Dual GPU processing...for future consoles?

[selnor]

binary solo said:

disolitude said:

Mr Khan said:

My thoughts were that we were moving away from separate GPUs entirely and moving towards integrated chipsets. I imagine that Sony is at least going to have the CELL pull the whole workload for PS4 like it was originally intended to do for PS3, and certainly not to multi-GPU rendering.

I honestly don't see that happening.

I mean...sure they can try that and spend billions of dollars in developing a CPU which has the ability to substitute a GPU. In the meantime, xbox720 will just phone ATI and have them deliver a current gen GPU.

I think Sony has learned their lesson with the PS3 and all the money they lost. I read that cell's yield rate when they started making PS3s was somewhere around 25%...with 75% of the chips being a waste. And this is with the downgraded cell processor which is missing one of the SPEs...

Haven't they already done that? They've basically spent the money and proven that you can get excellent (for a console) graphics performance with a relatively weak GPU. Devs are now familiar enough with t3h C3ll that it's not going to be a barrier to game development for PS4 to keep going along the same path, and given the main development work has been done it's not going to be billions in R&D to beef up the horsepower enough to rid themselves entirely of 3rd party GPUs. PS4 could figuritively be 2 PS3s duct taped together, only with the GPU removed couldn't it? I bet Sony could beef up the Cell (is 2 x Cell1.5 a possibility?) into a console cheaper than what MS would have to pay for a current gen CPU/GPU combination.

With 360 having a superior GPU but developers struggling to match PS3 graphics, and unable to surpass PS3 graphics (at present), Sony is basically showing the world that GPUs can be a thing of the past, therefore why would Sony turn around and pursue a dual GPU route in any way shape or form?

Perhaps Sony has a bigger picture in mind with diminishing the importance of GPUs, or eventually making them entirely irrelevant, in its console. If you can eliminate as much reliance on 3rd party hardware as possible then it means the profits are going to you, not them. Or rather your losses are diminished.

As pointed out already. Cell Is dead.

Sony sold Cell completely to IBM. The whole rights. IBM decided t stop production of Cell in full. No more R&D.

Why? Again as pointed out in this thread. GPU's on PC eat Cell alive. They now have GPU's doing Multiprocesses of what Cell was supposed to be designed for much much more efficently. And CPU manufactorers have CPU's doing the rest of the tasks much much better than Cell can do those.

The future is clearly GPU's being made more into CPU's and helping with those tasks.

If PS4 is to have a Cell, Sony need to front up alot of money to do R&D without IBM funding at all this time to make Cell advancements. Yet it's pointless, considering GPU multi processing is clearly the way forward.