• More on Sony’s Next-gen PS4 Specs Revealed

    // Gradly // blog, Consoles, Gadgets, Games, PS4, Rumors, Sony 2 Responses

    More on Sony's Next-gen PS4 Specs Revealed

    More on Sony’s Next-gen PS4 Specs Revealed

    Following our previous PlayStation 4, PS4, leaked specs, new information regarding the SoC devkit has surfaced. Below are all the details courtesy of VGLeaks.

    LIVERPOOL SOC

    • Custom implementation of AMD Fusion APU Architecture (Accelerated Processing Unit)
    • Provides good performance with low power consumption
    • Integrated CPU and GPU
    • Considerably bigger and more powerful than AMD’s other APUs
    PS4 Liverpool SoC Diagram

    PS4 Liverpool SoC Diagram

    CPU:

    • Orbis contains eight Jaguar cores at 1.6 Ghz, arranged as two “clusters”
    • Each cluster contains 4 cores and a shared 2MB L2 cache
    • 256-bit SIMD operations, 128-bit SIMD ALU
    • SSE up to SSE4, as well as Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX)
    • One hardware thread per core
    • Decodes, executes and retires at up to two instructions/cycle
    • Out of order execution
    • Per-core dedicated L1-I and L1-D cache (32Kb each)
    • Two pipes per core yield 12,8 GFlops performance
    • 102.4 GFlops for system

    GPU:

    • GPU is based on AMD’s “R10XX” (Southern Islands) architecture
    • DirectX 11.1+ feature set
    • Liverpool is an enhanced version of the architecture
    • 18 Compute Units (CUs)
    • Hardware balanced at 14 CUs
    • Shared 512 KB of read/write L2 cache
    • 800 Mhz
    • 1.843 Tflops, 922 GigaOps/s
    • Dual shader engines
    • 18 texture units
    • 8 Render backends

    Memory:

    • 4 GB unified system memory, 176 GB/s
    • 3.5 available to games (estimate)

    Storage:

    – High speed Blu-ray drive

    • single layer (25 GB) or dual layer (50 GB) discs
    • Partial constant angular velocity (PCAV)
    • Outer half of disc 6x (27 MB/s)
    • Inner half varies, 3.3x to 6x

    – Internal mass storage

    • One SKU at launch: 500 GB HDD
    • There may also be a Flash drive SKU in the future

    Networking:

    • 1 Gb/s Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n WIFI, and Bluetooth

    Peripherals:

    • Evolved Dualshock controller
    • Dual Camera
    • Move controller

    Extra:

    • Audio Processor (ACP)
    • Video encode and decode (VCE/UVD) units
    • Display ScanOut Engine (DCE)
    • Zlib Decompression Hardware

    Each CU contains dedicated:

    • ALU (32 64-bit operations per cycle)
    • Texture Unit
    • L1 data cache
    • Local data share (LDS)
    • About  14 + 4 balance:
      • 4 additional CUs (410 Gflops) “extra” ALU as resource for compute
      • Minor boost if used for rendering
    • Dual Shader Engines:
      • 1.6 billion triangles/s, 1.6 billion vertices/s
    • 18 Texture units
      • 56 billion bilinear texture reads/s
      • Can utilize full memory bandwidth
    • 8 Render backends:
      • 32 color ops/cycle
      • 128 depth ops/cycle
      • Can utilize full memory bandwidth

  • Sony’s Next-gen Console, PlayStation 4 ‘PS4’ Specs Leaked

    // Gradly // blog, Consoles, Gadgets, Games, PS4, Rumors, Sony 1 Response

    Sony's Next-gen Console, PlayStation 4 'PS4' Specs Leaked

    Sony’s Next-gen Console, PlayStation 4 ‘PS4’ Specs Leaked

    Following Microsoft‘s Xbox 720 specs leaked recently, It’s time to turn our attention to Sony’s offering with the new Game console, PS4.

    Sony‘s Next-gen console, PS4, codenamed Orbis, is said to be powered by an 8-core CPU based on “Jaguar” technology by AMD. According to VGLeaks, there are 3 iterations of devkits make the evolution of Orbis through the years.

