Console Architecture

1
Overview

• What is a console?
• Console components
• Differences between consoles and PCs
• Benefits of console development
• The development environment
• Console game design
• PS3 in detail
• Console transitions
What is a Console?

• Consoles are dedicated game machines

– Nintendo WiiU, Wii
– Nintendo GameCube (NGC)
– Nintendo64 (N64)
– Nintendo DS / 3DS
– Nintendo GameBoy Advanced (GBA)
– Xbox One, Xbox 360, Xbox
– Sony Playstation 4 (PS4), PS3, PS2, Playstation (PSX)
– Playstation Portable (PSP)
– Playstation Vita
– Sega Dreamcast (DC)
Console Evolution
• Sony Playstation (1995)
– 33 MHz MIPS R3000 derivative
– 2 MB RAM
– CD-based storage (~650 MB / disc)
• Sony Playstation 2 (2000)
– 300 MHz MIPS R5000 derivative
– 32 MB RAM
– DVD-based storage (~9 GB / disc)
• Sony Playstation 3 (2006)
– 3 GHz Cell processor (PowerPC core plus 7 custom SPUs)
– 256 MB CPU RAM plus 256 MB Video RAM
– Blu-ray-based storage (50 GB / disc)
• Sony Playstation 4 (2013)
– 1.6 GHz 8-core x64 CPU
– 8 GB Unified GDDR RAM
– Blu-ray + 500GB HD
Differences from PC

• Output to TV rather than monitor

– Lower resolution
– Poor colour reproduction on older generations (NTSC)
• Limited permanent storage until this generation
– No hard disk on Xbox and Wii
– No virtual memory
• Can implement it yourself on PS3 though
– Slow physical media access
• As compared to HD access
• No keyboard, mouse
– Makes control systems for FPS and RTS games difficult
– Some modern consoles have capability to use them, but can’t
generally depend on them
Console Benefits

• Fixed target
– Makes it easier to eke out performance
– More exposure of underlying hardware
• Consoles are dedicated to games
– Dedicated hardware, dedicated software platform (e.g. Trophies)
• Bigger market
– Consoles are cheaper
– More accessible
– More people have them
• PC hardware market is bigger, but a lot of that is for businesses
– Consoles are more secure
• Less copyright infringement
– More people buy games
– More $$$ for developers
Console Liabilities

• Underpowered
– Particularly near the end of it’s life

• Little, or no operating system

– DIY memory management
– Lots of hardware level programming
• Interrupt handlers
• DMA
• Task scheduling
• Assembly

• Less open production / distribution models

The Development Environment

• Games are written on a host machine

– PC
– Mac
– Linux
• Compiled on the host with a cross-compiler
– Visual Studio for Xbox
– GCC and SN compilers for PS3
– CodeWarrior for Nintendo Wii
• Downloaded to development system through a network or
USB connection
Testing and Debugging

• The game runs on the development system.

• Debugging is done remotely
– Can be across regular network connection (Xbox, PS3)
• Integrated seamlessly into Visual Studio for Xbox
• Separate app (SN Debugger) for PS3
– Or custom connection (GameCube, all earlier consoles)
• Rather than burning disks, a DVD emulator is used to
allow games to test streaming systems, etc.
Development Libraries

• There is little in the way of an operating system, but there

are usually some libraries to help you get off the ground
• Lots of variation between consoles
• Support can be weak
– Particularly early in lifecycle
– Libraries coming in late
– Poor documentation
– Bugs
Game Design

• Console architecture can have a large effect on game

design:
– Limited memory:
• Reduce size of world or stream from DVD
– Lower resolution
• Different input mechanisms
– Can only depend on gamepad, that affects design
– Motion control getting pretty ubiquitous
• Console games are played in a different environment
– Living room, TV, stereo
– Party gaming
• Console gamers represent a different market
– Some markets still live on PC (MMO, Strategy)
– Wii has a much broader base of players
A Third Generation 3D Console

• Released in 2006
• 3.2 GHz CPU
• 8 CPU cores
• 2 × 256 MB RAM
• Blu-ray
• Up to 320 GB HDD
• Gigabit Ethernet
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• USB
CPU

• 1 Power Processing Element (PPE)

– PowerPC instruction set
– 2 × 32k L1 caches
– 512k L2 cache
– 64 and 128 bit register sets
– 2 hardware threads
• 7 Synergistic Processing Elements (SPE)
– Custom instruction set
– 256k embedded SRAM
– 128 × 128 bit SIMD registers
– Main memory access via DMA only
• High throughput, high latency design trade-off
Graphics

• Half the main memory is VRAM

– Fast to read by GPU (22 GB/s)
– Fast to write by CPU (4 GB/s)
– Slow to read by CPU (16 MB/s)!
• RSX graphics chip
– 550 MHz
– Based on NV47 (GeForce 7800)
– Parallel programmable shader pipelines
• 8 vertex
• 24 pixel
– 24 texture filtering (TF) units
– 8 texture addressing (TA) units
– Peak theoretical pixel fill rate 4.4 Gpixel/s
Development Environment

• Compilers
– GCC version provided by Sony
– SNC provided by SN Systems (Sony’s subsidiary)
• IDEs
– Visual Studio integration plugin from SN Systems
• Debuggers
– ProDG Debugger from SN System
• Graphics libraries
– GCM
– PSGL
PlayStation 3 Issues

• Memory dichotomy
– All budgets need to be expressed in two values
– CPU memory is premium
• Heterogeneous CPU architecture
– Different compile/link/execute path for SPUs
– Lack of direct addressing
– Learning threshold for programmers
• Big performance gains once you get over it
• RSX performance
– Addition of RSX was an afterthought
– Rendering is a bottleneck
– Can/must be circumvented by better use of SPUs
• But then the advantage of having the SPUs is less
Console transitions
Console transitions

• Because console are fixed targets, eventually they get out

of date
• Refreshes generally happen to all ecosystems at once
– Nobody wants to be (to far) behind
• Last transition
– Started November 2005 (XBox 360)
– Took roughly a year for all hardware to refresh
– Some things lingered
• Software takes a while to taper off
• PS2 still manufactured till last year
• Current transition
– Started November 2012 (Wii U)
– Sony and Microsoft shipped new hardware in 2013
– Hardware may have longer post replacement shelf life this time
Console transitions

• Lots of business turmoil during a transition

– Last one started with Sony in a dominant position and Microsoft
and Nintendo as also-rans
– Finished with Nintendo out in front (but not as far as Sony had
been), and MS narrowly beating Sony
• Though split by territory was pretty dramatic
– Could someone get ‘Dreamcasted’?
• New platforms open up new possibilities
– Last generation brought us motion controls
– Nintendo is banking on multi-screen gaming this time out
– Better hardware enables various enhancements
– Means learning a bunch of new stuff
The next Sony and Microsoft consoles

• PS4 and XBox One shipped for Christmas 2013

• Predictable improvements in overall performance

• Architecturally very similar to a PC

– Very little special games hardware
• Mostly controller improvements
• Some custom silicon on CPU/GPU
– Significant improvements to software platform
• Video Streaming, Play while installing, etc.

• Microsoft tried to switch to full digital distribution of

games, but backed out due to customer complaints
Console transition

• From a development perspective, this transition was as

easy as you could hope for

• No strange new architectures

• No new programming models
– Compute Shaders are more usable than previous consoles
• More performance, and more predictable performance
• Lots more memory

• It’s less clear how the transition will work out from a
business perspective, or who will “win” this generation
In Closing

• Consoles present many interesting challenges.

• The fixed platform that consoles offer is both

advantageous and limiting.

• Consoles are entering a very turbulent year or two.