Dual GPU processing...for future consoles?

[zarx]

disolitude said:

Soleron said:

disolitude said:

...

I agree that having dual GPU in a single console is not an option due to heat, power consumption...etc. However don't you think having 2 consoles connected in a way where they can share the GPU workload could provide some benefits?

You are thinking about it form a PC perspective...and yeah it doesn't make sense for console.

And where is the market that would pay for it? I always try and think in economic terms, not technology.

Even if a few thousand people are prepared to pay for it, a two-tier hardware capability like this is completely against the concept of a console anyway.

Well if a company is making money on a console...and you need to buy 2 consoles and 2 games to make this work, then there is some potential to sell this to the public. Crytek, Naughty Dog, Epic and other top tier developers would prolly jump on the opportunity to get a performance edge in the console market.

I am not saying I have the business plan for this model or anything...but I am hoping that someone at Microsoft or Sony does :)

but if GT5 can already do it what more do you wan't? admittedly they needed 4 PS3's and 4 HD TVs and technically it just generated 4 separate images which is nothing like what SLI/Crossfire does but thats all you can really hope for with consoles anyway.

 

as for the PS4 using sclaed up Cell tech I don't see that happening first reason being IBM stopped developing the Cell line. Seccond since the PS3 came out there has been a strong move to make GPUs more able to perform more traditional CPU tasks especially stuff that requires parallel processing like physics and the advantages of the massive parallel processing power of modern GPUs far out perform that of any modified CPU and you get the advantage of it being highly optimised of rendering tasks is a great boon for consoles. Third is cost sony would have to foot the entire bill for the design of the advanced Cell and would probably be the only ones using it, modern GPUs are just much better at everything the Cell was meant to be good at (high bandwidth parallel processing) and modern CPU's are much better at running the kinds of processing thats left. The Cell was a dead end it's much easier to make a GPU more like a CPU than it is for them to make a CPU more like a GPU, the GTX series has 512 "cores" the most a Cell chip will have is like 28 add in the fact that more developers are familiar with using GPU architecture and there are already tools available to utilize the GPU chips and an pure Cell powered system seems more unlikely. 

 

Now the GT 400 series is way to hot and power hungry today but by 2012 with die shrinks and a redesign or two it something at the level of the GTX 4X0 chips will be available.