Lets talk about the Future of the industry

[JoeTheBro]

torok said:

JoeTheBro said:

CPUs are all but a thing of the past. They are still very important for a few tasks, but the majority of the work is done by the GPU. Because of this the systems will move from x86 to arm.

GPUs can't replace CPUs. The opposite actually is possible from a technical standpoint, while a GPU simply can't replace a CPU. GPUs are massivelly parallel, but all of their cores have to execute the same instruction in the code at the same time (with different data). That's great for graphics: you apply the same lightning to a lot of vertices or rasterize them as pixels. But when you got AI code or any thing that needs decisions, recursive calls and so on, a GPU simply is too slow.

GPUs only exist because they are cost effective ways to be massively parallel, only because of their simplistic nature. We actually have attempts to add GPU-like parallelism to CPUs in the Cell and now in the Xeon Phi processor, while the opposite simply is impossible because GPUs don't have the same capacities as a CPU (while a CPU has all habilities of a GPU and more).

I didn't say the GPU will replace the CPU. "They are still very important for a few tasks." However I predict CPUs in next gen consoles will not be significantly stronger than the ones used in 4BONE. Instead the the GPU will receive the bulk of the upgrade, making an incredibly lopsided system by today's standards.

@Intrinsic
You have to keep in mind that we're talking about something 6 years from now. ARM processors will continue to rapidly evolve as the mobile industry moves forward. By 2020 it'll be a completely different market. I'd predict the average consumer PC on store shelves will use ARM. Only gaming rigs and other high end setups will stick with x86. It'd be too expensive and unnecessary for 9th gen systems to go with those high end x86 CPUs, so they'd use ARM.

As far as RAM goes, this is again an example of people being blinded by the present. 2020 is a long time from now. Every PlayStation console has increased their RAM amount 16x from the previous generation. 8GB for PS4, 512 MB for PS3, 32 MB for PS2, and 2 MB for PS1. 128 GB for the next system is very realistic.

The reason you don't use extra memory for the OS is that it limits the console. These systems need to be dynamic throughout their lives, and on a title by title basis. It's the reason consoles have switched to unified memory. Physically segregating a chunk of the ram without reason for the OS would be a step backwards.