I wonder if AMD have done a deal with Sony and also modified their future chips in line with Sony's own changes? If they put out a chip that's exactly the same as the PS4 then that chipset would become cheaper a lot quicker. Not to mention it would make a lot of PCs compatible with the PS4. I'm beginning to wonder whether Sony have changed their strategy entirely to the developers this year. They've shifted their plans from consumer to creators because they've suddenly realised that it's the creators that ultimately relate to their audience ... and that's what makes the money, NOT public relations.

Have Sony allowed AMD to copy their changes in exchange for cheaper chipsets? When I then look at Cage and the recent festival he was at, I can't help but wonder if Sony didn't pull a few strings to get that to happen. Then you look at the Indie scene and how suddenly Sony have become synonymous with 'Indie'. Something is definitely afoot. I can't wait to see how this pans out. This is the Play, Create, Share philosophy taken to a whole new level.

Haven't Sony also just announced some directive with 'coding' too? Something about sharing code between developers or anyone who wants to contribute. I think the development studios are going to embrace a console like that.

Whatever Sony has influenced in AMD's designs, it will not become apparant for years, because it takes that long to design a CPU or even a GPU.
AMD, nVidia and Intel have multiple teams working on CPU's and GPU's so they can have frequent launches every year, this isn't cheap or easy, having someone come in mid-development and drop something new in can distrupt an entire chain of development.

Besides, even before Sony came around AMD was already heading down this path with it's Fusion initiative, it's an evolutionary step up the ladder to get to the ultimate goal of fusion.

And as for the other important fact... Intel and AMD keep their x86 designs very close to the chest, I'm pretty sure AMD would be breaking it's x86 licensing agreement with Intel if it shared/showed the "x86 secrets" with another company such as Sony, Sony's engineers can probably suggest some things, but overall it would probably not even be allowed to look at the chips design and hence assist with actual development.
Heck, Intel chucked a fit when AMD spun off Global Foundries, Intel didn't want x86 chips being fabbed at another company.

Also, are those Single Precision GPU numbers and Double precision CPU numbers being compared in that AMD's chart in the Ops post? If so, talk about bloody unfair.

That is pretty much what I am thiniking, too. Tit for tat - there is no apparent reason that both companies could not profit from such an exchange.  And this stuff is expensive, very expensive since it is brand new, untested chips. There is also this tidbit which one has to read very carefully to understand correctly:

"He said, "Everything that Sony has shared in that single chip is AMD [intellectual property], but we ..."

That does not mean that AMD "owns" the PS4 SoC at all. What it means is that there are design features in the SoC that Sony does NOT share with AMD! Certainly the "Share button" hardware is one of those things, the extra command bus between the two cpu modules and gpu probably is another one. Then the question how the gddr5 memory is tacked to the various processors. Since AMD has experience with ring bus architecture in its gpus, I was thinking it is a ring bus, but nothing has been said yet - if it ever will be disclosed.

HARDLY FUCKING ANYTHING

NOTHING IN THAT LIST IS MAJOR OR HARD OR REQUIRES BILLIONS OF FUCKING DOLLARS

AMD HAD ALREADY DEVELOPED THE HARD PARTS OF KAVERI AND SONY JUST BORROWED THE TECH

BESIDES WHICH KAVERI IS TWO YEARS BEHIND SCHEDULE BECAUSE OF AMD'S IMBECILIC MANAGEMENT

THE PC HAS BEEN AHEAD OF THE PS4 FOR A CONSIDERABLE TIME FOR COST AND POWER REASONS

KAVERI WILL NOT EVEN GET CLOSE TO INTEL CPU + NORMAL GPU UPON LAUNCH AND IS IN FACT FUCKING IRRELEVANT

SONY'S CONTRIBUTION TO KAVERI IS NEAR ZERO

NEITHER AMD OR SONY ARE STARTING ANY KIND OF REVOLUTION IN EITHER THE PC OR THE CONSOLE SPACE

PS4 IS A GLORIFIED COST-DOWN COMPUTER WITH SOME MERELY COMPETENT DECISION MAKING BEING MARKETED AS A FUCKING MIRACLE

AMD HAS ZERO CHANCE OF RETURNING TO THE HIGH-END; SONY HAS ZERO CHANCE OF HOLDING SUPERIOR TECH EXCEPT ON A COST AND INTEGRATION BASIS WHICH FRANKLY SHOULD BE EXPECTED FROM A CONSOLE AT RELEASE WITH SUCH INVESTMENT

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ok I think I killed all the misconceptions in this thread. this sony/amd narrative is the most wrong thing I've ever seen.

As long as there are hundreds of millions of PCs that don't use their architecture, PS4 will still have an advantage.
PC Gamers will prefer the old way of upgrading their systems as they please for years to come.

Hopefully this technology becomes mainstream though. Only good can come from it.

Its no surprise. AMD was going into this direction anyway. Once the mainmemory has the same or greater bandwith than PS4 has we will see APUs that put PS4 to shame. CPU and GPU becoming one is the future.

Calm down dude. First of all, stop talking about "the PC" like it is one single thing. There are thousands and thousands of configurations. Second of all, you're right Sony didn't contribute billions of dollars to this project. That's the point. Low Cost, High Performance.

This APU inside the PS4 is a variation of the one that is coming to PCs. Like it says right there, the Sony APU has double the cores and lots of other customizations that make it better suited for console use.

No, PS4 wont' blow away $2000 PCs, but at the price point it's going at it will be state of the art. Consoles won't blow away high-end PCs like they did last-gen, but they will put them to shame in terms of efficiency and cost. My $600 custom PC can barely run a game like Guild Wars 2 in high settings at reasonable framerates. There's slow downs in the big towns, its playbable, but noticable. If a game like Guild Wars 2 was built specifically for my PC, it would run much better. Sadly, PC devs can't optimize their games for everyones setup. That's what PC settings are there for. So much power is wasted with PCs that they never live up to their true potential. It's all brute-force and raw power.

PS4 is a high-end console and it will be one of the easiest platforms to develop on and certainly the most developer friendly console ever created. That is worth praising. That is worth getting excited about and that is worth supporting with your wallet.

I going to take a guess and assume the the "High end PC market" is a very small one. AMD may sure be behind Intel, but it doesn't make them obsolete (as you seem to paint the picture, Soleron).

The APU is perhaps the best thing the average consumer can have in a PC. It wouldn't be fair to compare an Intel processor with some graphics card (~$300) with an standalone APU (~$130 for an A10). The APU would win if it comes to value imo.

Is it the future though? PC Gaming is dominant on desktops last time I checked. This technology seems aimed stuff like laptops. Like Soleron said, this isn't starting a revolution. They're hardly in the position to be that influential. This is pretty revolitionary tech for a console though. Sony couldn't have made a better decision with the tech in the PS4.

Its for Laptops now but if Main ram bandwith increases alot through stacking for example its possible to pair a strong GPU with a strong CPU. HSA has an efficency and cost advantage. It just won't replace the highest end but I can easily see it being an option for mid end Desktops. Intel definetly will push it too.