Would it be technically possible to have a PS4 portable nowadays? (no streaming techniques)

lunanto · Nov 25, 2019

Calling out the technicians/magicians of RESETERA here.

This last year I have been enjoying a lot with my PS4 and my Nintendo Switch. Games like The Last Of Us Remastered and God Of War have totally seduced me and at times I have wanted to "undock" (!?) the PS4 to just continue my game lying in bed. You may say there are plenty of great games on the Switch that you can play wherever you want and this is totally true, but PS4 has great games as well, and these games are great because they run on a more capable hardware, among other reasons.

Given this thought of mine, the recent patents of new Sony cartridges (probably pointing at the Sony Toio or the SSD storage of the upcoming PS5) and the Switch reaching its maturity in the market, I feel this question is relevant and enriching for a possible discussion:

Would it be technically possible to have a PS4 portable nowadays? (no streaming techniques)

I am not especially wise in these technical matters but I just know it would be insane to have a hardware that powerful running games in your (I hope not burnt) hands.

Enlight me/us, please.

GhostTrick · Nov 25, 2019

Define portable.

Porygon · Nov 25, 2019

Like the Switch?

Technically I would say yes, but the cost....

Terrysaur · Nov 25, 2019

Absolutely. However, such a thing would only be marketable if the PlayStation R&D team can find a way to make it as cheap to produce as humanly possible.

Pottuvoi · Nov 25, 2019

Something like IBM 5155 should be reasonably easy.

MysticGon · Nov 25, 2019

Gaming laptops exist so sure.

But nah, the DF guys did something on this a year ago. It just draws too much power and generates too much heat to resemble anything like a traditional handheld or even the Switch.

baggage · Nov 25, 2019

I don't believe there is a mobile chipset version of the hardware the PS4 is based on, so "Literal Portable PS4" is Not happening. Absolutely something could be made around the ballpark of the power of the base PS4 but it won't be a "portable PS4"

IronicSonic · Nov 25, 2019

I mean yes but storage probably would be a headache for Sony's R&D team. Like play GTSport on the Go, that's a lot of gigs

T002 Tyrant · Nov 25, 2019

Not without having a large, expensive 1080p OLED screen, be actively cooled and cost $800+

smuf · Nov 25, 2019

Possible but not cheap.

Deleted member 2254 · Nov 25, 2019

I mean, absolutely. There's phones and tablets that already beat current-gen console's computional power, so there's nothing about PS4 (or X1, for that matter) that couldn't be made as a portable experience. It would be a pretty expensive product however, with a relatively limited long-term appeal considering Sony and Microsoft are looking at making your existing devices turn into consoles due to streaming. Releasing a handheld that is more expensive and (obviously) much less powerful than their upcoming consoles is not something I see them doing right now. But it's possible technically, sure.

catboy · Nov 25, 2019

you could definitely have something portable around the power of a ps4, but it would be expensive and probably architecturally very different to the ps4 rendering it basically a new platform.

the biggest things holding mobile chips back are cooling and power - nintendo went with active cooling for switch which was sensible but you can see that in order to get battery efficiency they released a newer model on a significantly more powerful chip but downclocked to resemble the original.

nsilvias · Nov 25, 2019

it'd be a worse switch in battery, size, and thermals

Nostremitus · Nov 25, 2019

baggage said:
I don't believe there is a mobile chipset version of the hardware the PS4 is based on, so it's unlikely. Absolutely something could be made around the ballpark of the power of the base PS4 but it won't be a "portable PS4"

I mean Jaguar were meant to be mobile chips... AMD just couldn't get their performance and thermals to work out. I wonder if super low TDP Zen2 cores could match the Jaguars...

nsilvias · Nov 25, 2019

FairyEmpire said:
There's phones and tablets that already beat current-gen console's computional power

this means nothing if they cant stay cool. phones and tablets even with most mobile games dont get pushed as much as in a proper console game.
try and push those phones and they'll melt themselves if they dont throttle themselves. dont forget about battery

catboy · Nov 25, 2019

Nostremitus said:
I mean Jaguar were meant to be mobile chips... AMD just couldn't get their performance and thermals to work out. I wonder if super low TDP Zen2 cores could match the Jaguars...

those chips were designed for laptops, not tablet / smaller form factor devices.

baggage · Nov 25, 2019

Nostremitus said:
I mean Jaguar were meant to be mobile chips... AMD just couldn't get their performance and thermals to work out. I wonder if super low TDP Zen2 cores could match the Jaguars...

