8th Generation: Predict specs

[jetrii]

Groucho said:

jetrii said:

Groucho said:
I think you are missing the upcoming nanotech wall for tech advancement. All three console makers will want to release a console before those problems get solved, let alone before they are affordably solved.

That does not make any sense at all. Could you restate that?

 

 

I think you're overestimating hardware advancement, based upon history, and not looking forward at the smaller processes necessary to reduce heat/increase clock (as you suggest) for cheap console hardware.  As the process size gets smaller, electron loss gets much worse -- resulting in a lot more heat generated.  Unless diamond wafers become the Next Big Thing, or someone cooks up a cheap technique to fabricate chips smaller than 22nm (or even 32nm), the specs you listed are going to be top-of-the-line for several years, at best, and just not feasible for consoles, from a financial standpoint.

 

 

Actually, no, they are not. IBM already has working 45nm Power7 chips with 16 cores and ATI and NVidia already have GPUs more powerful than the ones I listed. None of these components are revolutionary, they are simply evolutionary. I expect the Cell2 and Power7 CPU to be 45nm and the GPUs to be 55nm or so. They are not anywhere near the situation you described. 

 

Groucho said:

jetrii said:

Xenos is a GPU, not a CPU. I am assuming that you're talking about Xenon. And yes, every console this generation uses in-order execution, so I am not fully sure what point you are making. I fully expect the next generation to also use in-order execution to lower costs. It's not like Microsoft is just going to take a normal POwer 7 CPU, it will obviously be customized a bit.

?

 

 

Yes, I meant the Xenon.  The point is that creating the Xenon from the stock PowerPC was not easy, nor was it cheap.  You think MS will sink the kind of $$ necessary to reduce the Power7 core to console levels next gen, when they are probably going to shoot for the Blue Ocean, and not the hard core?

 

Actually, the PowerPC cores in the Xenon are very simplified versions of cores which IBM sells to their customers. Developing the core was difficult for IBM, making the Xenon was not. IBM is already putting in the money to develop the Power7, removing OOE and other components is not hard. I think you are a little out of touch with modern hardware.