Insiders Say Intel to Build PlayStation 4 GPU
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: Intel, Sony, PlayStation, Nvidia
The PlayStation 4 is giving "Intel Inside" a whole new meaning.
When the term "discrete graphics" comes to mind, many immediately think of Nvidia and ATI. The two rivals represent the lions share in the discrete graphics market. However, the pond may need to make room for another big fish.
Intel, a company known more for its CPU's and motherboards, is now making a push into the discrete graphics market. According to The Inquirer, Sony has commissioned the California-based chip maker to build the graphics muscle in its next gaming console. While the PlayStation 4 may be several years off, and is (probably) powered by a Cell processor refresh, Sony is certainly shaking things up.
Anyone who follows hardware already knows the bitter rivalry that exists between Intel and Nvidia. The former believes that a harmony of CPU and GPU, with an emphasis on the CPU, is appropriate for personal computers. Nvidia, whose bread and butter is computer graphics, is pushing a "GPGPU" philosophy. This General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit, in the simplest terms, would be something like current video cards, but used for all computing functions inside of ones PC.
Nvidia has now been blacklisted in the console realm. It broke into the market when Microsoft commissioned them for the original Xbox GPU, and is the company behind the graphics power in the PlayStation 3. With the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii powered by ATI, and both Microsoft and Nintendo's next offering rumored to be ATI-powered as well, this newest development with Intel leads one to believe that Nvidia is no longer welcome by the three console makers.
Intel also offers stability by means of its very deep coffers, something Nvidia does not. "The nice Sony engineering lady at CES told us that Intel essentially bought the win," says Charlie Demerjiana of the Inquirer. "...theoretically good architecture, no imminent threats of going bust, and not being hated by Sony all contributed too. With a couple of [variables] satisfied, the PS4 GPU belongs to Intel. No word if this is going to be the entire architecture, CPU as well, or not. That, from what we are told, is not final yet. Perhaps the most important aspect of this deal is Intel showing its GPU know-how. With Larrabee in the back of many enthusiasts minds, a PS4 with Intel graphics that isn't a technological flop can open a window in the PC discrete graphics market for Intel.
Demerjiana also said to expect the Wii2 and Xbox3 (or whatever they end up being named), in or around 2012. If that's true, expect the PS4 at the same time. It may not be that coveted ten year life cycle Sony is shooting for, but in the interest of sales and competition, shaving a few years off wouldn't hurt.
Has Nvidia been given the boot out of the console market? Sure looks like it. However, where one opportunity closes, another begins. If the Microsoft phone rumors are true, Nvidia's Tegra platform may have some serious muscle behind it.
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Poor Nvidia
intel doing the gpu? I don't know..considering how little experience they have with it (none really, their worthless igp's don't count) and laterbee still has to prove itself (not to mention release) it seems far too pre-mature to say intel might be doing it, I don't think companies hate nvidia that much
Why wouldn't you break the cycle? Maybe release your console mid-cycle so yours is actually 2-3 years development time, more powerful than the competitions'. Why live in the confines of this "product cycle". They can produce a console that developers WANT to program for, make it affordable yet more powerful than the competition's due to the extra development time, and maybe throw something in that the competition doesn't have (something like the wii did this time around). This doesn't just have to apply to Sony, but they want their product cycle to last longer than what the others seem to be doing. Thoughts?
So correct me if I'm wrong but Sony is going with Intel mainly because they have lots of money? Apple should get in on this.
Can someone elaborate why Nvidia isn't welcome in the consoles? I wasn't aware of such big problems. Thanks.
i honestly dont think intel will put a GPU in a console but i could be wrong it may be more powerful then we thought it would be...
Nvidia is in the lead of the competition. intel on the other hand is way over expecting its larrabee to compete with ATI and Nvidia. throw in a new 16 SPE cell on the table and uv got urself a standoff. although from the demos iv seen and heard of larrabee its mainly physics oriented (although its still too early to tell. it is highly daughtful they can reach a teraFLOP) .... who knows how ps4 will work with it in combination with the cell ....
