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[KidBeta]

If there is, I've never heard of it.

That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but the Xbox would have no need for the move engine tiling if the GPU could already do it.

There's no mention of it in the Southern Islands architecture docs.

Or the move engines could be another MS rename, of the normal DMA units, which is much more likely imo.

 

[Petalpusher]

If you are talking about RAM, WiiU has 1GB for games and 1 for the system.

Im talking about internal flash for system (every console have some), not RAM or storage (wich is also flash, but a different type obviously, in WiiU)

 

[OminoMichelin]

I really think he's talking about internal flash for system.. Not ram.

Hm, I guess so, my bad.

 

[bonus_sco]

Theres nothing to suggest the PS4 doesn't support hardware PRT nor the hardware in place swizzling your talking about. Also the other display plane most likely has more to do with snapping another application to the screen then rendering the UI at a different reso to the 3D.

VGLeaks seem to have everything already.

The PS4 supports PRT but PRT has to be manually managed by the game. You have to tell the GPU which tiles are "resident" and you need to "upload" that data into memory.

There's no mention of the PS4 having hardware move engines or tiling.

There's no mention of the console having one system display plane and two for the game.

MS have made a big deal of these coprocessors, I'd imagine Sony would be rubbing it in if they had those and 50% more CUs.

 

[bonus_sco]

Or the move engines could be another MS rename, of the normal DMA units, which is much more likely imo.

They're not linked to the GPU at all. The GPU will still have DMA engines to access memory.

This was all also shown at hot chips.

 

[KidBeta]

VGLeaks seem to have everything already.

The PS4 supports PRT but PRT has to be manually managed by the game. You have to tell the GPU which tiles are "resident" and you need to "upload" that data into memory.

There's no mention of the PS4 having hardware move engines or tiling.

There's no mention of the console having one system display plane and two for the game.

MS have made a big deal of these coprocessors, I'd imagine Sony would be rubbing it in if they had those and 50% more CUs.

I can tell you now that the Move Engines themselves specifically relate to Texture Swizzling and Unswizzling (The direct words used from what I am looking at).

These are features that are present in all AMD GCN cards and usually 2 (for the 2 DMA units) aswell, its just another MS renamed AMD job.

The PRT stuff we don't know more about so its a bit hard to tell but we do know that the PS4 and the XBONE both support some unknown level of PRT wether its Tier 1o r Tier 2 is unknown, it is unknown even what Tier 2 fully entails so until we know all the details its probably best to assume they both support the same level.

 

[KidBeta]

They're not linked to the GPU at all. The GPU will still have DMA engines to access memory.

This was all also shown at hot chips.

I cannot seem to see any DMA units attached to the GPU at the hotchips presentation, do you mind pointing out where they are.

 

[EmptySpace]

Yeah, I wasn't specific enough. It supports two frame buffers with independent resolutions and blends those together.

Handy for a console with a 12 CU GPU

It's almost like the hardware is designed to play ID games. Dynamically scale the 3D resolution on one plane, render the UI at full res on another plane, hardware PRT support and hardware in-place swizzling.

The Xbox One is a very interesting console. PS4 had more brute force grunt but the One is genuinely intriguing. Penello's claims weren't crazy, he just isn't am engineer.

I'm looking forward to hearing from the Technical Fellow.

save the fact that the one will be doing multitasking features, which EmptySpace suspects all the hardware is there for.

besides, how accurate is the vgleaks info? that is from months ago, before the xbone was even revealed.

 

[Chobel]

You have to tell the GPU which tiles are "resident" and you need to "upload" that data into memory.

PS4 support partially resident textures.

MS have made a big deal of these coprocessors, I'd imagine Sony would be rubbing it in if they had those and 50% more CUs.

So Sony too™. Stop this, just because MS is bragging about their hardware doesn't mean Sony will do it. Also MS didn't talk about those co-precessors at all.

 

[robertsan21]

PS4 50% more powerful than Xbox One.

on the front page of one of Swedens most read online news sites.

Awesome!

However, it´s not really a contest in sweden, we are a PS4 country.

www.aftonbladet.se

 

[bonus_sco]

save the fact that the one will be doing multitasking features, which EmptySpace suspects all the hardware is there for.

besides, how accurate is the vgleaks info? that is from months ago, before the xbone was even revealed.

It all lines up with the Hot Chips reveals for the most part.

 

[mrklaw]

VGLeaks seem to have everything already.

The PS4 supports PRT but PRT has to be manually managed by the game. You have to tell the GPU which tiles are "resident" and you need to "upload" that data into memory.