    Details of each devkit are listed below:

    1- R10 Board (with special BIOS) assemble in a Generic PC

    • Requires Windows 7 64 bit edition
    • Recommend
    • Sandy Bridge (Intel) or Bulldozer (AMD)
    • Minimum 8 GB RAM (system memory)
    • 650 Watt PSU
    • VS2010 SP1
    • DWM (Desktop Windows Manager) must be turned off
    • Application will use Windows services for everything except GPU interface
    • SCE will provide “Gnm”, a custom GPU interface
    DVKT-KS000K system block diagram

    DVKT-KS000K system block diagram

    2- DVKT-KS000K (“Initial 1″)

    • Runs Orbis OS
    • CPU: Bulldozer 8-core, 1.6 Ghz
    • Graphics Card: R10 with special BIOS
    • RAM: 8 GB (system memory)
    • BD Drive
    • HDD: 2.5 ” 160 GB
    • Network Controller
    • Custom South Bridge allows access to controller prototypes

    3- SoC Based Devkit

    • Available January 2013
    • CPU: 8-core Jaguar
    • GPU: Liverpool GPU
    • RAM: unified 8 GB for devkit (4 GB for the retail console)
    • Subsystem: HDD, Network Controller, BD Drive, Bluetooth Controller, WLAN and HDMI (up to 1980×1080@3D)
    • Analog Outputs: Audio, Composite Video
    • Connection to Host: USB 3.0 (targeting over 200 MB/s),
    • ORBIS Dualshock
    • Dual Camera

  • Microsoft’s Next-gen Console, Xbox 720 Specs Leaked

    // Gradly // blog, Consoles, Gadgets, Games, Microsoft, Rumors, Xbox One 2 Responses

    Xbox 720 Specs Leaked

    Xbox 720 Specs Leaked

    Microsoft‘s Next-gen console, Xbox 720, codenamed Durango, is said to be powered by an 8-core CPU clocked at 1.6 GHz and an 800-MHz graphics processor with 12 shader cores providing a performance of about 1.2 teraflops. This comes on par with specs revealed recently.

    The console will sport an 8GB DDR3 RAM with 32 MB of fast embedded SRAM. And for the first time it will be capable of reading Blu-ray discs up to 50GB at x6 read speeds. According to VGleaks, the full reported specs below:

    Durango system block diagram

    Durango system block diagram

    Full specs list:

    CPU:

    – x64 Architecture
    – 8 CPU cores running at 1.6 gigahertz (GHz)
    – each CPU thread has its own 32 KB L1 instruction cache and 32 KB L1 data cache
    – each module of four CPU cores has a 2 MB L2 cache resulting in a total of 4 MB of L2 cache
    – each core has one fully independent hardware thread with no shared execution resources
    – each hardware thread can issue two instructions per clock

    GPU:

    – custom D3D11.1 class 800-MHz graphics processor
    – 12 shader cores providing a total of 768 threads
    – each thread can perform one scalar multiplication and addition operation (MADD) per clock cycle
    – at peak performance, the GPU can effectively issue 1.2 trillion floating-point operations per second
    High-fidelity Natural User Interface (NUI) sensor is always present

    Storage and Memory:

    – 8 gigabyte (GB) of RAM DDR3 (68 GB/s)
    – 32 MB of fast embedded SRAM (ESRAM) (102 GB/s)
    – from the GPU’s perspective the bandwidths of system memory and ESRAM are parallel providing combined peak bandwidth of 170 GB/sec.
    – Hard drive is always present
    – 50 GB 6x Blu-ray Disc drive

    Networking:

    – Gigabit Ethernet
    – Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct

    Hardware Accelerators:

    – Move engines
    – Image, video, and audio codecs
    – Kinect multichannel echo cancellation (MEC) hardware
    – Cryptography engines for encryption and decryption, and hashing

  • Microsoft Celebrates Xbox 10th Anniversary with Interactive Timeline

    // Gradly // blog, Consoles, Games, Microsoft, Xbox 360, Xbox One No Responses

    Microsoft Celebrates Xbox 10th Anniversary with Interactive Timeline

    Microsoft Celebrates Xbox 10th Anniversary with Interactive Timeline

    As the Xbox turned ten today, Microsoft is celebrating the anniversary with the launch of an interactive timeline showing the platform history. The platform first debuted on March 14, 2002.

    The timeline is available on Xbox.com and takes you on your own personal journey from your first Xbox experience through the hardware, software and entertainment launches over the last 10 years.

    It commemorates the original console launch through to the controller-free revolution with Kinect, and the host of live TV, music, movie and social media partners on Xbox Live who are helping us change the way people enjoy entertainment in their living rooms.

    As seen from the screenshot above, some interesting figures showing that total console sales surpassed 108,000,000. You can access the interactive timeline by visiting this link