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Forums - Sony - Sony to use Nvidia Tegra for PSP2; explains delay

joeorc on 16 July 2010
Soleron said:
disolitude said:
...

I think the fact its an all in one cpu/gpu solution will give them similar battery performance to the PSP 1 which is all that is needed really. I have not read much about Tegra 2 battery performance, but Zune HD with Tegra 1 chip has had nothing but praise about battery life from what I've heard.


The article refers to a seperate CPU: "For a device that has already been delayed because of it's CPU, that is not a good sign.". So it may have two CPUs, one on-die and one off-die. The off-die one would appear to be more important. That's not a bad thing though - the DS has two CPUs as well.

With Tegra, it's not so much the absolute battery life (which was good) as that Nvidia promised X power use and delivered well above X (unacceptable in the embedded market) so all those design wins were cancelled. For Nvidia to have spent all that development money and get one SINGLE viable product (Zune HD) is not going to make money in that space. Normally chips by Qualcomm, Broadcom etc. need tens of retail products to do so. Especially after announcing so many Tegra products that never appeared.

More info here: http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/04/14/samsung-dumps-nvidia-tegra/

 

"I'd be surprised if Sony used a tegra chip for PSP to be honest. Sony likes to own their hardware designs... Portable gaming is not a be all/end all of computing performance and Sony should be able to crank out a sufficient processor rather quickly for this application that is comparable to Apples A4 or intel atom."

CPU? Yes. They could use an ARM one. GPU? Sony's PSP strategy requires graphics much better than Nintendo, and there are very few high-end graphics makers. PowerVR could do it, but their commodity chip avaliable for Sony to just pick up and use isn't good enough to ensure that. They would have had to go with an external design to get the graphics capability.

the PSP has alway's used processor's from Freescale http://www.mips.com/

1st core:

2nd core:

http://www.extremetech.com/slideshow_viewer/0,2849,l=0&a=133950&po=1,00.asp

Sony may well indeed stick with freescale or go with the Atom processor for the PSP 2



I AM BOLO

100% lover "nothing else matter's" after that...

ps:

Proud psOne/2/3/p owner.  I survived Aplcalyps3 and all I got was this lousy Signature.

Around the Network
joeorc on 16 July 2010
On Thursday, May 20, Google unveiled its new Google TV platform. Read the official announcement here.

Regarding the announcement, MIPS' Vice President of Marketing Art Swift commented:

"MIPS Technologies was pleased to see today's Google TV announcement. Google's announcement is clearly well aligned with our own vision of the future connected television and entertainment experience. To date, MIPS Technologies has synergistically supported Google’s commitment to the architecture-neutral, open source nature of Android by ensuring that our licensees have access to the best available software ecosystem for Android on MIPS-Based solutions. Google TV is the latest architecture-neutral solution from Google and, leveraging our past work with Android and our ongoing relationship with Google, MIPS Technologies is now in an excellent position to work with our licensees as Google TV moves beyond its initial reference platforms and into mainstream development within the digital home market—a market where MIPS is already the number one processor architecture."



I AM BOLO

100% lover "nothing else matter's" after that...

ps:

Proud psOne/2/3/p owner.  I survived Aplcalyps3 and all I got was this lousy Signature.

joeorc on 16 July 2010
makingmusic476 said:

Sheesh.  This isn't a good sign.  Why does Sony always have issues with nVidia.  They had similar problems with the RSX just before the ps3's launch.  They had to downclock it from 550mhz to 500 at the last second due to heat issues.

I hope they get everything ironed out, and I hope this doesn't lead to yet another console that has a launch price that doesn't quite match the machine's capabilites.

no it's still @ 550

straight from Nvidia

Specifications

550 MHz on 90 nm process Based on NV47 Chip (Nvidia GeForce 7800 Architecture)

300 million transistors

Multi-way programmable parallel floating-point shader pipelines

Independent pixel/vertex shader architecture
24 parallel pixel-shader ALU pipes
5 ALU operations per pipeline, per cycle (2 vector4 , 2 scalar/dual/co-issue and fog ALU, 1 Texture ALU)
27 floating-point operations per pipeline, per cycle
8 parallel vertex pipelines
2 ALU operations per pipeline, per cycle (1 vector4 and 1 scalar, dual issue)
10 FLOPS per pipeline, per cycle

Maximum shader operations: 136 billion shader operations per second

24 texture filtering units (GF) and 8 vertex texture addressing units (TA)
24 filtered samples per clock
Maximum texel fillrate: 12.0 GigaTexels per second (24 textures * 550 MHz)
32 unfiltered texture samples per clock, ( 8 TA x 4 texture samples )
8 Render Output units / pixel rendering pipelines
Peak pixel fillrate (theoretical): 4.4 Gigapixel per second
Maximum Z sample rate: 8.0 GigaSamples per second (2 Z-samples * 8 ROPs * 550 MHz)
Maximum anti-aliasing sample rate: 8.0 GigaSamples per second (2 AA samples * 8 ROPs * 550 MHz)

Maximum Dot product operations: 54 billion per second

128-bit pixel precision offers rendering of scenes with high dynamic range rendering (HDR)
256 MB GDDR3 RAM at 700 MHz

128-bit memory bus width
22.4 GB/s read and write bandwidth
Cell FlexIO bus interface
20 GB/s read to the Cell and XDR memory
15 GB/s write to the Cell and XDR memory
Support for OpenGL ES 2.0
Support for S3TC texture compression

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t84439.html



I AM BOLO

100% lover "nothing else matter's" after that...

ps:

Proud psOne/2/3/p owner.  I survived Aplcalyps3 and all I got was this lousy Signature.

