Business Unit or Product Name
IBM Is Serious About
Games
John M. Cohn
IBM Fellow
© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
Every New Game Console is Powered by IBM
*
Sony
PlayStation®3
*
Microsoft
Xbox 360®
Nintendo
Wii®
*
* Chips not to scale
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© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
Why Does IBM Care About Games?
IBM makes high performance servers, so why games?
– Servers are high margin, but low volume
– Technology investment for server leadership is very expensive
• e.g. 300mm fab in East Fishkill, NY = $3B
Game chips are high volume
– Game chips expected to generate big revenue for IBM
– Help amortize the cost of server investment
– Provide high volume part numbers for line learning / efficiency
3
© 2003 IBM Corporation
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Games Are BIG Business
4
© 2003 IBM Corporation
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Games Generate Great Press for IBM
“It was originally conceived
as the microprocessor to
power Sony's [PS3], but it is
expected to find a home in
lots of other broadbandconnected consumer items
and in servers too.”
-- IEEE Spectrum
“…Cell could power
hundreds of new apps,
create a new videoprocessing industry and
fuel a multibillion-dollar
build out of tech hardware
over ten years.”
-- Forbes
5
© 2003 IBM Corporation
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Why Did the Game Companies All Choose IBM?
Deep architectural and design experience
– 50 years of server leadership
Technology Leadership
– Industry leading Si process
– Earliest introduction of new technologies – SOI, Cu, low-K, strained Si
Open architecture
– Power architecture is now the de facto architecture for games
– ‘We’ll do it your way’
Platform partnership manufacturing
– Deep fab partnership
– Multiple sources of supply
6
© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
2005 - 2012
A Brief History of Games
The HD Age:
1995 - 2004
The Next Gen:
1984 - 1994
1971 - 1983
New architectures drive
1984realism
- 1994 into
more
gaming
Home Consoles Rule
1984
1994
with
an -enhanced
gaming experience
-The Digital Living
Room
The Modern Age:
- Convergence of
digital and broadband
devices
PC Gaming drives
the industry
- Home Theatre
- Online Gaming
The Golden Age:
- Multiprocessors
st
1952 - 1970
The Early Years:
Pioneers in
interactive
experience
1950
7
1 home consoles
and PC platforms
2000
1986
1977
1972 Atari 2600
1980
Magnavox
Odyssey
Intelivision
1960 1970
1980
PS2
NES
1995
1989
GameBoy
1990
Gamecube
PlayStation
2002
N64
Xbox
2000
2006
2005
PS3
Xbox360
Revolution
2005
2010
© 2003 IBM Corporation
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Technical Challenges of Games
Performance
Power
8
Cost
© 2003 IBM Corporation
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Performance is Everything !
(Mflops)
Game Processors
PC Processors
1 TFlop
1.E+05
1 GFlop
1.E+03
1.E+01
1994
9
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
Performance - Moore’s Law of Semiconductors
> 1 Billion Transistors
per Chip!!!
4X increase
every 3
years
2X increase
every 3 years
> 10 GHz
10
© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
Materials Innovations to Keep Up
helium
hydrogen
Before 90’s
1
H
2
He
Since the 90’s
12
Mg
calcium
20
Ca
strontium
38
Sr
scandium titanium vanadium chromium
22
22
23
21
24
Ti
Ti
V
Cr
Sc
yttrium
39
Y
barium
56
Ba
57
La
11
cerium
58
Ce
tantalum tungsten
29
73
73
Ta
Ta
W
Praeseo
dymium
59
Pr
neodymium
60
Nd
nickel
28
Ni
oxygen
7
8
O
B
aluminum
silicon
phosphorus
chlorine
15
P
17
copper
29
germanium
arsenic
32
Ge
33
Bromine
35
35
Br
Br
Cu
13
14
Al
Si
zinc
30
Zn
N
Rhenium
75
Re
iridium
77
Ir
As
xenon
54
Xe
platinum
78
Pt
samarium europlum gadollinium
64
63
62
Gd
Eu
Sm
9
F
Cl
ruthenium rhodium palladium
43
45
45
Ru
Rh
Pd
zirconium niobium molybdenum
42
40
41
Mo
Zr
Nb
hafnium
72
Hf
lanthanium
cobalt
27
Co
nitrogen
5
Beyond 2005
magnesium
fluorine
carbon
6
C
boron
bismuth
83
Bi
terbium dysprosium holmium
65
66
67
Tb
Dy
Ho
erbium
68
Er
thullium ytterbium
69
70
Tm
Yb
© 2003 IBM Corporation
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To Put That In Perspective …
If cars had advanced at that rate:
– A Rolls Royce would cost $0.18
– It would go 176,000 MPH
– Get 64,000 MPG
If planes had advanced at that rate
– It would take 5.5 seconds to fly from L.A. to NYC
– … and would reboot randomly and fall out of the sky
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© 2003 IBM Corporation
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But …. Can It Go On Forever ?
