News & Rumours: Playstation 4/ Orbis *spin*

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Sure, it could be allowed, but that just seems inelegant. Plus, it clutters up the area where your console is.

I'm sure they'll offer systems starting at 500GB storage, but if its a 2.5" drive, getting a high-end 1TB drive will only store a few games and movies. But a 3.5" drive is so much more capable.

I actually think that might be a contributing reason why even a PS4 prototype wasn't shown off because even that would give a ton of info to Microsoft early enough that they could theoretically make minor changes to their own system.

3.5 drives is imho not an option maybe if it's a thin profile one platter design but compared to 2.5 it just takes up to much space, but it's sony so who knows what design wizardy they come up with.

My point is that those that would require more than 500GB is not in great numbers but Sony could in a cheap and flexible way provide a solution with external drives. 4K movies will most likely be around 50-100GB, a collection will quickly fill up pretty much anything you can put in a Console. But those that would like to have a collection would have no problem with external storage.
 
A 3.5" drive would be nice and they are actually cheaper per GB. But there is a rather large cost associated to them in terms of heat and failure rates with regards to heat. When neither manufacturer knows whether a consumer will put their console into a home theater A/V cabinet with insufficient airflow, that becomes a rather significant issue. Even 5400 RPM 3.5" drives run a fair bit warmer than 5400 RPM 2.5" drives. The larger actuator arms and magnets required to move them also induce much more stress on the entire motor assembly leading to potentially greater failure rates.

Personally I'd love to see a nice fast 7200 RPM 3.5" drive in there, but I'm don't see that as being very likely.

However, since games will be, in theory, tied to user accounts and their associated machines then in theory one can install them on any external drive. USB 3.0 basically provides the same data throughput as can be achieved with SATA, hence you could add an SSD external drive if you wanted. Providing for faster load times and faster streaming.

Just be aware that going by PC games, even using a fast SSD some games can take up to 30 seconds to load a level. And that is with using on average 2 GB or less of game assets. Granted there's often other things happening during that time other than just transferring data.

Hmmm, that just made me think. Just loading 2 GB worth of data from a 6x BD would take almost 1.5 minutes in ideal conditions (sequential reads, all data in outer tracks), that increases to potentially 3-5 minutes if there's some random data (non-sequential blocks) to load especially if there's many small files. Potentially increases to 7+ minutes if data is located on the inner tracks. Yeowza.

Regards,
SB

On a related note Seagate stopped producing 7200 rpm 2.5 drives:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storag..._of_7200rpm_Mobile_Hard_Drives_This_Year.html
 
On a related note Seagate stopped producing 7200 rpm 2.5 drives:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storag..._of_7200rpm_Mobile_Hard_Drives_This_Year.html

Yup. 7200 RPM 2.5" drives were rather marginal in volume compared to 5400 RPM 2.5" drives though due to higher heat and power consumption, both of which aren't very friendly for mobile devices.

Instead Seagate is going to focus more on hybrid SSD/HDD drives to service that sector that was formerly serviced by 7200 RPM 2.5" drives. They can in theory be faster, more power efficient, and hence also produce less heat than 7200 RPM 2.5" drives. As well they could potentially be less power hungry and thus produce less heat than 5400 RPM 2.5" drives if the flash portion is large enough to service the most frequent read requests.

Regards,
SB
 
Clutter from external drives would be an issue, unless they make the form factor of the console and the peripheral stackable.

It would be in Sony's interest to encourage customers to buy more media content from them, to tie them to their ecosystem. So they should make such peripherals cheap and easy to use, with liberal DRM.

Maybe offer a media server which would stream videos to big screens around the house which have PS4s attached and also load the videos on phones and tablets, which would encourage people to but or rent movies.
 
Clutter from external drives would be an issue, unless they make the form factor of the console and the peripheral stackable.

It would be in Sony's interest to encourage customers to buy more media content from them, to tie them to their ecosystem. So they should make such peripherals cheap and easy to use, with liberal DRM.

