Scorpio Uses Jaguar Chip

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11250/microsofts-project-scorpio-more-hardware-details-revealed

That's a rather technical description of the hardware many might prefer to skip, but it describe the scorpio console as having eight jaguar cores, probably a polaris gpu, and a really funky memory bus nobody can figure out. If I had to guess, the memory crossbar is about virtual reality applications where the machine feeds different images to each eye. However, consoles have always been about how cheap any memory is at the time and this one will come with 12gb of GDDR5 which is faster than ram and dedicated to just graphics. What the article doesn't say is that MS invested in AMD in order to reap the benefits of buying a cheaper eight core processor and gpu. Consoles always come out as the prices fall on memory because they want the cheapest parts imaginable but, being a console, even a slow eight core cpu can provide 60fps because all of the games are optimized for that specific hardware and windows ten is made just for this kind of multicore processing. In fact, because its a console the 12gbs of GDDR5 it has can be considered the equivalent of 24gb in a desktop because its really all about sheer bandwidth when everything is already optimized for the machine.

The next generation of this same console should come with a ryzen processor and vega gpu and have a substantial leap in power over what can already provide an impressive 4k resolutions at 60fps. The next generation might be the machine that is capable of truly impressive real-time ray traced geometry and virtual reality programs. Its already possible to give any video game ever made much more vibrant and realistic ray traced lighting or global illumination, but what is coming along with it is interactive environments and characters that will blow your mind. For example, with ray tracing characters can know when you are looking at them and have much more AI and its also possible to make things like buildings out of boards and bricks or whatever to create destructible landscapes or the equivalent of Mine Craft with realistic graphics that allow you to build the Brooklyn Bridge or whatever. Once ray tracing becomes standard its a much more intuitive way to program graphics allowing individuals to play more of the part of a director in the movies and put more art into the technology that, of course, will increase demand and drive down the prices.

What Sony will do in response is anyone's guess, but it appears scorpio is aimed at undercutting any hardware advantages they have had in the past by MS basically investing in better hardware and simply leveraging all the bandwidth possible on an eight core cpu capable of doing complete matrices. That's where it starts and where the two should go from there is into exploiting different bandwidth schemes that become more elaborate with time. Vega and ryzen being in the next machine means Sony will have to come out with something along the lines of its own high bandwidth controller like AMD's HBM2 suggesting both consoles are going to remain married to AMD for the near future. It also means a relatively inexpensive console can produce results that require a home computer twice as expensive and can produce even impressive results at 1080p that improve the graphics.

It points to the same kinds of dramatic gains we should see in the near future in desktops and laptops as the entire industry adopts more analog architecture better suited to bandwidth concerns thanks to just the continuing shrinking of everything on chips.