Ha, it's like Jeff read my mind.
On that point, IIRC one of the rumours about PS4 was that Sony was tweaking for improved compute perf, and maybe some threading improvement might have been pulled over as part of that. But if a decision was made to hunker down on the 7 series as a base, I dunno if they could switch to a 8 series customisation just like that. That's all I'm saying. Maybe the 7-based chip wasn't their final target, but if it was...
In the context of a closed system they have more flexibility anyway WRT integration...so what they've been able to do with a 7-series-based chip might meet their needs in terms of 'HSA'-ish stuff.
The 2014 design 8000 series has a couple of features that would be advantageous.
1) Full HSA
2) Context switching
On that point, IIRC one of the rumours about PS4 was that Sony was tweaking for improved compute perf, and maybe some threading improvement might have been pulled over as part of that. But if a decision was made to hunker down on the 7 series as a base, I dunno if they could switch to a 8 series customisation just like that. That's all I'm saying. Maybe the 7-based chip wasn't their final target, but if it was...
In the context of a closed system they have more flexibility anyway WRT integration...so what they've been able to do with a 7-series-based chip might meet their needs in terms of 'HSA'-ish stuff.