lol come on man, where did you read this?
If they have secret agents infiltrated within MS/AMD then the theory of MS catching them by surprise makes even less sense
Minor changes yes but nothing major, consoles chips require throurough testing to ensure everything works, no bugs/exploits, yields. They don't have the luxury of recalling consoles chips once out
You can check for yourself how development goes in this interview
Mark Cerny has faced plenty of challenges in his illustrious lifelong career as a game developer, but building the PlayStation 4 from the ground up might have been his biggest.
www.digitaltrends.com
Github was a RDNA1 so...
They redesigned the chip from RDNA1 to RDNA2?
It sounds like a pretty big change to me.
RDNA2 supports wavefront sizes 32 & 64, XSX needs this too for bc.
RDNA2 is not only confirmed by Sony but also AMD confirmed in one of their presentations next gen consoles are RDNA2. Leaves no room for speculation or crazy theories.
Misinterpreting what?
Navi10= RDNA1
No RT bespoke hardware= RDNA1
What other interpretation is there?
Im not saying its necessary fake just that it was outdated and using an older chip as a placeholder (rdna1). The latest github leak claimed rdna1 without hw rt did it not?
About ariel what makes you think it was for BC testing and if it was wouldn't you find it reasonable to asume they were using a rdna1 placeholder for testing bc?
And i ask you again evidence of what? so we can take the discussion from there
As someone who knows the Github leak like the back of my hand, I would say it was totally legit. Regarding the timeline, it was probably something like this:
Ariel B0 (iGPU) - RDNA 1 36 CUs @2Ghz with 448GB/s memory bandwidth (256-bit, 14Gbps GDDR6 chips).
Oberon A0 (iGPU) - A move from RDNA 1 to RDNA 2, still 2Ghz, still 36 CUs. Memory bandwidth upgraded to 510GB/s (256-bit, 16Gbps chips).
Oberon B0 (iGPU) - Unknown changes, memory bandwidth upgraded to 532GB/s (256-bit, underclocked 18Gbps chips).
------------------------------------------------------
Flute (the whole APU, separate leak) - unknown change, still 2Ghz, memory bandwidth still 532GB/s, has an actual data - July 2019.
Those are the leaks. Now, for some Q&A regarding the leak:
Q: How do we know it's real?
A: The Github repo was removed for AMD copyrights, it means that AMD had copyrights for that data which means it's 100% a real AMD data. In addition, everything on the hardware level was 100% right, the only thing that changed from the Github leak to the reveal of both consoles was clocks, which again proves it was real (clocks change all the time over development).
Q: How do you know Ariel -> Oberon was a change from RDNA 1 to RDNA 2?
A: Stepping isn't there for architectural changes, it's there for things like improving clock speeds, improving testability of the chip, fixing bugs, improving power usage and so on. When a real architecture change happens, like adding more CUs or actually changing major stuff in the chip, instead of a stepping the code name changes. It means that from Ariel to Oberon something architectural changed. We have references for Ariel being Navi based, which means RDNA1. CU count didn't change, memory controllers remained the same and so on. On top of that, we know that today PS5 is RDNA2. So the logical conclusion is the Ariel to Oberon was the RDNA 1 to RDNA 2 shift.
Q: Wait, wasn't the Github leak missing RT tests? It means Oberon A0 and B0 didn't have RT, right?
A: The Oberon leak was regression testing. In regression testing, all you test is the old chip's abilities VS the new chip's ability in order to see if you f---ed something up. Ariel was RDNA 1, it had no hardware-level RT capabilities, so no regression test comparing to Ariel will test RT. Or in other words, just because RT tests weren't a thing in those tests (because it was regression testing) doesn't mean Oberon A0 and B0 didn't have RT hardware.
Q: It's been so much time since Oberon B0, didn't the PS5 and XSX completely changed since?
A: Actually in early 2019 both consoles were pretty final. At that point, you can't do much other than tweak using steppings. It means that things like clocks could change, but the actual silicon itself remained the same. Remember that though both consoles only launch in late 2020, during 2019 near-final consoles have been already built for testing. For instance, Phil Spencer already got his fulling working (and buggy) XSX last year and the SOC inside that console was probably already fabbed in summer 2019 in a pretty bug-free state.
I hope that helps set the record straight regarding Github.