Sony just announced the PlayStation 4, along with some high level system specifications. The high level specs are what we've heard for quite some time:

  • 8-core x86-64 CPU using AMD Jaguar cores (built by AMD)
  • High-end PC GPU (also built by AMD), delivering 1.84TFLOPS of performance
  • Unified 8GB of GDDR5 memory for use by both the CPU and GPU with 176GB/s of memory bandwidth
  • Large local hard drive

Details of the CPU aren't known at this point (8-cores could imply a Piledriver derived architecture, or 8 smaller Jaguar cores—the latter being more likely), but either way this will be a big step forward over the PowerPC based general purpose cores on Cell from the previous generation. I wouldn't be too put off by the lack of Intel silicon here, it's still a lot faster than what we had before and at this level price matters more than peak performance. The Intel performance advantage would have to be much larger to dramatically impact console performance. If we're talking about Jaguar cores, then there's a bigger concern long term from a single threaded performance standpoint.

Update: I've confirmed that there are 8 Jaguar based AMD CPU cores inside the PS4's APU. The CPU + GPU are on a single die. Jaguar will still likely have better performance than the PS3/Xbox 360's PowerPC cores, and it should be faster than anything ARM based out today, but there's not huge headroom going forward. While I'm happier with Sony's (and MS') CPU selection this time around, I always hoped someone would take CPU performance in a console a bit more seriously. Given the choice between spending transistors on the CPU vs. GPU, I understand that the GPU wins every time in a console—I'm just always an advocate for wanting more of both. I realize I never wrote up a piece on AMD's Jaguar architecture, so I'll likely be doing that in the not too distant future. Update: I did.

The choice of 8 cores is somewhat unique. Jaguar's default compute unit is a quad-core machine with a large shared L2 cache, it's likely that AMD placed two of these together for the PlayStation 4. The last generation of consoles saw a march towards heavily threaded machines, so it's no surprise that AMD/Sony want to continue the trend here. Clock speed is unknown, but Jaguar was good for a mild increase over its predecessor Bobcat. Given the large monolithic die, AMD and Sony may not have wanted to push frequency as high as possible in order to keep yields up and power down. While I still expect CPU performance to move forward in this generation of consoles, I was reminded of the fact that the PowerPC cores in the previous generation ran at very high frequencies. The IPC gains afforded by Jaguar have to be significant in order to make up for what will likely be a lower clock speed.

We don't know specifics of the GPU, but with it approaching 2 TFLOPS we're looking at a level of performance somewhere between a Radeon HD 7850 and 7870. Update: Sony has confirmed the actual performance of the PlayStation 4's GPU as 1.84 TFLOPS. Sony claims the GPU features 18 compute units, which if this is GCN based we'd be looking at 1152 SPs and 72 texture units. It's unclear how custom the GPU is however, so we'll have to wait for additional information to really know for sure. The highest end PC GPUs are already faster than this, but the PS4's GPU is a lot faster than the PS3's RSX which was derived from NVIDIA's G70 architecture (used in the GeForce 7800 GTX, for example). I'm quite pleased with the promised level of GPU performance with the PS4. There are obvious power and cost constraints that would keep AMD/Sony from going even higher here, but this should be a good leap forward from current gen consoles.

Outfitting the PS4 with 8GB of RAM will be great for developers, and using high-speed GDDR5 will help ensure the GPU isn't bandwidth starved. Sony promised around 176GB/s of memory bandwidth for the PS4. The lack of solid state storage isn't surprising. Hard drives still offer a dramatic advantage in cost per GB vs. an SSD. Now if it's user replaceable with an SSD that would be a nice compromise.

Leveraging Gaikai's cloud gaming technology, the PS4 will be able to act as a game server and stream the video output to a PS Vita, wirelessly. This sounds a lot like what NVIDIA is doing with Project Shield and your NVIDIA powered gaming PC. Sony referenced dedicated video encode/decode hardware that allows you to instantaneously record and share screenshots/video of gameplay. I suspect this same hardware is used in streaming your game to a PS Vita.

Backwards compatibility with PS3 games isn't guaranteed and instead will leverage cloud gaming to stream older content to the box. There's some sort of a dedicated background processor that handles uploads and downloads, and even handles updates in the background while the system is off. The PS4 also supports instant suspend/resume.

The new box heavily leverages PC hardware, which is something we're expecting from the next Xbox as well. It's interesting that this is effectively how Microsoft entered the console space back in 2001 with the original Xbox, and now both Sony and MS have returned to that philosophy with their next gen consoles in 2013. The PlayStation 4 will be available this holiday season.

I'm trying to get more details on the CPU and GPU architectures and will update as soon as I have more info.

Source: Ustream

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  • krumme - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link

    LOL, good one, but you misspelled you name.
    As 8 jaguar cores is about the same size as a single core i7. Add far cheaper process. You could probably get a quarter to a half Intel single core. Try gaming on that :)
  • Mugur - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link

    EXACTLY.
  • silverblue - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link

    I'm not sure about that. Had you said Piledriver "module", then I wouldn't be quibbling, but as Jaguar should be roughly equivalent to K8 in performance per core, and Phenom was only a modest step up, I couldn't see how a Piledriver core on its own would outperform it so massively especially considering they're smaller than Stars cores themselves. Even so, if you meant module, I'd agree 100%.
  • piroroadkill - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link

    Haha, what? Then stick with the PC Gaming Master Race.

    Consoles are not made to compete in raw specs with maxed PCs.
  • Origin64 - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link

    I'm actually quite disappointed with the PS4. Apart from using hardware that's barely current-gen, the new services seem to be blatant ripoffs of what NVidia and Nintendo are doing, and nothing actually new seems to be included in the package. The streaming service produces horrible image quality, from what I've seen from the Killzone video. Also, the lack of any next-gen processing like tesselation in the video worries me.
  • ponderous - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link

    Nice to finally see some info on PS4
  • tipoo - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link

    Anyone who was expecting a sub 600 dollar console to be better than PCs costing more was setting themselves up for disappointment anyways. The rumored specs were pretty much dead on, with a pleasant surprise in the 8GB GDDR5.

    None of us can get GDDR5 as system memory, and most of us don't have half that, most not even a quarter of it, in a GPU.

    And every time a new console launches there are articles about which inexpensive PCs are better, but those kind of miss the point imo, lets see which runs games better in 7 years. Developers won't care about your 7 year old PC, they will care about the current generation of console hardware though and will ensure their game runs well on it.
  • B3an - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link

    The reason a PC wont last as long, even if it's more powerful, is because PC graphics improve more over time. Even many current console ports right now look significantly better on PC. So yes a console will obviously always run it's games well as it's hardware stays the same. But if PC games stayed at the same level of graphics for many years at a time, then PC's would easily be able to do the same.

    Personally i'd prefer the better graphics and if it means upgrading now and again i don't have a problem with that.
  • tipoo - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link

    I'm not saying otherwise, mind. Just that they are different philosophies, and the influx of silly articles elsewhere detailing how so and so computers are already better than it are silly.
  • ionis - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link

    I was really hoping Sony would announce that the PS4 had Rift support.

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