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Forums - Gaming - Is the X86 architecture good?

baloofarsan on 04 April 2016
Netty said:
The x86 architecture is good enough. The big benefit is the whole universe of skills, parts, and drivers that have been built around it over decades of computing. The benefits start with the platform holder (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, etc), allowing them to more easily design hardware platforms since they can pretty much pick and choose the parts they want, with a high degree of confidence that everything will work together. Since everything is a little more standardized, they can then put out higher quality development tools (compilers, debuggers, drivers, etc) for developers, allowing people to spend more time developing their software and less time fighting with crappy tools.

Good answer. Is the X86 so much bigger and standardized than ARM or PPC??



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baloofarsan on 04 April 2016

I really should have known better than to start a thread this late in the evening. Midnight here. Gotta sleep!



Netty on 04 April 2016
baloofarsan said:
Netty said:
The x86 architecture is good enough. The big benefit is the whole universe of skills, parts, and drivers that have been built around it over decades of computing. The benefits start with the platform holder (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, etc), allowing them to more easily design hardware platforms since they can pretty much pick and choose the parts they want, with a high degree of confidence that everything will work together. Since everything is a little more standardized, they can then put out higher quality development tools (compilers, debuggers, drivers, etc) for developers, allowing people to spend more time developing their software and less time fighting with crappy tools.

Good answer. Is the X86 so much bigger and standardized than ARM or PPC??

PPC is dead - I can't imagine any new mainstream devices will be making use of it. In fact, Nintendo's decision to stay with PPC for Wii U may explain why the cost of the system is still so high. Since x86 and ARM are manufactured in such huge volumes they are a much more cost effective option, and their popularity guarantees that drivers and toolsets will continue to be maintained.



WolfpackN64 on 04 April 2016

The architecture in itself is well, what most of us are used to.
Is it easier to program x86 over PPC? No, but more people know how to program in x86.
Personally, I'd rather see the console manufacturers go full RISC and stick to PPC since it's still very much being developed and with the right resources it isn't more expensive to manufacture than x86 parts.



WolfpackN64 on 04 April 2016
Netty said

PPC is dead - I can't imagine any new mainstream devices will be making use of it. In fact, Nintendo's decision to stay with PPC for Wii U may explain why the cost of the system is still so high. Since x86 and ARM are manufactured in such huge volumes they are a much more cost effective option, and their popularity guarantees that drivers and toolsets will continue to be maintained.

PPC is not dead. IBM is in fact clawing back market share on the server side from intel and NXP(Freescale's) embedded PPC designs are still often being used. The Amiga PC's still use PPC.



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fatslob-:O on 04 April 2016
WolfpackN64 said:
The architecture in itself is well, what most of us are used to.
Is it easier to program x86 over PPC? No, but more people know how to program in x86.
Personally, I'd rather see the console manufacturers go full RISC and stick to PPC since it's still very much being developed and with the right resources it isn't more expensive to manufacture than x86 parts.

Why ? x86 itself is close to RISC too ... 

WolfpackN64 said:

PPC is not dead. IBM is in fact clawing back market share on the server side from intel and NXP(Freescale's) embedded PPC designs are still often being used. The Amiga PC's still use PPC.

Source ? 



WolfpackN64 on 04 April 2016
fatslob-:O said:
WolfpackN64 said:
The architecture in itself is well, what most of us are used to.
Is it easier to program x86 over PPC? No, but more people know how to program in x86.
Personally, I'd rather see the console manufacturers go full RISC and stick to PPC since it's still very much being developed and with the right resources it isn't more expensive to manufacture than x86 parts.

Why ? x86 itself is close to RISC too ... 

WolfpackN64 said:

PPC is not dead. IBM is in fact clawing back market share on the server side from intel and NXP(Freescale's) embedded PPC designs are still often being used. The Amiga PC's still use PPC.

Source ? 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2016/03/15/ibms-q4-power-numbers-portend-to-a-potential-comeback-story/#2243ea054700

Given, it's nothing spectacular, but PPC is still in the game.

And I'd rather see a proper RISC architecture than a CISC CPU wanting to be RISC. It's like a hybrid kernel, it wants to be a microkernel but can't get free of the monolithic kernel's roots.



fatslob-:O on 04 April 2016
WolfpackN64 said:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2016/03/15/ibms-q4-power-numbers-portend-to-a-potential-comeback-story/#2243ea054700

Given, it's nothing spectacular, but PPC is still in the game.

And I'd rather see a proper RISC architecture than a CISC CPU wanting to be RISC. It's like a hybrid kernel, it wants to be a microkernel but can't get free of the monolithic kernel's roots.

You realize that there are no pure RISC or CISC designs anymore as far as personal electrionics are concerned, right ?



Ruler on 04 April 2016

Its defeniatley better than PowerPC which we all saw how fast the 7th consoles broke down on us (RRoD etc) and the dissapointing Wii U Graphics performance over PS4.
But Emotion Engine for example had a lot of potantial if Sony and Toshiba made it alone, we all saw how easy the PS2 could compete dispite having no real GPU inside. When the PS2 was launched it was ahead of PC gaming in terms of visuals.



Why i left PC gaming

 

(2015) Question for PS4 owners: if the situation would be reverse? would you still play on PS4?

(2015) The "I don't care PS4 is the most powerful console" thread

WolfpackN64 on 04 April 2016
Ruler said:

Its defeniatley better than PowerPC which we all saw how fast the 7th consoles broke down on us (RRoD etc) and the dissapointing Wii U Graphics performance over PS4.
But Emotion Engine for example had a lot of potantial if Sony and Toshiba made it alone, we all saw how easy the PS2 could compete dispited having no real GPU inside. When the PS2 was launched it was ahead of PC gaming in terms of visuals.

Those are a bunch of half truths. The Xbox 360 broke because of an GPU heating issue, not the CPU, the PS3 never had CPU issues. The PS2's emotion engine was basically an SoC with a MIPS CPU. The Wii U uses an old PPC core (about 4 generations behind current POWER cores), has an older GPU and a small amount of RAM