Are you retarded?
The PS1's life was 11 years, with games being published until '05. The PS2 is still kicking 8 years from it's launch.
Poor Nvidia
Poor ppl who buy a ps4 Intel has been able to deliver gpu that are nice looking on paper but none that work out in tests very well.
Is this a joke? Wheres the logic in this? You've got two brands that focus their entire entity based on graphics. So they decide a company with almost no experience in a graphic based market?
I didn't notice that nvidia fail in every console it took part in but u can't blame nvidia if the console won't sell. Its the games that push the console.
Overclocking on a PS4 lmao, would be nice. xD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_(GPU)
According to this article, Larrabee is expected to have nearly 2 teraflops of computing power (a lil more raw computing power than a single 4870X2, lets w8 until the first benchmarks ...)
Can someone elaborate why Nvidia isn't welcome in the consoles? I wasn't aware of such big problems. Thanks.
I remember there being bad blood between Microsoft and nVidia with the Xbox 1. Since Microsoft used basically off the shelf graphics and didn't own the silicon microsoft couldn't control the pricing of the Xbox 1. I imagine that Sony is having more issues with the performance end of what they got from nVidia.
Intel graphics? Thats like yelling we want our graphics to suck.
Almost no experience in the graphic based market? are you insane? take a look at the numbers on who ships more graphic chip sets. Intel owns around 46% of the market share of shipped graphic chips. Intel has the resources to make something like the larrabee work. Especially now that they have a little more motivation to make an instant impact on a market. With Sony now basically paying for some of the initial cost of larrabee, Intel can bring it to mass production scale without much risk.
"Demerjiana also said to expect the Wii2 and Xbox3 (or whatever they end up being named), in or around 2012. If that's true, expect the PS3 at the same time. It may not be that coveted ten year life cycle Sony is shooting for, but in the interest of sales and competition, shaving a few years off wouldn't hurt."
umm... u meant that as PS4, right? we already have PS3
Ummm we forget here that gpus are just giant processors (well lots of smaller cores etc) - something Intel is a monster at! And when packing in all those cores into a more advanced manafacturing process (45nm or better vs ati 55nm etc) there will be advantage.
Intel may not be able (yet) to make a "video card" but they can make chips that will have more (perhaps) raw processing power then the competition, which sony can use.
We all forget the turn arounds intel have - Pentium D to Core 2 Duo, jumps with 65nm vs 45nm core 2's, SSD's (first attempt dominates) etc, and do we all forget who owns most of the "graphics" market? INTEL - billions of dells etc use Intel Integrated video making up more then 50% of the market.
My thought was that Intel had such a large gpu market share because their cheap to put in pre-builts. With this in mind, how does this say anything about their performance?
Out of curiosity whats the fastest card Intel has out right now? How does it compare to Nvidia/ATI?
whats the fastest card Intel has out right now? How does it compare to Nvidia/ATI?
Intel doesn't have a single card out. Just a bunch of integrated solutions. None of which compete with any serious solutions, but none of them were meant to.
Although I found something rather interesting when I did a bit of research into the matter:
Larrabee's philosophy of using many small, simple cores is similar to the ideas behind the Cell processor. There are some further commonalities, such as the use of a high-bandwidth ring bus to communicate between cores. However, there are many significant differences in implementation which should make programming Larrabee simpler.
* The Cell processor includes one main processor which controls many smaller processors. Additionally, the main processor can run an operating system. In contrast, all of Larrabee's cores are the same, and the Larrabee is not expected to run an OS.
* Each compute core in the Cell (SPE) has a local store, for which explicit (DMA) operations are used for all accesses to DRAM. Ordinary reads/writes to DRAM are not allowed. In Larrabee, all on-chip and off-chip memories are under automatically-managed coherent cache hierarchy, so that its cores virtually share a uniform memory space through standard load/store instructions.