There's no mention of the PS4 having hardware move engines or tiling.

There's no mention of the console having one system display plane and two for the game.

MS have made a big deal of these coprocessors, I'd imagine Sony would be rubbing it in if they had those and 50% more CUs.

you don't need hardware move engines when all your memory is uniform and fast. You only need that because of ESRAM. And they only work at something like 25GB/s, and they take bandwidth from main RAM. So they aren't a cure-all

display planes are a nice feature for xbox one. The two game planes lets you have a native res overlay for HUD etc and a lower res (if necessary) main view, which is then scaled up. Will help if a game needs to use dynamic or sub 1080 resolution.

 

[bonus_sco]

save the fact that the one will be doing multitasking features, which EmptySpace suspects all the hardware is there for.

besides, how accurate is the vgleaks info? that is from months ago, before the xbone was even revealed.

Possibly, the VGLeaks info says there are 3 planes, 2 for the game one for the system.

 

[bonus_sco]

you don't need hardware move engines when all your memory is uniform and fast. You only need that because of ESRAM. And they only work at something like 25GB/s, and they take bandwidth from main RAM. So they aren't a cure-all

display planes are a nice feature for xbox one. The two game planes lets you have a native res overlay for HUD etc and a lower res (if necessary) main view, which is then scaled up. Will help if a game needs to use dynamic or sub 1080 resolution.

Not if the GPU natively supports textures packed with a space fitting curve.

 

[bonus_sco]

PS4 support partially resident textures.



So Sony too™. Stop this, just because MS is bragging about their hardware doesn't mean Sony will do it. Also MS didn't talk about those co-precessors at all.

I know the PS4 supports it. The game still has to use it properly.

MS have talked about the coprocessors and VGLeaks has the move engines defined.

 

[Can Crusher]

Why the hell would you even want to use tiling? I know with the 360 tiling came from a necessity because there was only 10 MB edram. Why would you do it with the PS4?

 

[KidBeta]

Not if the GPU natively supports textures packed with a space fitting curve.

The Move Engines only support Tiling and Swizzling in the context of normal texture tilling and unswizziling, as per I said earlier.

 

[bonus_sco]

I can tell you now that the Move Engines themselves specifically relate to Texture Swizzling and Unswizzling (The direct words used from what I am looking at).

These are features that are present in all AMD GCN cards and usually 2 (for the 2 DMA units) aswell, its just another MS renamed AMD job.

The PRT stuff we don't know more about so its a bit hard to tell but we do know that the PS4 and the XBONE both support some unknown level of PRT wether its Tier 1o r Tier 2 is unknown, it is unknown even what Tier 2 fully entails so until we know all the details its probably best to assume they both support the same level.

Texture Swizzling is rearranging using a space fitting curve.

Feel free to point out any PC GPU which can do that.

Vector element swizzling is different.

I'm looking for the hot chips slides, semi accurate's have gone missing.

 

[KidBeta]

Texture Swizzling is rearranging using a space fitting curve.

Feel free to point out any PC GPU which can do that.

Vector element swizzling is different.

I'm looking for the hot chips slides, semi accurate's have gone missing.

Texture swizzling is what the 3D API's define texture swizzling as, and a load of cards support it.

https://www.google.com/#q=texture+swizzling+hardware&start=0

 

[bonus_sco]

The Move Engines only support Tiling and Swizzling in the context of normal texture tilling and unswizziling, as per I said earlier.

Normal texture tiling is Morton order space fitting.

 

[gofreak]

VGLeaks seem to have everything already.

The PS4 supports PRT but PRT has to be manually managed by the game. You have to tell the GPU which tiles are "resident" and you need to "upload" that data into memory.

Untrue. There is hardware support for PRT in standard GCN and PSSL exposes it. You use a SparseTexture and sample it and take care of the case where a texel isn't present. That's it, the rest is handled by the API/hardware. The difference with X1/DX is syntax.

There's no mention of the PS4 having hardware move engines or tiling.

You can do tiling on any GPU but the typical use case is when you have a limited framebuffer storage size, which is irrelvant on PS4.

Move engines are irrelevant on PS4.

There's no mention of the console having one system display plane and two for the game.

Display Scan out on PS4 handles 1 system + 1 application (game) plane. All this stuff is pretty vanilla hardware.

MS have made a big deal of these coprocessors, I'd imagine Sony...

No they didn't really. The folks who made a big deal of those 'co-processors' were people who got access to info pre-VG Leaks and who didn't have a clue what it meant and assumed every little thing described or detailed was somehow 'special'.

