Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/259450
C G W Ja n u a r y / Fe b ru a r y 2 014 ■ 17 a carefully designed machine for running the most advanced games and entertainment that developers have to offer. With every new console come new obstacles. Developers are keenly aware of this fact, having fought many battles in the previous wars of system design complexity. As such, developers always view new consoles with some degree of trepidation over how different the process and tools will be from the past generation. In the last cycle, the PS3 and Xbox 360 had widely divergent architectures that made developing for both simultaneously quite a chore. "When you're moving from a piece of hardware that you have nearly a decade's worth of experience with, there's a bit of a shock when all of a sudden the problem you're running into is brand new and no one else has seen it yet," says Liam Gilbride, technical art director on Capcom's Dead Rising 3 for the Xbox One. "You have to re-invent all new tricks; a lot of the old ones either don't work or aren't valid anymore." Luckily for developers, the PS4 and Xbox One are much more closely related in specs and are practically distant cous- ins to one another. On the CPU side, both consoles tote 64-bit x86 cores based on the AMD Jaguar compute units for a total of eight cores each. The Jaguar processer was basically AMD's version of the Intel Atom. In this case, these are custom-made for the consoles. As such, they have 20 percent more instructions per cycle than the standard compute unit. "The CPUs on the new consoles are fast," says Chris Jurney, senior programmer at indie developer Supergiant Games, "but per-core they are slower than desktops, so we've had to do a lot of work threading our engine to take advantage of the increased core count." Each console also contains 8 gb of RAM, which is shared between the CPUs and GPUs. That gives this generation of hardware 16 times as much memory as the previous generation (Xbox 360 and PS3). On the GPU side, both consoles are running AMD Jaguar compute units at 1.6 ghz with an 800mhz clock speed. Sony, however, has 18 compute cores, while Microsoft is running with 12. This technically means that the Xbox One peak shader output is 1.23 teraflops (Tflop), while the PS4 puts out 1.84 Tflop. This is where the true power of the consoles comes from. Developers are keenly focused on utilizing those GPU compute cores, along with that huge amount of memory, to do amazing things. "We've definitely taken advantage of all the extra power by increasing the complexities of our shaders and the density of content in our levels," says Jurney from Supergiant Games, makers of Bastion and the upcoming PS4 title Transistor. "With a smaller game and having so much memory, we don't really have to worry about load times or asset sizes. Our whole game will likely fit into RAM on the PS4." Not only do the new hardware systems provide a bump in RAM, but they pro- vide much larger hard drives, as well – 500 gb in each. This enables the practical a carefully designed machine for running the most advanced games and entertainment that developers have to offer. With every new console come new obstacles. Developers are keenly aware of this fact, having fought many battles in the previous wars of system design complexity. As such, developers always view new consoles with some degree of trepidation over how different the process and tools will be from the past generation. In the last cycle, the PS3 and Xbox 360 had widely divergent architectures that made developing for both simultaneously quite a chore. "When you're moving from a piece of hardware that you have nearly a decade's worth of experience with, there's a bit of a shock when all of a sudden the problem you're running into is brand new and no one else has seen it yet," says Liam Gilbride, ■ THE NEW GENERATION of consoles, including Microsoft's Xbox One (top), are resulting in a new generation of game graphics, such as those in Capcom's Dead Rising 3 (left). technical art director on Capcom's 3 for the Xbox One. "You have to re-invent all new tricks; a lot of the old ones either don't work or aren't valid anymore." Xbox One are much more closely related in specs and are practically distant cous ins to one another. On the CPU side, both consoles tote 64-bit x86 cores based on the AMD Jaguar compute units for a total of eight cores each. The Jaguar processer was basically AMD's version of the Intel Atom. In this case, these are custom-made for the consoles. As such, they have 20 percent more instructions per cycle than the standard compute unit. "The CPUs on the new consoles are fast," says Chris Jurney, senior programmer at indie developer Supergiant Games, "but per-core they are slower than desktops, so we've had to do a lot of work threading our engine to take advantage of the increased core count." Each console also contains 8 gb of RAM, which is shared between the CPUs and GPUs. That gives this generation of hardware 16 times as much memory as the previous generation (Xbox 360 and PS3). On the GPU side, both consoles are running AMD Jaguar compute units at 1.6 Sony, however, has 18 compute cores, while Microsoft is running with 12. This technically means that the Xbox One peak shader output is 1.23 teraflops (Tflop), while the PS4 puts out 1.84 Tflop. This is where the true power of the consoles comes from. Developers are keenly focused on utilizing those GPU compute cores, along with that huge amount of memory, to do amazing things. "We've definitely taken advantage of all the extra power by increasing the complexities of our shaders and the density of content in our levels," says Jurney from Supergiant Games, makers of Transistor. "With a smaller game and having so much memory, we don't really Transistor. "With a smaller game and having so much memory, we don't really Transistor have to worry about load times or asset sizes. Our whole game will likely fit into RAM on the PS4." Not only do the new hardware systems provide a bump in RAM, but they pro vide much larger hard drives, as well – 500 "When you're moving from a piece of hardware that you have nearly a decade's worth of experience with, there's a bit of a shock when all of a sudden the problem you're running into is brand new and no one else has seen it yet," says Liam Gilbride, ■ THE NEW GENERATION of consoles, including Microsoft's Xbox One (top), are resulting in a new generation of game graphics, such as those in Capcom's Dead Rising 3 (left). Game On!