I guess a gaming laptop with compatible hardware would work and would technically count as a portable ps4

Bomblord · Nov 25, 2019

The hardware exists just not in a reasonable form factor/power consumption target for a handheld.

See Surface Pro X which has a stronger CPU and a 2tflop GPU. Although it's Windows gaming performance is pathetic due to the emulation layer.

Deleted member 2254 · Nov 25, 2019

nsilvias said:
this means nothing if they cant stay cool. phones and tablets even with most mobile games dont get pushed as much as in a proper console game.
try and push those phones and they'll melt themselves if they dont throttle themselves. dont forget about battery

But they also have many functions a portable console wouldn't have. The OP is theoretical. Obviously if a portable PS4 came out it wouldn't be flat as an iPad, it would have a much meatier construction which would allow for extra cooling, a massive battery, etc.. In theory it can absolutely be done. It would, however, be a premium priced product because a portable PS4-level hardware that runs games like Red Dead Redemption 2 without dying in 30 minutes is not an easy feat. It's possible but it probably isn't worth the investment, for Sony and the consumers alike.

z0m3le · Nov 25, 2019

Porygon said:
Like the Switch?

Technically I would say yes, but the cost....

I don't think AMD can build a 2TFLOPs GPU with an 8 thread x86 CPU and ~180GB/s bandwidth on ~9 watts.

Bomblord said:
The hardware exists just not in a reasonable form factor/power consumption target.

See Surface Pro X which has a stronger CPU and a 2tflop GPU. Although it's Windows gaming performance is pathetic due to the emulation layer.

That is 2TFLOPs fp16 sadly.

Fularu · Nov 25, 2019

AMD's next line of APUs (to replace the 2400g) should have vastly superior performance to a base PS4 and probably a Pro one.

The issue would be to have them cramped in a Switch like design. This is what the supposedly « real » Zmach portable is doing with a 2200g which can use passive cooling.

Maybe once the APUs are made on a 7nm fab process.

CaviarMeths · Nov 25, 2019

Problems off the top of my head:

PS4 has a high power draw, about 10x higher than the Switch.
PS4 generates a lot of heat.
PS4 uses full size optical discs for media.
PS4 requires high storage capacity for full game downloads.

It would be a very difficult engineering job to solve even one of these problems, let alone all four. Impossible to do it at a price that consumers will pay.

Ishaan · Nov 25, 2019

When you say a "PS4 portable," do you mean something that could run games at the same visual fidelity as an actual PS4? If so, the answer is obviously no. But if you mean something that could run a lot of those games with realistic compromises, that's basically what the Switch already is.

Bomblord · Nov 25, 2019

z0m3le said:
I don't think AMD can build a 2TFLOPs GPU with an 8 thread x86 CPU and ~180GB/s bandwidth on ~9 watts.

That is 2TFLOPs fp16 sadly.

I can't find a reference to that anywhere where did you find that info?

Deleted member 31092 · Nov 25, 2019

Probably in the laptop/big tablet form factor and at a very high price.

Absolutely impossible in the Switch form factor.

Anthony Hopkins · Nov 25, 2019

The mobile GPU adreno 685 is 2.1tflops (fp32) however its memory bandwidth is only 68gbps which is less then 1/2 of the PS4's, so I don't think it could be done.

cw_sasuke · Nov 25, 2019

+100gb games on a portable....good luck with that.

Aostia82 · Nov 25, 2019

Joseki said:
Probably in the laptop/big tablet form factor and at a very high price.

Absolutely impossible in the Switch form factor.

This ia my take on the topic, too

z0m3le · Nov 25, 2019

Fularu said:
AMD's next line of APUs (to replace the 2400g) should have vastly superior performance to a base PS4 and probably a Pro one.

The issue would be to have them cramped in a Switch like design. This is what the supposedly « real » Zmach portable is doing with a 2200g which can use passive cooling.

