"Wii U GPU is several generations ahead of current gen" Shin'en

[Pemalite]

Netyaroze said:

Its not just Semantics. Its an efficency improvement. Are you telling me that you could in the past address the same ram space through GPU and CPU ? I have never heard that once please give some links. It kills the need for duplicating data, occupiyng more space and hoging up bandwith.

Asfar as I understood Cernys babbeling about the volatile tag: PS4 is not UMA but NUMA http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Uniform_Memory_Access except for CPU+GPU. Thats basically how HUMA from AMD works and is suppossed to come later this year.

What Consumer PC did that before  ?

Also PCI is not holding anything back right now (You know exactly I mean the latest iteration). But it will eventually, appearently some people think GPU computing will be more important. And I think PCI 3.0 maxes out at 16gb/s currently ? PS4 is slightly above that I think.

 

Your last comment makes no sense I said Consoles became more PC like, and PC will become more Console like (speculation obviously). That means using more efficent ways to get to the goal. Split memory like GPU RAM and CPU RAM will disappear. Sooner or later, IMO.

 

I am not even sure what we are talking about here. The technology for the PS4, HUMA etc is about to come out for PC at the same time. But its not the same level due to ram limitations. The usual PC Setup has certain disadvantages and the APUs are bandwith starved. So its not been done in the same way on PC. 

PC will catch up on the memory front, they are however way too strong to struggle with anything you throw at them. So its not like they need it.

PC will have HUMA by the time PS4 is released but the bandwith of the main ram is too narrow to allow AMD to leverage that advantage in a meaningful way.

I dont want you to push me here in a Console defense position. So I need precise information were exactly any of the things I said are wrong and if they aren't I would like to end this discussion.

 

I dont really care about the consoles. But its just wrong to say Consoles bring nothing new at all to the table and everything has been done on the PC decades ago. The PS4 and XBone are state of the art budget PCs designed by AMD. Realized in a way thats not possible with the current PC System Architecture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is just semantics. They both share the same memory pool, both the processors can talk to each other via that memory pool, it's been well documented in the linux community where they develop there own graphics drivers, the difference is GPU's of today are far more progammable and can talk directly via it's own dedicated bus to the CPU instead of passing through the System Ram like with Intels Ring Bus.
But that doesn't mean it's not possible for a CPU and IGP not to talk to each other and provide assistance in older platforms via slower methods. (Which is the point of this entire discussion.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_coherence
https://01.org/linuxgraphics/blogs/vivijim/2012/i915/gem-crashcourse-daniel-vetter
http://supercomputingblog.com/cuda/cuda-memory-and-cache-architecture/

That link you provided is also not in English, no idea why you would post it in another language when this entire conversation has been purely in English.
Here is the English version for those wanting to know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Uniform_Memory_Access
Again, Intel had supported NUMA 5-6 years ago, starting with the Nahalem platform.
http://lse.sourceforge.net/numa/faq/

Intel will be taking it a step farther with Haswell with it's embedded DRAM that both the CPU and IGP utilise as a cache and can see what processor has what, much akin to what they do in System Ram, it is just another step up in the cache hierachy to hide the latency and bandwidth deficit that DDR3 has. (Only on the GT3e IGP's however.)

Now, I honestly don't see dedicated memory going away, how you came to that conclusion beats me.
For example, back on the Radeon Xpress/3000/4000 IGP's AMD included 32Mb - 256Mb of DDR3 (Or better) Ram dedicated to graphics. - http://www.anandtech.com/show/1537/17
Intel has gone with throwing a bunch of transisters for a large fast cache on the CPU die.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6911/intels-return-to-the-dram-business-haswell-gt3e-to-integrate-128mb-edram
AMD will be introducing GDDR5 for Integrated graphics soon.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20130305060258_AMD_s_Fusion_Kaveri_APU_Supports_GDDR5_Memory_Report.html


Lastly... As for PCI-E 3.0 bandwidth... It is 1GB/sec per lane in each direction, maximum of 32GB/s in total, PCI-E 4.0 will double that again.

curl-6 said:
^ Isn't this thread supposed to be about Wii U, not PS4/X1 vs PC?

Correct, but the Wii U does benefit from technology such as this. :P