13
© 2003 IBM Corporation
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Scaling - The Way it Was
Voltage, V /l
α
WIRING
tox/α
The smaller you get
– If lithography dimensions, gate
thickness and supply voltage go
down by a factor of ~1.4 every 2
years
W/ α
GATE
n+
n+
drain
source
L/ α
p substrate, dopingα*N A
The faster you go
– Your chip will run 1.4 X faster
– Be ~ ½ the size
– And burn roughly half the power
SCALING:
Voltage:
Oxide:
Wire width:
Gate width:
Diffusion:
Substrate:
x d/ α
V/α
tox /α
W/α
L/α
xd /α
α * NA
RESULTS:
Higher Density: ~a2
Higher Speed: ~a
Power/ckt:
~1/a2
Power Density:~Constant
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© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
Power – The Emerging Discontinuity
Passive power
continues to explode
1000
A c tiv e P o w e r
100
Power components:
– Active power
– Passive power
– Gate leakage
Power (W/cm2)
10
1
0.1
L e a k a g e
P o w e r
0.01
0.001
0.0001
1E-5
0.01
0.1
1
Lpoly (um)
silicon bulk field effect
transistor (FET)
15
© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
Power Impacts Performance
250
3500
Chip Power
Watts
Single Thread
Performance
3000
SPECint
200
2500
150
Practical power limit for
commodity packaging
2000
Single thread performance
growth rate slows
dramatically
1500
100
Historical Trend
45% CGR
1000
50
500
0
0
1998
16
2000
2000
2002
2002
2004
2004
2006
2006
2008
2008
2010
1998
1998
2000
2000
2002
2002
2004
2004
2006
2006
2008
2008
2010
© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
Further Impacts of Power
Power is a major concern as it drives heat, reliability, fan noise
So we design cores for power constrained performance
nuclearreactor
reactor
10W * 100M * ¼ = 250MW ½½nuclear
Assume you
could save 10W
per chip
Assume 25% of
units are
powered on at
any one time
# of consoles
projected
17
Vermont Yankee
Nuclear Power Plant
535MW
© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
Why Is Cost So Important?
Chip development costs are significant
– e.g. Building Cell took $400M (STI), 5 years and 450 people
– Development costs must be recovered by software sales
$$$
– Drives longer product lifecycle 5 years
t
ofi
r
P
Dev Cost
Re
ry
e
v
co
Breakeven
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Final Profit
Time
© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
How Do We Beat Scaling ?
Application
Specific
Optimized Single Thread
Performance
IT / Games /
SuperC
uP uP
uP4
PPC uP4
Core(s)
uP4
Accelerator
uP uP
uP uP
uP4
uP uP
Scale Up
Memory
uP3 uP3
Game
Processors
uP
P5
3 uP3 uP3
uP
3
uP
2
uP
3
IO
Accelerator
Accelerator
up
Next Gen
Products
up
Customer IP
uP
2
405/440 SoCs
Power
Architectur
e
uP
up
up
uP
2
uP uP
ASSPs /
ASICs SoCs
uP uP
uP uP
u
uP uPP
450 SoCs
Multi-core Processing
Scale Out
19
Embedded Markets
OEM / Licensing
uP uP
uP uP
Accelerator
Accelerator
...
© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
System Design
Integration Driven
Scaling Driven
System
Chip
Processor
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Applications
Middleware
O/S
Compilers
Bus
Memory Interfaces
Semiconductors
Processor Core
Cache
Packaging
I/O
Cooling
Interconnect
Applications
Middleware
O/S
Hypervisor
Cluster
Multiple Cores
Embedded Memory
Accelerators
Power Management
Interconnects
Switch Fabric
Cache
High Speed I/O
Compilers
Semiconductors
Processor Core
Cache
Packaging
I/O
Cooling
System
Level
Integration
Chip
Level
Integration
© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
XBAR
– 3.2GHz
– Multithreading
CPU
PHY
PLL
L2
TEST / DEBUG
– Specialized Function VMX
MISC IO
3-Way Symmetric Multi-Processor
– IBM PowerPC Architecture®
CPU
CPU
FSB
E.g.: Microsoft Xbox 360
DEBUG IO
Firsts:
– First 3-way SMP in volume
production
– Silicon tape-out to > 1 million parts
in less than one year
– Highest frequency IBM Power
Architecture™ core shipped at the
time
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© 2003 IBM Corporation
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E.g.: Cell Processor
250M transistors … 235mm2
Top frequency >4GHz in lab
> 200 GFlops (SP) @3.2GHz
> 20 GFlops (DP) @3.2GHz
Up to 25.6 GB/s memory B/W
Up to 70+ GB/s I/O B/W
– Practical ~ 50GB/s
100+ simultaneous bus
transactions
– 16+8 entry DMA queue per
SPE
22
© 2003 IBM Corporation
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What Does Multi-Core Really Buy You?
Terragen
Intel Pentium
23
Terrain Rendering Engine
STI Cell
© 2003 IBM Corporation
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Ray Casting
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© 2003 IBM Corporation
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Cell B.E. Chip
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© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
Building New Businesses from Game Processors
3D Visualization via Volumetric Rendering for Medical Images
PC Solution
~6 minutes to render entire volume
~2 seconds per slice
Cell Solution
~2 seconds to render entire volume
Courtesy of Mercury Computer Systems
http://www.mc.com/cell/media/medium.cfm
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© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
It’s Just Ducky
27
© 2003 IBM Corporation
Business Unit or Product Name
Summary
IBM has locked down the games industry
– We’re working hard to keep it
Innovations are aimed at managing performance, cost, power
– Multi-core, cost efficient, low power designs
Leveraging investment in game λP to create new opportunities
So What?
– IBM Innovation made these chips possible
– Spread the word – Video games are cool and so are we!
– What could you use a small, fast supercomputer for?
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© 2003 IBM Corporation