Maybe offer a media server which would stream videos to big screens around the house which have PS4s attached and also load the videos on phones and tablets, which would encourage people to but or rent movies.

It would be an issue for very few imho, mostly ht freaks that wanted 4k movies. And depending on the looks of the ps4 it should be possible to buy suitable 3rd party drives.
 
[closing an infinite loop]
Okay obviously we have some issues communicating.

Everything you're saying seems to assume the HDD is optional, but Mark Cerny clearly said PS4 would have an HDD builtin because games will need it. This FUD about PS4-crippled-because-it's-not-like-durango has to stop. There hasn't been any rumor that disc based games won't be allowed to use and rely on the HDD, and everything points to something that is improved upon the PS3's crude partial install of game data (which didn't have any bottlenecks, quite the opposite).

HDD caching on level loading screen == wait time loading each level the first time.
Partial Install of time-sensitive data == longer waiting before playing the first time.
Full Install == lots of wait time before playing the first time.

None of these options have any of the bottlenecks you imagined. Only different waiting times at different moment. I'll be sad if they actually force full install before playing on the PS4, because it would mean Mark Cerny failed to do what he promised at the press conference. They have the opportunity to do the best of both worlds, and they have the specs necessary to do it, and the mission statement saying precisely that's what they're trying to achieve.

I expect the more complex storage API of the PS4 to have zero bottlenecks and still allow the exact same games available on disc, dd and streaming (native, running local), with varying local storage needs, and much much smaller initial waiting times as any full-install options. The key is how they write the storage API, it will only work if they plan it correctly from the start.
 
Okay obviously we have some issues communicatin
HDD caching on level loading screen == wait time loading each level the first time.
Partial Install of time-sensitive data == longer waiting before playing the first time.
Full Install == lots of wait time before playing the first time.

There are other scenarios than these.
I think there is a disconnect of what a full install is.
It need not require sticking a disk in the drive and waiting 25 minutes for it to copy to HDD and I would not assume that "mandatory install" means that.
It should be quite possible to play a game while it's "installing".
 
There are other scenarios than these.
I think there is a disconnect of what a full install is.
It should be quite possible to play a game while it's "installing".
If they are providing that service for PSN games, they can provide the same from disk by packaging the contents in exactly the same container and treating the BRD as a 200 Mbps internet connection. There's zero reason to think anything else will happen. It'd be mind-numbingly short-sighted for Cerny to see this requirement in downloads but fail to address disk-load and install issues.
 
Can't either HDD or BD reading use the HDD and/or main ram as cache? And if the data is already on HDD, can't it just cache in the memory when the need is anticipated?

Do we expect games to take over the full 8 GB of ram in any scene? Isn't the point of having all these ram to load areas contiguously regardless of where the data is coming from, that's my impression. While we are in one instance, the data could be being prepared in the background for the next.

I expect installs will be necessary for all games on PS4, only that this frequently accessed data or chunks of any levels and that startup material will be installed while we are playing the game. Suddenly that slow BD transfer rate seems like less of a problem because the game's loading screen is behind the game we are already playing.

At least that is my impression of the whole 'immediate' pillar thing. I'm sure Cerny has some plan of attack for all these scenarios, must be a reason he is system architect.

I guess the real question is how much of any game will have to be installed, and does this change for different types of games.

Whichever games are more predictable in advancing between levels might have a lower profile on the HDD, but maybe games where the game wants the player to jump back and forth between different areas rapidly,maybe more dependency on HDD and RAM caching is necessary.
 
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Can't either HDD or BD reading use the HDD and/or main ram as cache? And if the data is already on HDD, can't it just cache in the memory when the need is anticipated?
Yes. That's what happens already

Do we expect games to take over the full 8 GB of ram in any scene?
No game uses the whole of RAM for the current scene. You load level or area assets and store them in RAM ready when needed. The drive is used to preload assets ahead of the GPU calling on them, and when that system fails, we get pop-in. You can also cache from optical to HDD to RAM.
 