Sony isn't going to make a big deal out of display scan out or ROPs (as some did with X1 because MS gave them a different label!) and this kind of stuff above because it's either irrelevant in their system or completely ordinary and boilerplate.

OTOH, a 50% difference in CUs or tweaks made to the ACE setup or coherency model are going to be noted because they are noteworthy for being a substantial improvement either vs their competition (in the former case) or vanilla GCN (in the latter).

 

[TheD]

How can you tell when a new console is coming out?.....

When people make big deals out of DMA engines and simple hardware compositing.

 

[onQ123]

Yeah, I wasn't specific enough. It supports two frame buffers with independent resolutions and blends those together.

Handy for a console with a 12 CU GPU

It's almost like the hardware is designed to play ID games. Dynamically scale the 3D resolution on one plane, render the UI at full res on another plane, hardware PRT support and hardware in-place swizzling.

The Xbox One is a very interesting console. PS4 had more brute force grunt but the One is genuinely intriguing. Penello's claims weren't crazy, he just isn't am engineer.

I'm looking forward to hearing from the Technical Fellow.

PS4 has hardware PRT


Partially Resident Textures

- Also called “Tiled Resources”
- Hardware Virtual Texturing
- Textures broken up into 64KiB tiles
- Tile texel dimensions dependent on texture
dimensionality and underlying texture format
- Allows for not all the texture to resident in
memory at a time

- Like this, but in hardware!

PSSL and PRT

- Exposed in PSSL as a new Sparse_Texture* type
- All sample-able texture types supported, 1D, 2D, 3D, Cube, Arrays,
etc.
- Sample() modified to take an extra out parameter to
indicate status
- It’s not necessary to use the Sparse_Texture type to utilize
partially resident textures, but Sparse_Texture is necessary
if you want status information!
- Essentially page-fault tolerant GPU memory accesses

 

[bonus_sco]

Texture swizzling is what the 3D API's define texture swizzling as, and a load of cards support it.

https://www.google.com/#q=texture+swizzling+hardware&start=0

You'll need to get yourself a copy of Real Time Rendering and look at the section on space fitting curves.

You are wrong

 

[KidBeta]

Normal texture tiling is Morton order space fitting.

I can tell you now that MS mentions nothing more then the 3D API terms of texture swizzling / unswizziling in regards to the Move Engines.

 

[KidBeta]

You'll need to get yourself a copy of Real Time Rendering and look at the section on space fitting curves.

You are wrong

There is nothing in the doco to suggest what you are suggesting.

 

[bonus_sco]

Untrue. There is hardware support for PRT in standard GCN and PSSL exposes it. You use a SparseTexture and sample it and take care of the case where a texel isn't present. That's it, the rest is handled by the API/hardware. The difference with X1/DX is syntax.



You can do tiling on any GPU but the typical use case is when you have a limited framebuffer storage size, which is irrelvant on PS4.

Move engines are irrelevant on PS4.



Display Scan out handles 1 system + 1 application (game) plane. All this stuff is pretty vanilla hardware.



No they didn't really. The folks who made a big deal of those 'co-processors' were people who got access to info pre-VG Leaks and who didn't have a clue what it meant and assumed every little thing described or detailed was somehow 'special'.

Sony isn't going to make a big deal out of display scan out or ROPs (as some did with X1 because MS gave them a different label!) and this kind of stuff above because it's either irrelevant in their system or completely ordinary and boilerplate.

OTOH, a 50% difference in CUs or tweaks made to the ACE setup or coherency model are going to be noted because they are noteworthy for being a substantial improvement either vs their competition (in the former case) or vanilla GCN (in the latter).

Geez, this post is wrong from beginning to end.

The whole point of partially resident textures is so that the texture is only partially resident. The application decides which tiles are resident and which tiles map to other tiles when they're not resident.

Yes, that's the same for both.

Texture tilling used to be reordering with a space fitting curve. PRTs caused confusion so people now call Morton order tiling "swizzling". That's now caused more confusion with people mistaking it for vector element reorder operators or swizzle operators. They're not the same.

Display scan out on Xbox One has 3 planes. One for the system, two for the game.

I haven't mentioned Xbox One's ROPs. They're normal, PS4 has twice as many but with two display planes, Xbox One doesn't have to alpha blend it's HUD. Slight optimisation.

PS4 has a more powerful GPU, never said it didn't.

MS have talked about their 15 coprocessors and discounting them isn't any better than over estimating them.

 

[bonus_sco]

I can tell you now that MS mentions nothing more then the 3D API terms of texture swizzling / unswizziling in regards to the Move Engines.

