From the OP: "Although both upcoming game consoles Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are based on AMD hardware, only PlayStation 4 incorporates hUMA [Heterogeneous Uniform Memory Access] for supporting a shared memory space. This was explained by AMD's Senior Product Marketing Manager Marc Diana to c't [big German IT magazine] at gamescom"
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
AMD: PlayStation 4 supports hUMA, Xbox One does not
- Thread starter ElTorro
- Start date
From the OP: "Although both upcoming game consoles Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are based on AMD hardware, only PlayStation 4 incorporates hUMA [Heterogeneous Uniform Memory Access] for supporting a shared memory space. This was explained by AMD's Senior Product Marketing Manager Marc Diana to c't [big German IT magazine] at gamescom"
Manmademan
Member
yes and no.
the new consoles are x86, meaning easier portability of code between console and PC than we've ever seen before- outside of the original xbox in 2001, which had very little market share.
This time around both the ps4 and the xbone will be using identical AMD designs- meaning greater support for AMD, even if Nvidia still dominates the PC space. no dev will have the luxury of just ignoring AMD platforms, console marketshare is simply too large.
should = sollte != dürfte
A better translation would be "this would probably mean that 3D performance on PS4 is even further ahead of Xbox One than what is known today." But as others have stated that is only an educated guess by the author.
As for the statement that anyonymous developers said PS4 is way ahead of X1 I'd rather take Carmacks word for it when he says both are in the same ballpark. We've all been burnt by anonymous developers proclaiming Wii U to be six times as fast as PS360.
So now the question is, why did MS not want this hUMA?
At E3 we knew nothing, because they were target renders. To be polite, perhaps MS was overestimating the impact of the esram et al. I don't think our vision will get much clearer between now and launch. It all comes down to the Gamescom field reports, now with real hardware!
At this point i think some here would probably commit suicide if they couldnt go another day without dick waving.But the games on both machines tell a different story. Theres no huge jump from one to the other. Both machines look like they could easily pull off the same visuals should their exclusives ever trade places.
/XB1 PR
"The specs don't matter!"
I did read the OP, thanks. It's just to put forward the notion that the Xbox One architecture is not necessarily incompatible with hUMA, but possibly wasn't implemented for other reasons.
Killzone looks better.
Did someone call for me?
My first reaction to this spin was "why should we buy an xbox one at all then?"
Raonak
Banned
I doubt that the graphics on PS4 will be THAT much superior to xbone. Average consumers won't notice, in motion it'll negligible and no game will 60fps on the PS4 and 30fps on the xbone. I mean, Forza 5 still looks pretty damn sick. Does anyone have any actual numbers for how big hUMA is?
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
This should officially put to rest all debates regarding these system's graphical capabilities; don't see how you can get more "from the horse's mouth" than the leading tech company behind BOTH systems clearly saying one is more capable than the other.
And I say this as someone genuinely interested in a lot of the games the XBO has to offer. But it is what it is. Accept it, move on and you can start enjoying the games that much sooner.
And I say this as someone genuinely interested in a lot of the games the XBO has to offer. But it is what it is. Accept it, move on and you can start enjoying the games that much sooner.
Manmademan
Member
this has never happened, ever.
And this site is a trusted source, right? If that is what they're saying, I don't know how you could draw any other conclusions than what the thread title and OP restate.
Devs use hardware to achieve goals, but hardware doesn't use devs to achieve anything... (lol)
What i wanted to say is: we can't know what those PCs are capable of because those PS4/XBO games are using resources that weren't efficiently used until now in PC. I'm not talking technical but semantics, PC devs weren't using things they can't use by design on other platform or just on other less recent PCs that make 99% of the market.
I'm not saying PS4/XBO have higher processing power (that would be lol-worthy) than high end PCs, i'm just saying they elevate the lowest common denominator at a point where they will begin to using what is in your high end PCs, and architecture will be a big factor too (big TFLOPS factories won't be enough vs hUMA powered rendering techniques). Bruteforcing won't be possible in some cases, it's not only TFLOPS vs TFLOPS.
Every PC gamer should wait 2014 before upgrading. It's exactly why i'm not ok with what alexandros is saying. But it's just my opinion about those things, if i'm wrong someone can certainly disprove me and i'm looking forward to it.
badcrumble
Member
Beyond the reduction of latency, does this also mean that the PS4 will in essence be able to make greater use out of its memory pool w/r/t storage by not having to duplicate data? Sorry if this is a dumb question.
Consoles are not PCs, if the game is going to run on PC, It is likely going to run on Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs.
Manmademan
Member
never said they wouldn't run. the question is how well.
right now, everything on pc is running on intel/nvidia. very few people are running AMD so no games are programmed around their architecture. consoles are using unique CPU setups- though one has an AMD gpu and one doesn't.
next gen, every single game with console as lead platform will be designed around AMDs CPU/GPU architecture, not intel's. This will have benefits for users running AMD.
Right now, most next gen cross platform games are leading with PC as lead platform so that's irrelevant, but i expect that to change as next gen platforms gain in marketshare.
The cloud would be great if the system was still an 'always online system'. They no longer can depend on the cloud since they cant guarantee that all customers are connected to the internet.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
First-party Sony will probably look better. I still think 95% of third-party games will be identical, though.
