Sony has released a new PlayStation 4 video teasing its upcoming DualShock controller.
As you may recall, the next-gen controller was revealed in February alongside the PS4 when Mike Cerny, lead system architect for the console, noted that it had been designed with “key partners in the development community to enhance the feel of the joystick and the trigger buttons.”
As previously discussed on TG Daily, Sony has thus far confirmed a number of specs for its upcoming Playstation 4 (PS4) console, including 8 GB GDDR5 of system RAM, a single-chip accelerated processing unit (APU), 8 AMD x86-64 bit Jaguar (CPU) cores and 18 next-generation AMD (GPU) Radeon-based compute units.
Additional specs? 4x USB 3.0, 2x Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.1, AV output: HDMI, analog-AV out, and digital output (optical) 2.0, 5.1, 7.1 channels, Blu-ray 6xCAV and a 160GB HDD.
According to prominent industry analyst Jon Peddie, it’s probably safe to assume that the chip’s eight x86 Jaguar cores boast 4 MB of L2 cache (512 KB per core) and run at 1.60 GHz (or higher).
“It has dedicated custom hardware blocks (e.g., HEVC video decoders for 4K video support) and AMD graphics core next (GCN) architecture. The GPU packs 18 compute units (CUs) and looks very much like the Radeon HD7850 (with 64 cores, built in 28 nm, it produces 1.76 TFLOPS at 860 MHz),” Peddie explained in a recent industry report sent to TG Daily.
“The 18 CUs in the Orbis chip, with its 1152 shader cores, generate 1.8 TFLOPS.
The AMD Jaguar based CPU will likely include a 128-bit floating-point unit (FPU) with enhancements and double pumping to support 256-bit AVX instructions as well as an innovative integer unit with new hardware divider, larger schedulers, and more out-of-order resources.”
Peddie also noted that the PS4 was likely to run a custom version of Linux, while supporting Open GL 4.3 with some special extensions (e.g., for gesture), which Sony will probably continue to call PSGL.
“Sony has definitely raised the bar for console suppliers. The eight X86 CPUs (which
likely contain a 512K l2 cache), plus four shared 128 FPUs and 8 GB of DDR5, will give the PS4 astonishingly long legs. We are not going to see massive scaling of shader cores (for a variety of reasons) in GPUs on the PC. I think they will reach asymptote at about 3,000,” the analyst wrote.
“The Orbis CPUs will have plenty of headroom for physics and AI, so this machine is not going to get trounced by PCs in three to five years like past consoles. It may not be able to do what $3,000 worth of Titans in a $2,000 PC can do, but then it won’t cost $5,000 either. So on a FLOPS/$ basis, or a FPS/$ basis, this machine is going to look mighty good.”
Indeed, says Peddie, we will probably top out at maybe 3,000 shaders by 2015–2016.