Maybe once the APUs are made on a 7nm fab process.

I doubt it. PS4's GPU while not RDNA, is still a 1.84TFLOP part, it would need at least 1.5TFLOPs to match what the PS4 does, won't handle the same bandwidth (~180GB/s) and while it might have a better CPU, those APUs in a handheld system won't be able to sip more than ~10 watts for the entire device. It's a tall order for AMD who hasn't been able to keep up with anyone else in the power consumption part of their graphics department.

werezompire · Nov 25, 2019

CaviarMeths said:
PS4 uses full size optical discs for media.
PS4 requires high storage capacity for full game downloads.

It would be a very difficult engineering job to solve even one of these problems, let alone all four. Impossible to do it at a price that consumers will pay.

First one is easily solved by just making it digital-only (which has inherent benefits for portable gaming anyway) and also lowers the manufacturing cost a little since you don't have to include a drive. And you can get micro SD card with around half a TB for a reasonable price these days and they're only going to get bigger & cheaper as time goes on. Yes, some AAA games have massive storage requirements, but the vast majority of games are under 10GB.

Pachinko · Nov 25, 2019

Always .... but the price is the constraining factor. I think nvidia and ARM have chips and such out there that could probably make a PS4 level handheld right now but it might cost north of 500$ so it's not quite feasible. A handheld PS4 that just uses the same parts (like some kind of netbook sized device) would still cost too much to sell to an end user fo similar reasons. Maybe in about 2 years you'll see something like this with a super switch or some such. By then it could probably be done for 300$.

Fisty · Nov 25, 2019

Enjoy either rebuying all your games on carts or only being able to fit 2 or 3 games on a 200gb SD card

We will need major changes to distribution to make it remotely feasible, on top of all the hardware wizardry needed to make it happen

Bomblord · Nov 25, 2019

werezompire said:
First one is easily solved by just making it digital-only (which has inherent benefits for portable gaming anyway). And you can get micro SD card with around half a TB for a reasonable price these days and they're only going to get bigger & cheaper as time goes on. Yes, some AAA games have massive storage requirements, but the vast majority of games are under 10GB.

While I generally agree if you think 1tb micro SD cards are currently at a reasonable price you and I have a very different definition of reasonable xP

Deleted member 227 · Nov 25, 2019

Cooling and cost would be way too hard and high for that being possible.

It may be possible to make a portable device with the graphical output close to a PS4 in the near future, but at that point due to technical differences in architecture it wouldn't really be a "PS4" anymore, but a new platform and that'd require ports instead. They tried that with Vita already.

Fularu · Nov 25, 2019

z0m3le said:
I doubt it. PS4's GPU while not RDNA, is still a 1.84TFLOP part, it would need at least 1.5TFLOPs to match what the PS4 does, won't handle the same bandwidth (~180GB/s) and while it might have a better CPU, those APUs in a handheld system won't be able to sip more than ~10 watts for the entire device. It's a tall order for AMD who hasn't been able to keep up with anyone else in the power consumption part of their graphics department.

A 2200g draws 68w at peak power draw in The Witcher 3, 32w on average. That was on the old fab process and clocked at 3 ghz.

You can definitely go lower and 9e seems pointlessly low. 15w would be more than acceptable and just the die shrink should help AMD get there.

The 2400g draws 40w on average (for better frame rate, in both cases better than the PS4).

Nuclear Muffin · Nov 25, 2019

As in a literal portable PS4? No, and the tech will never get there. The PS4 just wasn't built in a way that could possibly accomodate that kind of power draw and size profile, not even with long-distance future die-shrinks.

As in a portable as, or more powerful, than the PS4? Sure, the tech is there now; but it's still crazy expensive, would require the unit to be huge for a portable, and the battery life would be piss poor.

werezompire · Nov 25, 2019

Bomblord said:
While I generally agree if you think 1tb micro SD cards are currently at a reasonable price you and I have a very different definition of reasonable xP

I didn't say 1TB, I said around half a TB. 400GB & 500GB SD cards can generally be found in the $50-$100 range.

