First up is the PS4 CPU (Central Processing Unit)
For comparison the PS3 uses a cell based processor with 1 PPE (Power processing element) @ 3.2 GHz which is dual thread i.e. capable of processing 2 streams of instructions at a time and 8 SPEs (Synergistic Processing Elements) @ 3.2GHz of which 1 is disabled for yield purposes and 1 is reserved for security purposes such as encryption and decryption of the hard drive in real time. The cell in the PS3 has an overall performance of 204 GFLOPs.
Sony had invested hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars in to the development of the Cell Processor and on building fabrication factories (of which cost over $500,000,000 each!), all that money would go to waste if Sony chooses not to include a Cell processor in their next console.
I believe that Sony will add more SPEs to have an overall amount of 16 SPEs as this has an optimal power to heat ratio if manufactured at 32nm. It should consume the same amount of energy as the 90nm Cell processor found in the 60/20Gb PS3s. 1 will be disabled for yield purposes and 1 will be reserved for security purposes. If this cell processor is made then it should start at 32nm as Sony are already at work shrinking the PS3's cell to 32nm. At 32nm they could double the local store for each SPE to 512KiB which will add much more performance for games.
Clock speed could increase to up to 3.8GHz, however with the improved performance of the new cell and the amount of SPEs this is unneeded and will create too much heat. I can only see an increase in clock speed if fabrication starts at 22nm as this will help reduce the heat created. 22nm processors are expected to be released in 2011 so by the time the PS4 comes out this would be the norm, so 22nm is a feasible starting fabrication. This will make it have an overall performance of around 500 GFLOPs for the whole Cell Processor at 3.2GHz.
Second up is the PS4 GPU (Graphical Processing Unit. Updated Feb 2012)
This is where it gets a bit tricky as I am just going to base my prediction on a product that hasn't been released yet. However I do believe that since the PS4 is a “closed” system and that the cell can do some graphical processing that a relatively moderate GPU can be used in the PS4. For comparison the PS3 uses the Reality Synthesizer developed by Nvidia, clocked at 550MHz with 256Mb of GDDR3 clocked at 700MHz.
So if Sony is going to continue with stereoscopic 3D then that will rule out any ATI 5000 series cards and below and I do believe that Sony will stick with Nvidia anyway since they have a good relationship. The PS4 will need to be able to support 1080p 3D @ 60 FPS per eye so it has to have enough VRAM.
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 700 (due to be released in 2013). A 512 bit bus so that it can communicate with the cell exceptionally fast and a core clock speed in excess of 1GHz. All of which if utilised properly could do 1080p @ 120 FPS with high resolution textures and high AA and AF.
Thirdly the main PS4 system RAM. Updated Feb 2012)
For comparison the PS3 has 256Mb of XDR RAM clocked at an amazing 3.2GHz (Super fast!!!!! :o). The next obvious step would to include 1Gb of XDR however XDR2 has been released since that time with many improvements such as a bandwidth increase and reduced latency (even though it was low to begin with). XDR2 operates at double the CPU speed, so 6.4GHz to 7.6GHz is expected even though it can operate at up to 8GHz!
A unified memory architecture would be the best choice next generation. It gives developers the most flexibility to use the RAM exactly how they want. Code will be much more efficient, so the need for installs would be non-existent. I predict at least 4Gb of RAM in total. Either GDDR6 or XDR2, however GDDR6 is more likely as it is much cheaper and still super fast. The Cell's memory architecture will have to be updated to be compatible with GDDR6, however it has been 7 years since the Cell's creation I am sure that could be easily achieved.
Blu-ray or HVD?
Many people have been saying that the next logical step for Sony is to ditch blu-ray and go with HVD. HVD drives are just too expensive (a few thousand dollars) and too big.
Sony spent a lot of money on developing blu-ray, why would they ditch it? Its wasteful and the fact that not a single developer has created a game that uses a full 50gb dual layer blu-ray disc yet makes the extra space useless. And with a 100gb quad layer disc in development who needs HVD anyway?