Those are the correct terms and those words have different meanings based on the context.

In this context it's space filling curves.

 

[thunder_snail]

In a typical tiled renderer, geometry must first be transformed into screen space and assigned to screen-space tiles. This requires some storage for the lists of geometry for each tile. In early tiled systems, this was performed by the CPU, but all modern hardware contains hardware to accelerate this step.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiled_rendering

Is this what we are talking about? Correct me if I'm wrong since this tech talk is going over my head at this point.

 

[KidBeta]

Those are the correct terms and those words have different meanings based on the context.

In this context it's space filling curves.

How do you know what context the words are used in, your adding your own context. Im pretty sure its not talking about space filling curves and that the DME's don't support it. They would mention it I think and not leave it ambigious to confuse people.

 

[bonus_sco]

There is nothing in the doco to suggest what you are suggesting.

Does your doc explain the difference between d3dfmt and d3dfmt_Lin textures?

 

[travisbickle]

Have any more developers chipped in information for this thread? Or are you all talking in circles?

 

[KidBeta]

Does your doc explain the difference between d3dfmt and d3dfmt_Lin textures?

Nope but its pretty obvious from the stackoverflow question you linked before what the difference is.

 

[bonus_sco]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiled_rendering

Is this what we are talking about? Correct me if I'm wrong since this tech talk is going over my head at this point.

It's not tiled rendering either .

Your mobile phone probably had a tiled renderer GPU unless it's a Tegra.

 

[dragonelite]

You mean like later in the generation the dedicated hardware might be lacking because of increased sizes of data that needs to be processed and task might have to be moved like on the PS4 to the GPU instead? I guess that you could still split it up so the dedicated hardware job and then let the GPU do the rest that needs to be done or will it become a fixed bottleneck?

You never know what developers would want to do.
I imaging if microsoft back in 2004 knew about deferred rendering getting popular they would have probably chosen a bigger block maybe like 12~16mb

 

[velociraptor]

display planes are a nice feature for xbox one. The two game planes lets you have a native res overlay for HUD etc and a lower res (if necessary) main view, which is then scaled up. Will help if a game needs to use dynamic or sub 1080 resolution.

Is that even a good feature? If you can't get a game to run at 1080p, then what is the point? Anything below that is, frankly, a blurry/jaggy mess.

 

[bonus_sco]

Nope but its pretty obvious from the stackoverflow question you linked before what the difference is.

Yes, it should be obvious from that question. Compressed textures are already block compressed and not linear pixels

 

[Dr Frasier Crane]

I have no idea what's going on in here.

 

[bonus_sco]

I have no idea what's going on in here.

We are in disagreement over whether the move engines reorder data using a space fitting curve or just rearrange vector elements inside individual texels.

Am example space fitting curve is z-order: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-order_curve

 

[gofreak]

Geez, this post is wrong from beginning to end.

The whole point of partially resident textures is so that the texture is only partially resident. The application decides which tiles are resident and which tiles map to other tiles when they're not resident.

Yes, that's the same for both.

A moment ago you seemed to be suggesting that was a point of difference.

Both GPUs have hardware support for PRT. You don't have to do it 'the old way' with custom shaders ala on PS3 or XB1.

If both systems are the same here I'm not sure why it's being discussed.

The rest of your post is not a contradiction or disagreement with anything I've said (so how my post was wrong 'from beginning to end'...)

The only other thing I would add is that that of the 15 processors, of the processors on MS's slide, only one looked like something one might like in PS4 - and that's based on an assumption of relative strength (wrt the audio chips). The rest looked very normal, like stuff described in a PS4 context too, or were specific to XB1's memory setup.

(And yes, you didn't mentioned ROPs...just that all this conversation reminds me of earlier pre-announcement conversation around leaks that ended up being much ado about nothing)

 

[JonathanPower]

Yeah, I wasn't specific enough. It supports two frame buffers with independent resolutions and blends those together.

Handy for a console with a 12 CU GPU

It's almost like the hardware is designed to play ID games. Dynamically scale the 3D resolution on one plane, render the UI at full res on another plane, hardware PRT support and hardware in-place swizzling.

The Xbox One is a very interesting console. PS4 had more brute force grunt but the One is genuinely intriguing. Penello's claims weren't crazy, he just isn't am engineer.

I'm looking forward to hearing from the Technical Fellow.

Well, MS dediced to focus a lot on OS functionalities, while Sony decided to focus more on gaming. The Xbox ONE dedicates a lot of resources for the OS, leaving less power available for games. There was a rumor that the PS4 reserves less than 1 core for the OS. If that is true, then the PS4 will also have a CPU advantage.