CaviarMeths · Nov 25, 2019

werezompire said:
First one is easily solved by just making it digital-only (which has inherent benefits for portable gaming anyway) and also lowers the manufacturing cost a little since you don't have to include a drive. And you can get micro SD card with around half a TB for a reasonable price these days and they're only going to get bigger & cheaper as time goes on. Yes, some AAA games have massive storage requirements, but the vast majority of games are under 10GB.

We're talking about a portable PS4 though, not just a hypothetical new handheld. No one's going to buy a PS4 that isn't compatible with the games they already bought. Sony's own first party games are all enormous in file size, let alone the popular 3rd party games. This would be dead on arrival at any price if it didn't read discs or fit AAA games.

Bomblord · Nov 25, 2019

werezompire said:
I didn't say 1TB, I said around half a TB. 400GB & 500GB SD cards can generally be found in the $50-$100 range.

Ahh sorry my skimming habit is bad and makes me miss context.

EdgeXL · Nov 25, 2019

I think the Switch is about as powerful as a device can be within a handheld form factor. There is a newer generation of that Tegra chip but as far as I know it has not been tested for a handheld gaming system.

z0m3le · Nov 25, 2019

Bomblord said:
I can't find a reference to that anywhere where did you find that info?

Adreno 640 to 680 is a doubling to the ALUs, 768 in this case. 768*2*585mhz is 898.6GFLOPs FP32, but they report the GPU with 1800GFLOPs, which is what you get with FP16, it is also worth noting that the other clock for the 640 is 675mhz. Doing the same is 1037GFLOPs FP32 and 2074GFLOPs FP16 (What I believe the SQ1 is).

cw_sasuke said:
+100gb games on a portable....good luck with that.

256GB $40 M.2 SSD 2242 (small enough to fit in the Switch)

werezompire · Nov 25, 2019

CaviarMeths said:
We're talking about a portable PS4 though, not just a hypothetical new handheld. No one's going to buy a PS4 that isn't compatible with the games they already bought. Sony's own first party games are all enormous in file size, let alone the popular 3rd party games. This would be dead on arrival at any price if it didn't read discs or fit AAA games.

It would be a harder sale, but let's not say no one. I can't be the only one whose PS4 library is almost entirely digital (and in fact, would be entirely digital if not for the fact that I was a developer of a PS4 game and so I was on Playstation's Christmas list for a couple of years and they sent me a few games). Personally, I'd be much more interested in a PS4 Go that was digital-only than I am for the PS5.

Also, there's no way anyone's making a portable-sized system that reads blurays. Even most laptops these days don't bother including a disk drive. If a theoretical PS4 Portable had physical media, it'd use carts like the Switch.

z0m3le · Nov 25, 2019

Fularu said:
A 2200g draws 68w at peak power draw in The Witcher 3, 32w on average. That was on the old fab process and clocked at 3 ghz.

You can definitely go lower and 9e seems pointlessly low. 15w would be more than acceptable and just the die shrink should help AMD get there.

The 2400g draws 40w on average (for better frame rate, in both cases better than the PS4).

The 2400g needs to be clocked at 1300mhz on the GPU to match the PS4's spec, but it doesn't have the bandwidth to keep up, not sure there is an easy solution there either. You still need to get it down to ~10watts to have a product that lasts 2 hours in a Switch form factor, not saying it's impossible, but AMD has shown no indication that it is possible.

Stowaway Silfer · Nov 25, 2019

I remember Apple saying that the 2018 iPad Pro is more powerful than the Xbox One S so a portable device that could play PS4 games seems technically possible. Would probably be very expensive though.

Fularu · Nov 25, 2019

z0m3le said:
The 2400g needs to be clocked at 1300mhz on the GPU to match the PS4's spec, but it doesn't have the bandwidth to keep up, not sure there is an easy solution there either. You still need to get it down to ~10watts to have a product that lasts 2 hours in a Switch form factor, not saying it's impossible, but AMD has shown no indication that it is possible.

I would rather say that they have had no reasons to try to.

And same can be said about Intel

Bomblord · Nov 25, 2019

z0m3le said:
Adreno 640 to 680 is a doubling to the ALUs, 768 in this case. 768*2*585mhz is 898.6GFLOPs FP32, but they report the GPU with 1800GFLOPs, which is what you get with FP16, it is also worth noting that the other clock for the 640 is 675mhz. Doing the same is 1037GFLOPs FP32 and 2074GFLOPs FP16 (What I believe the SQ1 is).