Soleron on 16 July 2010
joeorc said:
makingmusic476 said:
...

no it's still @ 550


On Nvidia forums =/= "straight from Nvidia". Anyone can post there.

Doing a few searches, it looks pretty even split between 550 and 500MHz. The 550 number was posted first but then it was news that it was downclocked to 500. I haven't seen technical evidence either way; spec sheets don't count as they could be pre-downclock.



joeorc on 16 July 2010
Soleron said:
joeorc said:
makingmusic476 said:
...

no it's still @ 550


On Nvidia forums =/= "straight from Nvidia". Anyone can post there.

Doing a few searches, it looks pretty even split between 550 and 500MHz. The 550 number was posted first but then it was news that it was downclocked to 500. I haven't seen technical evidence either way; spec sheets don't count as they could be pre-downclock.

since the spec's were finalized on the 90 nm scale as 550 Mhz,the PS3's production when it's finalized is and was 550 Mhz. that rumor that the clock speed was reduced to 500 Mhz was just that a rumor. while Nvidia has alway's stated it wasat 550 Mhz. Nvidia publicaly stated it was @ 550 Mhz



I AM BOLO

100% lover "nothing else matter's" after that...

ps:

Proud psOne/2/3/p owner.  I survived Aplcalyps3 and all I got was this lousy Signature.

Around the Network
jarrod on 16 July 2010
joeorc said:
Soleron said:
joeorc said:
makingmusic476 said:
...

no it's still @ 550


On Nvidia forums =/= "straight from Nvidia". Anyone can post there.

Doing a few searches, it looks pretty even split between 550 and 500MHz. The 550 number was posted first but then it was news that it was downclocked to 500. I haven't seen technical evidence either way; spec sheets don't count as they could be pre-downclock.

since the spec's were finalized on the 90 nm scale as 550 Mhz,the PS3's production when it's finalized is and was 550 Mhz. that rumor that the clock speed was reduced to 500 Mhz was just that a rumor. while Nvidia has alway's stated it wasat 550 Mhz. Nvidia publicaly stated it was @ 550 Mhz

It wasn't a rumor, Sony said it themselves (albeit 'privately' to development partners) around TGS 2006 and Game Watch leaked the story (which western media basically ignored in favor of old spec sheets).  VRAM speed also got a downclock from 700 MHz to 650 MHz and there may have also been a reduction in pixel shaders (from 32 to 24).  Neither Sony nor Nvidia made any direct statements after the TGS leak afaik?

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20060925/3d_tgs.htm



joeorc on 16 July 2010
jarrod said:
joeorc said:
Soleron said:
joeorc said:
makingmusic476 said:
...

no it's still @ 550


On Nvidia forums =/= "straight from Nvidia". Anyone can post there.

Doing a few searches, it looks pretty even split between 550 and 500MHz. The 550 number was posted first but then it was news that it was downclocked to 500. I haven't seen technical evidence either way; spec sheets don't count as they could be pre-downclock.

since the spec's were finalized on the 90 nm scale as 550 Mhz,the PS3's production when it's finalized is and was 550 Mhz. that rumor that the clock speed was reduced to 500 Mhz was just that a rumor. while Nvidia has alway's stated it wasat 550 Mhz. Nvidia publicaly stated it was @ 550 Mhz

It wasn't a rumor, Sony said it themselves (albeit 'privately' to development partners) around TGS 2006 and Game Watch leaked the story (which western media basically ignored in favor of old spec sheets).  VRAM speed also got a downclock from 700 MHz to 650 MHz and there may have also been a reduction in pixel shaders (from 32 to 24).  Neither Sony nor Nvidia made any direct statements after the TGS leak afaik?

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20060925/3d_tgs.htm

and i have seen that used as proof many time's when they were refering to the dev. kit.

 that's in ref. to the dev. kit..not the PS3

the dev. kit's RSX GPU was @  500 MHz!

the PS3's GPU is still clocked @ 550 Mhz



I AM BOLO

100% lover "nothing else matter's" after that...

ps:

Proud psOne/2/3/p owner.  I survived Aplcalyps3 and all I got was this lousy Signature.

jarrod on 16 July 2010
joeorc said:
jarrod said:
joeorc said:
Soleron said:
joeorc said:
makingmusic476 said:
...

no it's still @ 550


On Nvidia forums =/= "straight from Nvidia". Anyone can post there.

