It doesn't all mean much to me either mr nelly. And I already know old boy timey is as clueless as I.

Some of the guys popping into this forum, like ccxo, seem to understand a lot more.

So you're a car man are ya? Looks like you know your stuff too.

My darkened cave... I am awake! Beware Timey! Hello Nelly! I'm coming to get you!!

Now, where did I put my glasses and false teeth? Ah. Timey's got them! Yeah, I'll join you two in OAPs United Team if/when I ever get a PS4 console.

After reading MrNelster's linked article and looking at the pictures and videos the author linked to in support of his argument I am thinking he's got a point in all this Hetergeneous System Architecture malarkey that I was not previously aware of in its subtle distinctions from past APU architecture.

At first I had to google HSA but the initial results were not promising. It could not mean the human slaughter association could it? I mean, that's a bit weird. But when you put it in the context of gaming, maybe less so. And then it came to me and my understanding was furthered like a brilliant ray of light shining down briefly and filling me with wonderment and understanding except it didn't last very long or at least dissipated greatly when I saw the first slide. They were seemingly talking about how APU computing is evolving to a place it hasn't been before and that was why the guy was so excited about his 1.21 Gigawatts of computer power that he celebrated at Halloween like only a true ubergeek would.

So, um. Frustum culling eh? Yeah, nice one. Didn't think of that one. Parallelism? They always say that when they wanna make an argument. Unified address space and asymmetry (that old chestnut!) Yes, well I guess it makes sense if it's gonna reduce the latency and increase path-finding response times whilst simultaneously offloading ordinary asset decompression from the CPU to GPGPU who-gee-makals. Who'd have thought it eh? Less saturation and more frame rates is what we all want, of course!

HSA solves two major obstacles says he. Latency and memory access. Whilst HSAIL allows for entirely new kinds of GPGPU programs. Yes, yes. Of course it does. That's why SIMD programming will now be easier for PS4 developers. They won't need to worry about it all now. Easy peasy. Now at last APUs can be used to offload the CPU and praise be! Parallelism is preserved!! Amen and alleluia! HSAs are the future!

Integrated system architecture has worked wonders for the evolution of smartphones since the PS3 first came into being. AMD and Nvidia have been working on the Accelerated Processing Unit for some time now and it looks like the next gens will finally take off. Higher yields and lower cost, like I said, will hopefully all translate into new games. New innovate and highly original games that are fun to play and good looking to look at with lots of fancy pants physical things going on like realistic lighting, fog and smoke and water effects. Throw in more destructive terrain and litter the place with erm, litter. And we're talking!

Also, I reckon Sony have done a good job with the new Dualshock 4 controller and it shows they've been thinking really hard about their gaming customers. Ditto the Share button which I think is a nice thing to add but wouldn't personally use myself unless it was a really funny and special moment like killing Timey with a sneeze or something and watching him fall to his death off a skyscraper tower. Now, that would be worth recording and sharing!!

So, at the moment PCs don't have so much GDDR5 memory or true HSA APUs it seems. It will likely be a while longer before PC games developers can utilise the awesomeness too especially when you consider they will always be hampered by the average common denominator: those who've got aging PCs like mine and who would cry long and loud if a new game should come out that I could not play. Then there's the cost of all those upgrades [shudder]. Too much. Which is why I was kind of interested to see what the latest consoles should bring to the table and what they'd themselves cost.

But there's still the issue of costs of games and whether you can trade them in after. I can't see games publishers pushing for lower price points for games from all the savings they'll be making in development costs somehow. Time will tell and I have to agree that the next 2 years is gonna be an interesting time to be a gamer. Then after that, we'll all be back in the mire of pessimistic thought we've been in and complaining that Crysis 4 just looks so much better on the PC *if* you can afford top end stuff.

As Julius Caesar reputedly once said "omnibus locis fit caedes." Let the gaming begin!

Edited by deleted (Mon 25-Feb-13 07:13:41)

Thanks Professor Spook.

It was like reading the first chapter of the Bible

I started reading it this morning but come 12pm i had to go out so i bookmarked it

It would be fun you have to admit,mind you knowing sony we could be waiting along time and i doubt the console will hit worldwide.

Yeah, we will probably have to wait a year from now. But it would be cool, eh? You me and nelly all firing away at Swanny!

How far did you get then? In the beginning there was the Pong? And from the great Pong there came along a song that went a-ding-a-ling-a-long and low, video (and then computer) gaming was born.

You mess with the best you die like the rest

In reply to a post by time2die:

Dont care for ,Facebook,twitter,amazon.lovefilm,netflix and all the other junk neither.

Why do they think we do??
I deleted my facebook account and definitely don't want any of that other junk thanks

The only way we would be playing Swanny would be if the game had Battlefield in the title