Anyway to use the 100Gb disc you'll need a better blu-ray drive with faster reading speeds. The PS3 has a 2x blu-ray disc, 4x is the minimum to read a 100Gb disc. However the average read speed nowadays is 8x and it is relatively cheap, so I expect the PS4 to have at least a 8x drive which reads at 36Mb/s, so games should load much faster.
Hard drive or SSD?
SSDs are still to expensive to even be considered for a games console, so I expect spinning drives to stay with similar sizes of today’s PS3s . I'm not sure if Sony will change the SATA port to SATA 2 or 3 considering hard drives still don’t reach the SATA 1 limit of 150 Mb/s.
Lastly PS4 USB connections
2 to 4 USB 3.0 connections are to be expected. Anyone who has ever done a full back-up of your PS3 would be grateful for USB 3 connections as backing up 100Gbs of install data, applications and save data can take about 8 hours, with USB 3 this should be halved.
Posted by Henry, you may recognize my user name from the PS4 Forums. I have written an article for all of you about what I believe could* be the the specification of the Playstation 4.
*Disclaimer: This article is speculation only, however I have based this article on facts and figures to make as accurate an assumption as I possibly can. Any similarities with the Playstation 4 (in the event of Sony releasing the specifications of the Playstation 4) is purely coincidental. Enjoy and if you have any questions please leave a message below or message me in the PS4 Forums (registration is free). This article will be updated periodically with the latest information available to us.
Rumors
Update 03/01/2012
A recent article from Kotaku has begun a heavy debate on the internet, relating to the processor choice of the next Playstation console. The current processor in the Playstation 3 uses the Cell architecture originally designed by Playstation creator Ken Kutaragi. He originally planned that several household technologies could use this Cell technology to compliment the Playstation, thus increasing its computational power. Sadly, his vision seems to have come to an end as industry experts are reporting that Sony will ditch the current Nvidia design, for the more favored AMD. Although this is currently just speculation, in an interview last year, critically acclaimed programmer John Carmack said that an AMD Fusion-style chip was almost inevitable for the next generation of consoles.
This is a double-edged sword for Playstation fans. If the rumors are true, developers could already be developing titles for the Playstation 4 using currently available AMD technology. the downside, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make current Playstation 3 games or PSN titles, compatible with the Playstation 4. So what are your thoughts? Would you prefer backwards compatibility, or are you happy that developers will be able to program next-generation games far more easily? Leave a comment and let us know.
For comparison the PS3 uses a cell based processor with 1 PPE (Power processing element) @ 3.2 GHz which is dual thread i.e. capable of processing 2 streams of instructions at a time and 8 SPEs (Synergistic Processing Elements) @ 3.2GHz of which 1 is disabled for yield purposes and 1 is reserved for security purposes such as encryption and decryption of the hard drive in real time. The cell in the PS3 has an overall performance of 204 GFLOPs.
Sony had invested hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars in to the development of the Cell Processor and on building fabrication factories (of which cost over $500,000,000 each!), all that money would go to waste if Sony chooses not to include a Cell processor in their next console.
I believe that Sony will add more SPEs to have an overall amount of 16 SPEs as this has an optimal power to heat ratio if manufactured at 32nm. It should consume the same amount of energy as the 90nm Cell processor found in the 60/20Gb PS3s. 1 will be disabled for yield purposes and 1 will be reserved for security purposes. If this cell processor is made then it should start at 32nm as Sony are already at work shrinking the PS3's cell to 32nm. At 32nm they could double the local store for each SPE to 512KiB which will add much more performance for games.
Second up is the PS4 GPU (Graphical Processing Unit. Updated Feb 2012)
This is where it gets a bit tricky as I am just going to base my prediction on a product that hasn't been released yet. However I do believe that since the PS4 is a “closed” system and that the cell can do some graphical processing that a relatively moderate GPU can be used in the PS4. For comparison the PS3 uses the Reality Synthesizer developed by Nvidia, clocked at 550MHz with 256Mb of GDDR3 clocked at 700MHz.
So if Sony is going to continue with stereoscopic 3D then that will rule out any ATI 5000 series cards and below and I do believe that Sony will stick with Nvidia anyway since they have a good relationship. The PS4 will need to be able to support 1080p 3D @ 60 FPS per eye so it has to have enough VRAM.