Doing a few searches, it looks pretty even split between 550 and 500MHz. The 550 number was posted first but then it was news that it was downclocked to 500. I haven't seen technical evidence either way; spec sheets don't count as they could be pre-downclock.

since the spec's were finalized on the 90 nm scale as 550 Mhz,the PS3's production when it's finalized is and was 550 Mhz. that rumor that the clock speed was reduced to 500 Mhz was just that a rumor. while Nvidia has alway's stated it wasat 550 Mhz. Nvidia publicaly stated it was @ 550 Mhz

It wasn't a rumor, Sony said it themselves (albeit 'privately' to development partners) around TGS 2006 and Game Watch leaked the story (which western media basically ignored in favor of old spec sheets).  VRAM speed also got a downclock from 700 MHz to 650 MHz and there may have also been a reduction in pixel shaders (from 32 to 24).  Neither Sony nor Nvidia made any direct statements after the TGS leak afaik?

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20060925/3d_tgs.htm

no that's in ref. to the dev. kit..not the PS3

the dev. kit's GPU was 500 MHz!

That... doesn't actually make sense.  You can't have a slower clocked devkit (especially with memory speeds).  If anything, most devkits actually use upclocked RAM (and more of it) for prototyping.



joeorc on 16 July 2010
jarrod said:
joeorc said:
jarrod said:
joeorc said:
Soleron said:
joeorc said:
makingmusic476 said:
...

no it's still @ 550


On Nvidia forums =/= "straight from Nvidia". Anyone can post there.

Doing a few searches, it looks pretty even split between 550 and 500MHz. The 550 number was posted first but then it was news that it was downclocked to 500. I haven't seen technical evidence either way; spec sheets don't count as they could be pre-downclock.

since the spec's were finalized on the 90 nm scale as 550 Mhz,the PS3's production when it's finalized is and was 550 Mhz. that rumor that the clock speed was reduced to 500 Mhz was just that a rumor. while Nvidia has alway's stated it wasat 550 Mhz. Nvidia publicaly stated it was @ 550 Mhz

It wasn't a rumor, Sony said it themselves (albeit 'privately' to development partners) around TGS 2006 and Game Watch leaked the story (which western media basically ignored in favor of old spec sheets).  VRAM speed also got a downclock from 700 MHz to 650 MHz and there may have also been a reduction in pixel shaders (from 32 to 24).  Neither Sony nor Nvidia made any direct statements after the TGS leak afaik?

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20060925/3d_tgs.htm

no that's in ref. to the dev. kit..not the PS3

the dev. kit's GPU was 500 MHz!

That... doesn't actually make sense.  You can't have a slower clocked devkit (especially with memory speeds).  If anything, most devkits actually use upclocked RAM (and more of it) for prototyping.

remember at the time very few dev. kit's were released at that time because sony was not able to ramp up production of more kit's at the time.

28 pixel shaders (4 redundant, 24 active) at 550Mhz

also: you can use a slightly slower GPU to make game's just as you can with a faster speed GPU..remember the processor in the PSP mip's were released @222 Mhz, but they were 333MHz cores?

so developer's could use the faster speed, but it was not until later ! developer's programmed as if the PSP was at 222 MHz for their game's even though the PSP's 2 processor's were clocked @ 333 MHz



I AM BOLO

100% lover "nothing else matter's" after that...

ps:

Proud psOne/2/3/p owner.  I survived Aplcalyps3 and all I got was this lousy Signature.

jarrod on 16 July 2010
joeorc said:
jarrod said:
joeorc said:
jarrod said:
joeorc said:
Soleron said:
joeorc said:
makingmusic476 said:
...

no it's still @ 550


On Nvidia forums =/= "straight from Nvidia". Anyone can post there.

Doing a few searches, it looks pretty even split between 550 and 500MHz. The 550 number was posted first but then it was news that it was downclocked to 500. I haven't seen technical evidence either way; spec sheets don't count as they could be pre-downclock.

since the spec's were finalized on the 90 nm scale as 550 Mhz,the PS3's production when it's finalized is and was 550 Mhz. that rumor that the clock speed was reduced to 500 Mhz was just that a rumor. while Nvidia has alway's stated it wasat 550 Mhz. Nvidia publicaly stated it was @ 550 Mhz

It wasn't a rumor, Sony said it themselves (albeit 'privately' to development partners) around TGS 2006 and Game Watch leaked the story (which western media basically ignored in favor of old spec sheets).  VRAM speed also got a downclock from 700 MHz to 650 MHz and there may have also been a reduction in pixel shaders (from 32 to 24).  Neither Sony nor Nvidia made any direct statements after the TGS leak afaik?

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20060925/3d_tgs.htm

no that's in ref. to the dev. kit..not the PS3

the dev. kit's GPU was 500 MHz!

That... doesn't actually make sense.  You can't have a slower clocked devkit (especially with memory speeds).  If anything, most devkits actually use upclocked RAM (and more of it) for prototyping.

28 pixel shaders (4 redundant, 24 active) at 550Mhz

Actual developers seem to say otherwise.  Repeatedly.