* Because of the cache coherency noted above, each program running in Larrabee has virtually a large linear memory just as in traditional general-purpose CPU; whereas an application for Cell should be programmed taking into consideration limited memory footprint of the local store associated with each SPE (for details see this article) but with theoretically higher bandwidth.
* Cell uses DMA for data transfer to/from on-chip local memories, which has a merit in flexibility and throughput; whereas Larrabee uses special instructions for cache manipulation (notably cache eviction hints and pre-fetch instructions), which has a merit in that it can maintain cache coherence (hence the standard memory hierarchy) while boosting performance for e.g. rendering pipelines and other stream-like computation.
* Each compute core in the Cell runs only one thread at a time, in-order. A core in Larrabee runs up to four threads. Larrabee's hyperthreading helps hide latencies and compensates for lack of out-of-order execution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_(GPU)
I'd like to have faith in Intel, considering their great success with their SSDs on their first try. But that was a relatively new technology, that doesn't have a large market for it. So I can only hope it does well.
" Hatecrime69 02/07/2009 4:04 AM
intel doing the gpu? I don't know..considering how little experience they have with it"
With current GPU technologies - yes. But if they go along a completely different path? After all Tim Sweeney mentioned that next generation consoles would support Ray-Tracing. Also Intel has the money and Intel knows how to make silicone. So what's the big deal if they decide to make a different kind of processor?
Also before GF3 there weren't any programmable GPUs at least made by NVIDIA. So they didn't have any previous experience but it was a tremendous success and the first XBOX had it inside, didn't it?
This was coming, CPU and GPU integrated together into one chip. Its been in the works for years. As long as it blows away this generation of graphics and gameplay, Im all for it. Im sure the PS4 will be out of reach to most people pricewise, they will revert to buying a Wii 2 garbage. The Wii 2 probably still wont be HD or have kick ass graphics and will sell for under $250 what people most care about it seems. Wonder if the Crapbox 2 will have the Ring on it too and turn red when bad...RROD? lol
Intel GPU(multiple cpu's) + Cell CPU = Programming nightmare???
Intel GPU(multiple cpu's) + Intel CPU = Programmers dream. Money lost on Cell research.
With Sony ditching Nvidia we might lose backwards compatibilty with ps3 games like what happened to microsoft. Unless they will do software emulation for every game.
Poor ppl who buy a ps4 Intel has been able to deliver gpu that are nice looking on paper but none that work out in tests very well.
You're right, none have worked out in tests very well because intel has come no where close to releasing an engineering sample of the release hardware.
Intel Hardware + Pro Driver/Software teams? I can see this working.
I wonder if the desktop variants will have "extreme edition" on it...
C'mon people, don't hate yet. I too feel this can go straight to the woods, but think back a little.
PowerVR was a company who always tried to put a nice gfx card on the market for gaming PC's and failed over and over to match the competition. Yet the Dreamcast had an easy programmable and good gfx chipset.
Only time will tell.
Seriously people?? This is THE ENQUIRER we are talking about. Im surprised toms hardware even posted an article linking to them. Disregard pretty much anything from THE ENQUIRER.
I think the Intel angle is less interesting than the NVidia angle in this article. Intel is known for moving into and out of markets, and I invite them to give this segment a shot.
Nvidia blacklisted from the console market? What happened? Did I miss some big f-up that got everyone all pissed at them?
In a system you have a processor and memory. On a graphics card you have a processor and memory. All 3 companies deal with that on a regular company. They all make chipsets as well. I'm surprised Intel waited so long. They obviously have the technological advantage in making chips. Their specialization has given them an advantage (along with tons of money pumped into research). We'll see if they can handle expansion without losing some of their lead. Yet more competition leads to yet more advancements and yet lower prices.
Blessedman is right. They've made tons of chipsets for onboard graphics.
Charlie Demerjiana
The second i read it, i knew all of this was just speculation. Junk.