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 700 (due to be released in 2013). A 512 bit bus so that it can communicate with the cell exceptionally fast and a core clock speed in excess of 1GHz. All of which if utilised properly could do 1080p @ 120 FPS with high resolution textures and high AA and AF.
Thirdly the main PS4 system RAM. Updated Feb 2012)
For comparison the PS3 has 256Mb of XDR RAM clocked at an amazing 3.2GHz (Super fast!!!!! :o). The next obvious step would to include 1Gb of XDR however XDR2 has been released since that time with many improvements such as a bandwidth increase and reduced latency (even though it was low to begin with). XDR2 operates at double the CPU speed, so 6.4GHz to 7.6GHz is expected even though it can operate at up to 8GHz!
A unified memory architecture would be the best choice next generation. It gives developers the most flexibility to use the RAM exactly how they want. Code will be much more efficient, so the need for installs would be non-existent. I predict at least 4Gb of RAM in total. Either GDDR6 or XDR2, however GDDR6 is more likely as it is much cheaper and still super fast. The Cell's memory architecture will have to be updated to be compatible with GDDR6, however it has been 7 years since the Cell's creation I am sure that could be easily achieved.
Blu-ray or HVD?
Many people have been saying that the next logical step for Sony is to ditch blu-ray and go with HVD. HVD drives are just too expensive (a few thousand dollars) and too big.
Sony spent a lot of money on developing blu-ray, why would they ditch it? Its wasteful and the fact that not a single developer has created a game that uses a full 50gb dual layer blu-ray disc yet makes the extra space useless. And with a 100gb quad layer disc in development who needs HVD anyway?
Anyway to use the 100Gb disc you'll need a better blu-ray drive with faster reading speeds. The PS3 has a 2x blu-ray disc, 4x is the minimum to read a 100Gb disc. However the average read speed nowadays is 8x and it is relatively cheap, so I expect the PS4 to have at least a 8x drive which reads at 36Mb/s, so games should load much faster.
Hard drive or SSD?
SSDs are still to expensive to even be considered for a games console, so I expect spinning drives to stay with similar sizes of today’s PS3s . I'm not sure if Sony will change the SATA port to SATA 2 or 3 considering hard drives still don’t reach the SATA 1 limit of 150 Mb/s.
Lastly PS4 USB connections
2 to 4 USB 3.0 connections are to be expected. Anyone who has ever done a full back-up of your PS3 would be grateful for USB 3 connections as backing up 100Gbs of install data, applications and save data can take about 8 hours, with USB 3 this should be halved.
Posted by Henry, you may recognize my user name from the PS4 Forums. I have written an article for all of you about what I believe could* be the the specification of the Playstation 4.
*Disclaimer: This article is speculation only, however I have based this article on facts and figures to make as accurate an assumption as I possibly can. Any similarities with the Playstation 4 (in the event of Sony releasing the specifications of the Playstation 4) is purely coincidental. Enjoy and if you have any questions please leave a message below or message me in the PS4 Forums (registration is free). This article will be updated periodically with the latest information available to us.
Rumors
Update 03/01/2012
A recent article from Kotaku has begun a heavy debate on the internet, relating to the processor choice of the next Playstation console. The current processor in the Playstation 3 uses the Cell architecture originally designed by Playstation creator Ken Kutaragi. He originally planned that several household technologies could use this Cell technology to compliment the Playstation, thus increasing its computational power. Sadly, his vision seems to have come to an end as industry experts are reporting that Sony will ditch the current Nvidia design, for the more favored AMD. Although this is currently just speculation, in an interview last year, critically acclaimed programmer John Carmack said that an AMD Fusion-style chip was almost inevitable for the next generation of consoles.
This is a double-edged sword for Playstation fans. If the rumors are true, developers could already be developing titles for the Playstation 4 using currently available AMD technology. the downside, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make current Playstation 3 games or PSN titles, compatible with the Playstation 4. So what are your thoughts? Would you prefer backwards compatibility, or are you happy that developers will be able to program next-generation games far more easily? Leave a comment and let us know.
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