 

[bishoptl]

There's more to it than that.

I really can't say any more than that.

PS4 has secret sauce, lol.

Somebody please inform our friend here how the insider process works, and the ramifications of coming up short?

Thank you.

 

[dead monkey uk]

Well, MS dediced to focus a lot on OS functionalities, while Sony decided to focus more on gaming. The Xbox ONE dedicates a lot of resources for the OS, leaving less power available for games. There was a rumor that the PS4 reserves less than 1 core for the OS. If that is true, then the PS4 will also have a CPU advantage.

I thought the rumour was the PS4 used 2 cores for its OS, although I am sure all this can change even after release.

 

[bonus_sco]

Is there a part here you're missing? It's getting really difficult to keep reading the thread when you keep coming up with the same bs.

Audio raycasting is pretty advanced:



source: http://www.google.com/patents/US8139780

Cerny says eventually devs will even be able to use GPGPU for this, and for many other things such as complex physics. Does that mean the CPU won't be used for physics? No.

You are also assuming, and I would bet wrongly, that you won't have to use the GPU to reproduce the same technique on Xbox One. This whole audio thing is one hell of a reach by some in order to close the gap.

Lol, you're just adding things I didn't say. I only said Cerny used raycasting for audio because the other guy kept bringing audio GPGPU up.

Did I say the CPU wouldn't be used? Nope.

Did I say the Xbox One would have to do it the same way? Nope.

 

[onQ123]

Somebody please inform our friend here how the insider process works, and the ramifications of coming up short?

Thank you.

They did & he said something to the affect of we wouldn't miss him or something like that

 

[thunder_snail]

We are in disagreement over whether the move engines reorder data using a space fitting curve or just rearrange vector elements inside individual texels.

Am example space fitting curve is z-order: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-order_curve

How many of these various space fitting curves are move engines capable of? I thought they are fixed function.

 

[Perkel]

It's not tiled rendering either .

Your mobile phone probably had a tiled renderer GPU unless it's a Tegra.

Could you explain me in first place why are we talking about DME like some special souse that could leverage Xbone architecture ?

PS4 doesn't have split memory system. It doesn't need to move stuff around beside initial data load from drive. I don't see how DME can leverage anything since PS4 architecture is best case of DME where you don't need to move anything.

as for PRT wasn't that feature added long time ago to AMD gpus and now all their GPU support it via hardware ?

If you are talking about different type of PRT then is this solution 100% better or something wash ? Or we are talking here about some technique that doesn't have any real improvement from standard PRT.

Also how having 3 display planes could leverage anything ? I mean isn't this just feature just to accommodate running apps in background + having game UI in native resolution regardless of internal game rendering resolution which thanks to it could be less than for example 1080p and thanks to it your UI would look clear without low res blur ?

Also why you mentioned UI as something that PS4 has to deal with (with its ROPS) as if it is something expensive for hardware. Is UI expensive for hardware ?

If not you then someone can explain me above ?

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

Somebody please inform our friend here how the insider process works, and the ramifications of coming up short?

Thank you.

Just a junior, have mercy

 

[Glorified G]

Somebody please inform our friend here how the insider process works, and the ramifications of coming up short?

Thank you.

It's already been done way back

I'd imagine they are, considering these threads are suppose to promote meaningful and intelligent discussion about the consoles hardware, last thing people want is someone in here winding others up just for a laugh.

Pretending to have insider information and then attempting to discredit what people are saying based off information you made up is taken seriously I believe.

It is 100% ban. We had already cases like that and people got banned. Not the first time not the last.

 

[bonus_sco]

A moment ago you seemed to be suggesting that was a point of difference.

Both GPUs have hardware support for PRT. You don't have to do it 'the old way' with custom shaders ala on PS3 or XB1.

If both systems are the same here I'm not sure why it's being discussed.

The rest of your post is not a contradiction or disagreement with anything I've said (so how my post was wrong 'from beginning to end'...)

The only other thing I would add is that that of the 15 processors, of the processors on MS's slide, only one looked like something one might like in PS4 - and that's based on an assumption of relative strength (wrt the audio chips). The rest looked very normal, like stuff described in a PS4 context too, or were specific to XB1's memory setup.

(And yes, you didn't mentioned ROPs...just that all this conversation reminds me of earlier pre-announcement conversation around leaks that ended up being much ado about nothing)

I think we're all getting our wires crossed with regards to tiling/prt/swizzling and swizzling