256GB $40 M.2 SSD 2242 (small enough to fit in the Switch)

Wikipedia's Adreno article lists both the 680 and 685 as 1.8 and 2 tflops FP32 respectively

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adreno

z0m3le · Nov 25, 2019

Fularu said:
I would rather say that they have had no reasons to try to.

And same can be said about Intel

I mean the mobile market is a reason no? why does the V1000 APU exist? they are trying their hardest to compete with Nvidia on power consumption too, and just can't do it unless they are on a much lower node and still comes up short. Did you know that the RDNA 5700xt draws more power than the RTX 2080? and the RTX 2080 is on the TSMC's glorified 16nm node, while 5700xt is on the 7nm one? It's silly efficient in comparison.

Bomblord said:
Wikipedia's Adreno article lists both the 680 and 685 as 1.8 and 2 tflops FP32 respectively

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adreno

Yep, they list the 640 with incorrect flop count too. Even Anandtech noded when discussing the SQ1 that there is no indication on fp16 or fp32 but wiki which can be edited by anyone is sure it's fp32.

Adreno 640, 384 ALUs @ 585mhz is 449GFLOPs fp32. This is also inline with performance we see from the devices with this chip. Anandtech also made a comment that it's hard to fault the manufacture, because in the mobile world, fp16 is used for a lot of the GPUs workload, unlike with desktop computers, so the distinction only makes sense in the desktop realm (or in the console realm, where this is also still currently true).

IDreamOfHime · Nov 25, 2019

I can only imagine the battery life 💀

Isee · Nov 25, 2019

Probably.
The PS4 has 1.84 tflops of GPU power and something like a low powered, laptop class 3700u with integrated Vega 10 has ~1.7 tflops. The CPU part is significantly more powerful anyway.
It doesn't transition 1:1 and it's still a laptop APU and not a true mobile APU (probably still to power-hungry), but I assume it could be done with AMDs new 7nm RDNA architecture. If they really wanted.
There is a reason why samsung plans to use RDNA in the future.

Liam Allen-Miller · Nov 25, 2019

CaviarMeths said:
We're talking about a portable PS4 though, not just a hypothetical new handheld. No one's going to buy a PS4 that isn't compatible with the games they already bought. Sony's own first party games are all enormous in file size, let alone the popular 3rd party games. This would be dead on arrival at any price if it didn't read discs or fit AAA games.

Tons of people would buy a portable PS4 if the only real compromise was that it didn't support discs. Of all the things that would be a dealbreaker, the lack of disc drive would not be it.

Bomblord · Nov 25, 2019

z0m3le said:
I mean the mobile market is a reason no? why does the V1000 APU exist? they are trying their hardest to compete with Nvidia on power consumption too, and just can't do it unless they are on a much lower node and still comes up short. Did you know that the RDNA 5700xt draws more power than the RTX 2080? and the RTX 2080 is on the TSMC's glorified 16nm node, while 5700xt is on the 7nm one? It's silly efficient in comparison.

Yep, they list the 640 with incorrect flop count too. Even Anandtech noded when discussing the SQ1 that there is no indication on fp16 or fp32 but wiki which can be edited by anyone is sure it's fp32.

Adreno 640, 384 ALUs @ 585mhz is 449GFLOPs fp32. This is also inline with performance we see from the devices with this chip. Anandtech also made a comment that it's hard to fault the manufacture, because in the mobile world, fp16 is used for a lot of the GPUs workload, unlike with desktop computers, so the distinction only makes sense in the desktop realm (or in the console realm, where this is also still currently true).

Adreno 640 has 768 ALU's per Anandtech's article

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13680/snapdragon-855-going-into-detail

then this would mean the new Adreno 640 sports 384 ALUs per core for a total of 768 ALUs

Which would make the 640 performance 898gflops assuming the rest of your numbers are correct. And the 680's ALU's 1536 for a performance of 1796 Gflops or 1.8 Tflops FP32 right in line with the announced spec.

Would it be technically possible to have a PS4 portable nowadays? (no streaming techniques)

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