a tool that can sample whats going
on in D3D. Its meant for performance monitoring while developing, but
it may also be a handy way of looking inside other D3D applications.
Also a D3D Helper library should make developing easier, by shadowing
the entire D3D state, when debugging you can effectively 'see through'
the COM interface to what D3D is actually doing. Its also includes
stats and simple routines to dump states to screen, warning and
erronous states are checked and generally alot of things to make D3D
nicer to develop with. Also they are about to release the SDK update,
a non-runtime update that includes lots of new documentation, D3DX
functions and exporters. 3D Studio MAX 6 has been upgraded to
integrate into D3D effects closely, combined with a new exporter it
should improve artist work flow.

ATI did more presentations on image-space post-processing. Re-covering
some of the same ground they've done before, it did have some
extensions of Masaki Kawase light steaiking filters and I hadn't seen
the heat haze filters before. Microsoft gave a quick overview to
Precomputed Radiance Transfer and Spherical Harmonics, while the
technology is amazing convincing people to use it in real games seems
to be the real problem. Lots of people were very negative on any
actual non-demo use, personally I can see it being very useful but
initially just the spherical harmonic irradience not the full on
precomputed radiance transfer (though PRT for subsurface scattering
objects would seem to make a lot of sense...). Intel did some talks on
SSE, PNI (Prescott New Instructions) and Hyper threading, Intel were
pushing HT as the way forward. A possible 20% extra performance on HT
P3 today, 30% when Prescott is released, next one after that 40% and
the long term aim is for 2x/4x performance.

The most interesting talk in Beyond3D terms was Mike's very general
talk about the next Direct3D. I'll let Dave do it properly but in
general it was primitive programmability and single resource model
(texture and vertex data interchangable etc)."


also, discussion on Gaming-Age:

http://forums.gaming-age.com/showthr...threadid=56064

So obviously we should expect DX9 3.0-level shaders in both the next
Nintendo and Xbox. Vertex Shader/Pixel Shader 3.0 at least. This does
NOT mean the next Nintendo will use DX9 or any MS API. It means that
the shaders in the next Nintendo will be DX9-level or better. The
Flipper in GameCube was beyond DX7 but somewhat short of DX8, although
Flipper had its own bag of tricks to do some of the things DX8 could
do. I'm guessing the next Nintendo will do anything DX9 3.0 shaders do
and more, but perhaps will not *quite* be upto DX10 like the next
Xbox. That does NOT mean the Nintendo console will be weak. It just
means the two consoles are being designed with different goals. I am
certain that the Nintendo and XBox 2 VPUs (I'll call them Flipper2 and
XB2-VPU) will each have certain strengths over the other, much like
Flipper and XGPU each had their own strong aspects over the other.


I'd still like to see Nvidia involved in one of the consoles, in some
way. if only for the fact that Nvidia has sooo much IP and many
engineers from the best in the industry.



  #3  
Old September 17th 03, 08:14 AM
Lenny
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


Umm, that's great... but why cross post to a PC newsgroup?


Why not? Don't wanna read, skip on to next post man.

And just remember, XBox helped screw NVidia.


Like hell it did. Nvidia got into XB by their own free will, nobody forced
them.

Then they could use XB as a convenient excuse when things started going
wrong in NV30 development (which was A LOT by the way).

All those engineers were put
to work building chips for what would ultimately be low-margin parts for
Microsoft


Low-margin? *chuckles* That's why M$ forced Nvidia into arbitration over the
exorbitant pricing on the chips, because they were so cheap?!


  #4  
Old September 18th 03, 12:18 AM
magnulus
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"Lenny" wrote in message
...

Low-margin? *chuckles* That's why M$ forced Nvidia into arbitration over

the
exorbitant pricing on the chips, because they were so cheap?!


Console makers are always looking for the cheapest deals. This doesn't
really square well with PC graphic card makers because they are used to
selling products at higher margins to enthusiasts.

Hardware is all fairly irrelevent to a console anyways... all a console
needs is a library of games with marketting behind them and maybe a few new
ideas- most people are completely ignorant or uninformed of the actual
hardware in a console beyond whatever buzzwords they read in a tawdry gaming
mag ("Emotion Engine"- fancy way of saying the hyped-up innards from a Sony
DVD player, and "NV2X" was just a cool way to say "GeForce 3 1/2", or
"NVidia Media Processor"=some chips we found off a boat in Taiwan for 2
bucks each).


  #5  
Old September 18th 03, 10:25 AM
Lenny
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


Console makers are always looking for the cheapest deals. This doesn't
really square well with PC graphic card makers because they are used to
selling products at higher margins to enthusiasts.


Sorry to burst THAT bubble for you, but the high-margin enthusiast cards
make up an insignificant part of the revenue stream for a company like
Nvidia. For every highest-end card they sell they sell several hundred
lowest-end. THAT'S where the money is. Cheap crap to the masses.

NV2X was priced VERY high (around $50 a pop I believe), and it's still
expensive for M$ to buy. M$ console business as a whole is bleeding
horrendous amounts of money, unlike Sony and Nintendo, who actually make
profits (and big ones at that) on their ventures. That's why M$ is more
sensitive on this issue than Sony for example. PS2 was incredibly expensive
to manufacture initially, the chips in it were HUGE in their first
incarnation, but software sales made up for that. M$ loses money AS A WHOLE,
so they can't make up hardware losses with software profits.

"Emotion Engine"- fancy way of saying the hyped-up innards from a Sony
DVD player


Uh, it's not quite that simple man, and the EE deserves something a bit
better than that as well.
Check this out man:
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/1...ion2/ee-1.html


 




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