| fordy said: I originally suspected Polaris, but correct me if I'm wrong here...Polaris is a GPU iteration, and not a System on a Chip solution. There's also reports of the newer Polaris tech sucking more power from the PCI-E lanes than the standard calls for, so I don't think that would work in a portable system. |
You are correct. Polaris is a GPU solution. It can be paired up with any CPU Core/Logic that AMD desires. Such as... I dunno. Carizzo/Puma/Jaguar/Excavator etc'.
Polaris and PCI-E are two fundamentally different things.
Polaris based GPU would not be drawing energy from any PCI-E lanes if it was in an APU.
| fordy said: They bought the Imageon series from AMD, so the idea of using it would be just as feasible as Nintendo dealing with nVidia. Both require dealing with another external company. |
I did iterate on that.
AMD can petition to get Adreno technology and incorporate it into it's SoC designs. AMD has dealt with ARM/3rd party logic/chipsets before.
Intel did it all the time using PowerVR graphics solutions in various chips rather than it's own I.P.
AMD isn't scared to use other vendors technology... But more often than not, they also don't need to... And they would likely be more than happy to do it on Nintendo's behalf considering how much cash is dangling in front of them.
| fordy said: Does Tegra have some kind of PCI-E passthru that I'm not aware of? |
Yes.
| fordy said: Also, that kind of architecture could just swamp the existing bus if both devices share lanes. Remember, the idea is to pair GPUs from different physical devices dynamically, which is exactly what Intel Thunderbolt was designed for. From a hardware engineering perspective, why hack together a solution when there's an already established one? |
4x PCI-E lanes is more than ample for mobile-based-socs to be paired together in a "Crossfire/SLI" approach.
PCI-E can technically do everything Thunderbolt does with a few tricks. Tegra has native support for PCI-E and not Thunderbolt, from a hardware engineering perspective... Going with PCI-E would be cheaper, faster as the work has already been done.
| fordy said: It's been awhile since I've seen AMD's low power SoC designs, but if there is a proper, analogous answer to Tegra, I'd suspect that it would be the one Nintendo would be aiming to use. |
AMD does have low-powered SoC designs even today, usually based on it's low powered Cat cores and up-to 128 Radeon GCN shaders... Keep in mind though that AMD isn't targeting phones... More like low powered Laptops and Tablets.
Graphics Core Next 4.0 and Zen should hopefully be the successor to the current Graphics Core Next 1.2/3.0 and Puma.
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