Just like they were for ps3 and 360 right? Oh wait..
lowlylowlycook
Member
At this point i think some here would probably commit suicide if they couldnt go another day without dick waving.
Well played.
because Anthony Weiner
"Load of shit" is to assume, that there is anyone who target PC as game market =)
Wait what? What is Microsoft thinking?
I would have thought the entire idea behind the eSRAM is to increase the performance of hUMA in the form of a hugely extended level X cache. hUMA makes the most sense if you have a much larger cache, as you would then be capable of manipulating the data in the extended cache (say computing floating points with the GPU and then letting the CPU interpret the data) without having to first send it back to the RAM as you would under traditional architectures. hUMA in the case of the PS4 on the other hand doesn't make a whole lot of sense, beyond freeing RAM space; the cache on the Jaguars shouldn't be enough to calculate everything needed in a frame, before sending it back to the RAM to retrieve other data.
None of this makes any sense, if this is truly what MS is doing.
I would have thought the entire idea behind the eSRAM is to increase the performance of hUMA in the form of a hugely extended level X cache. hUMA makes the most sense if you have a much larger cache, as you would then be capable of manipulating the data in the extended cache (say computing floating points with the GPU and then letting the CPU interpret the data) without having to first send it back to the RAM as you would under traditional architectures. hUMA in the case of the PS4 on the other hand doesn't make a whole lot of sense, beyond freeing RAM space; the cache on the Jaguars shouldn't be enough to calculate everything needed in a frame, before sending it back to the RAM to retrieve other data.
None of this makes any sense, if this is truly what MS is doing.
xXxDieselxXx
Member
hUMA ?
heise is a very reputable publisher in Germany, probably the most reputable when it comes to IT news/magazines.
Manmademan
Member
no, the entire idea behind the esram was to mitigate the extremely low bandwidth of the ddr3. everything else is a distant second.
cripterion
Member
If it's coming from AMD's mouth, I gotta say it's a bit worrying to hear, might be a problem down the line for the Xbone. At the same time, the PS3 was supposed to sit on better hardware (I remember all the people saying the 360 games would suck cause no Blu-ray) and it turned out just fine in the end.
Not seeing huge graphical differences so far, but haven't touched any of the new consoles yet so who knows, maybe games on PS4 will run a lot better, have better IQ than on the Xbone.
Not seeing huge graphical differences so far, but haven't touched any of the new consoles yet so who knows, maybe games on PS4 will run a lot better, have better IQ than on the Xbone.
Go troll elsewhere.
Yeah, they were pretty much identical unless you wore a fedora and memorized every Digital Foundry face-off between PS360.
Live Free or Die
Banned
Wow, the bad news just keeps coming in for MS.
KernelPanic
Member
I don't think it's a question of want but rather afford.
They went for cheaper internal parts so they could include Kinect with every system and not break the bank. They still kind of are but it could be worse.
Imagine XB1 has identical PS4 components + Kinect. Costs much more $$$.
Also interesting: Sony joined the HSA Foundation in late January this year.
The Xbox One APU is not cheaper by any stretch of the imagination. If it was, you might be seeing $399 or $449 w/ Kinect rather than $499 w/ Kinect.
The Xbox One APU is not cheaper by any stretch of the imagination. If it was, you might be seeing $399 or $449 w/ Kinect rather than $499 w/ Kinect.
Dr Mayonnaise
Member
Sorry but all BF4 footage was running on PC not consoles. If you are talking about the PC version of BF4 than sure, but KZ:SF will probably look better than the ps4 version of BF4 since dice will have to sacrifice something to maintain 60fps on PS4/XBO.
phosphor112
Banned
That's a good point. Could the eDRAM in the 360 be accessed by the CPU?
Not uninteresting. Added to the Op.
Then why did MS not go with GDDR5? This entire time I figured that the whole differentiation between their system's memory architecture and Sony's was that MS was buying into hUMA hook, line and sinker.
It's just a very confusing design choice, if the reports are correct.
No, it won't help AMD, the microarchitecture of AMD's PC GPUs and CPUs will be different than the consoles in a few years (and thus things will be the same as the RSX and Xenos are in relation to PC GPUs now) and consoles are not 1:1 with PC, there is the different APIs you would be using on PC vs consoles.
phosphor112
Banned
If it was on a daughter die that was both accessible by the GPU and CPU directly, it would make more sense, but then at that point, you'd have to ask "where to connect the main memory"... and it would have to be the eSRAM... and.. well, that would create a huge bottleneck, lol. Well.. unless they had extra buses that would connect the main ram to the CPU/GPU while also connected to the eSRAM. But I suspect, all those buses wouldn't come cheap.
IIRC, no. The eDRAM was attached to the ROPS on the GPU. So there's no way the CPU can access it.
fastford58
Member
This sounds great. I picked the right console to back, that is for sure.
It's nice that Sony's advantages are tangible and measurable and not just arbitrary like "cloud is 40x more powerful" or some other invisible PR BS.
It's nice that Sony's advantages are tangible and measurable and not just arbitrary like "cloud is 40x more powerful" or some other invisible PR BS.
I'm sure comparison videos will soon be up.