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JWeinCom said:
elektranine said:

That is just an arcticle based on a routine email for those on AMD's mailing list. I've already said that SCE went to AMD for a reference design but they took that reference design and used that to create a new custom APU chip orders of magnitude more powerful and supporting new technologies not found even in AMD's current APU chips.

How does the PS4 APU become 1200% (12x) more powerful than even most high end APUs released in 2013?

How is it that even AMD's newest announced APUs (not even released yet) are still outclassed by the PS4 by over 2x?

All this extra power & technologies (such as HSA, hUMA) are not found in AMD's retail lineup because AMD does not own the rights to manufacture them. SCE paid alot of money to license the reference design & then customize it. Nintendo would have to do the same. But they lack SCE's engineering background. SCE created a whole new architecture, the cell. Nintendo has never done anything quite to that magnitude so they would have to rely on AMD which would largely increase the R&D costs. So spending a few hundred million $ in a single year doesn't really support this happening. More likely Nintendo is taking an AMD retail APU increasing things like clock speed, memory, etc and ending up with something about as powerful as the xbone.

"That is just an arcticle based on a routine email for those on AMD's mailing list. I've already said that SCE went to AMD for a reference design but they took that reference design and used that to create a new custom APU chip orders of magnitude more powerful and supporting new technologies not found even in AMD's current APU chips."

I really don't give a shit what you said, because you seem to be pulling everything directly from your ass.  I have a statement directly from AMD.  Do you have something more reliable to counter that?

The PS4 APU uses fairly standard Jaguar cores for the CPU, and the GPU is based on the Raedon series.  

"IHow does the PS4 APU become 1200% (12x) more powerful than even most high end APUs released in 2013?"

It doesn't.  AMD's figures for the PS4 (which Sony has used) puts the chip at 1.84 tflops.  The richland series, what was available at the time, is put at 744 gflops.  The difference is a little more than 2x not near 12x.  And that's just comparing the GPUs straight up and not accounting for the fact that the CPUs for richland are far more powerful.   

This is not correct. The richland architecture is NOT an APU at all. You cannot compare them. I was only talking about APUs. Richland is just a discrete CPU and a discrete GPU glued together in a single package much like Intel does. The richland "APU" lacks all the features true APUs have such as : heterogenious memory management, full coherence of memory between CPU/GPU, GPU pagable memory, etc. Not quite the same thing here.

And of course, tflops is a, at best, poor stat for comparison as the architecture makes a huge difference.  The jaguar cores were not the best that AMD has, then or now.  They are one of the most energy efficient, which is why they were used.

We live in a post CPU world now. They are not important at all. That's why SCE went with a lower power one. There was once a point where we had seperate math coprocessors and MMUs but you don't hear people chanting about needing more power for those. Pretty soon in the future traditional CPUs will go completely away and the APUs will no longer have CPUs or GPUs just heterogenious core that can execute either CPU or GPU instructions.

"How is it that even AMD's newest announced APUs (not even released yet) are still outclassed by the PS4 by over 2x?"

I doubt they are because it was barely 2x more powerful than the richland series in in 2013.  But, APUs are generally designed to not be particularly strong. The APU is based on the Jaguar architecture which was not their best architecture at the time and now even less so.

Sony's APU is more powerful (debatably), because they're the only ones who have use for a powerful APU.  APUs are designed for ultra books, lightweight laptops, and for budget gamers. They are not made for high quality gaming. Those who are looking to really build a PC rig would opt for two discrete chips.  And even if they were opting for an APU, they probably wouldn't want such a GPU heavy design.  That makes sense for a dedicated gaming device, but it doesn't make sense for a PC that will likely be used for many other things as well.  And of course AMD makes discrete GPUs that trounce the PS4.

 AMD doesn't make more powerful APUs for the mass market because the mass market doesn't really need them... 

Nope. Do you really think AMD would not sell these if they could. Many budget PC gamers would go after a $200 APU with a moderately powerful GPU. Enterprise use would also be huge as many corporation's employees need a capable desktop with good graphics capabilties. 

"All this extra power & technologies (such as HSA, hUMA) are not found in AMD's retail lineup because AMD does not own the rights to manufacture them. SCE paid alot of money to license the reference design & then customize it. Nintendo would have to do the same. But they lack SCE's engineering background. SCE created a whole new architecture, the cell. Nintendo has never done anything quite to that magnitude so they would have to rely on AMD which would largely increase the R&D costs. So spending a few hundred million $ in a single year doesn't really support this happening. More likely Nintendo is taking an AMD retail APU increasing things like clock speed, memory, etc and ending up with something about as powerful as the xbone."

Yeah, you just have no clue what you're talking about.  HSA is a technology that was developed jointly with many companies such as ARM, AMD, Samsung, Media Tech and qualcom.  There is actually an organization called the HSA foundation.  They list their key founders.  Sony is not on that list.  AMD's kaveri line off processors use HSA, as do many other products.  It's not a Sony thing.

http://www.hsafoundation.com/

As for hUMA that's another architecture the Kaveri line supports.  It's also something that has not been confirmed for PS4.   It was originally stated that the PS4 would use it, but AMD later said that was inaccurate.  The kabini line, which is the foundation for the PS4 and XBone processors, does not support Huma.  It is possible that the custom versions do somehow support it, but that has not been confirmed.

Nope again. SCE has been a member of the HSA group for years. I never said that it was some sort of SCE exclusive tech. And the PS4 APU uses Kaveri as its reference design NOT the kabini.

As for the cell, ye they created the cell.  It cost them 400 million.  About 1/7 of what you are claiming they spent to modify an existing AMD chip.  And... you just said that AMD can't use any of the special knowledge they gained from the development of the PS4 chip, and now you're saying it was Sony simply building on AMD's work... 

Actually the CELL was co-developed by SCE and IBM and Toshiba. SCE's share of the cost was $400 million. So that puts the total cost at $1.2 billion. Much of the cost SCE endured with the APU is the licensing of the patents & trademarks coming with the APU reference design. Dozens of tech companies cross-license patents like this and that builds the cost up. Patents from AMD, Intel, Nvidia, ATI, etc.

And Nintendo is very unliely to do anything like increase clockspeed.  The PS4 GPU clock speed is slightly lower than the XBox GPU, and is about standard for AMD APUs.  Its CPU on the other hand is clocked at a very low speed, about 1/3 of what is available on modern apus.  

Actually nope again. SCE has never said anything about their clockspeeds. That is all under NDA and not even AMD can legally say anything about it.

Do you have anything to back up anything you're saying?  Do you have something show how much sony's gaming division spent on R&D?  Anything to show that PS4's APU is 12x more powerful than the APUs of the time?  Anything to show how much it would cost to develop a chip like the PS4's?  Anything to show the details of Sony and AMD's deal?  Because it seems like everything you've said is coming directly from your ass.  And while I don't mean to offend your ass, it doesn't seem like a very reliable source.