That's what I felt. I think this is the main reason for the extra 4 GB of ram. Not for performance, but for caching... So loading performance. I guess this can be classified as 'user experience.'

Has the upgrade to 8 GB negatively impacted PS4 in any way? I'm asking only because as I understand none of the bandwidth changed. But each module of gddr has its own bandwidth correct? Has PS4 gone with more, slower modules... Or the same number of modules only larger? Am I asking this question correctly I cannot tell, or is it too early to ask this. Or does this not matter anyway since its all one pool of RAM regardless?
 
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Okay obviously we have some issues communicating.

Everything you're saying seems to assume the HDD is optional, but Mark Cerny clearly said PS4 would have an HDD builtin because games will need it. This FUD about PS4-crippled-because-it's-not-like-durango has to stop.

Why so defensive? I have never said at anytime that the PS4 would not have an HDD. In fact, in this very same thread, I pointed out to someone that wanted a PS4 with just 8 GB of flash why it is imperative that PS4 include an HDD. Especially when the PS4 reveal itself shows the PS4 with HDD.

HDD caching on level loading screen == wait time loading each level the first time.
Partial Install of time-sensitive data == longer waiting before playing the first time.
Full Install == lots of wait time before playing the first time.

Ah, I see, it seems that you are the one completely misunderstanding due to some unreasoned fear that I'm in some way attacking the PS4. Why in the world would I do that?

Both companies are going to have to have mandatory HDD installs. Mandatory HDD installs as ERP pointed out and as I've been pointing out in multiple posts now does not mean insert disk and wait for the entire game to install before you can play it.

None of your suggestions provides for a compelling game play experience with the increased data sets that will be required for next gen gaming, especially when you take into consideration that Digital Downloads (as Shifty points out) are also going to be playable while installing. When your data sets for a level for true next gen games increases by a factor of 10-25x over what we currently have, loading anything off the optical drive except for cutscene videos isn't going to be very good.

That seems to be the bit that your blinders continually ignore despite the fact that I've continued to point out that mandatory installs includes the ability to play the game while it is being installed. In other words, insert Optical Disk, start playing game. Simultaneously it'll be installing the game while you play. The first time you play the game in this way, it will take a while to load due to the speed of the optical drive (low sequential read speed and huge random seek times). But for the first time playing a game (loading into menu and then first level of a game) data can be optimized such that random reads are reduced, that same cannot be done once past the first level of a game. As well the fact that the game is continuing to install itself to HDD while in the games menu should help hide the fact that the optical disk is so terribly slow when it comes to modern games.

I expect the more complex storage API of the PS4 to have zero bottlenecks and still allow the exact same games available on disc, dd and streaming (native, running local), with varying local storage needs, and much much smaller initial waiting times as any full-install options. The key is how they write the storage API, it will only work if they plan it correctly from the start.

There is nothing the API can do to get rid of the relatively huge random seek times that all optical disks suffer from which greatly magnifies the lower sequential read speeds of optical drives or the anemic speeds for internet bandwidth. Those are all very real bottlenecks that become very very serious when the data that your game requires starts to grow. These are the SAME bottlenecks that exist on PCs that have been dealing with up to 2 GB of data for many many years now.

Even then, do you want to sit there and wait 1.5 minutes for your 2 GB worth of data used in your game to load before you can play or 20-30 seconds (depending on what 5400 RPM HDD is included) assuming a completely unrealistic scenario of completely sequential reads with zero random reads. If you want 4 GB of data in your games that's going to be 3 minutes of sequential reads off the optical drive before you can start playing.

Of course, purely sequential reads are never going to happen for any game so those times are going to explode. When every random seek means spending 1/10th of a second (just wasted the ability to read 2.7 MB of data at 27 MB/s) to find the file (which may only be 200 KB in size), then potentially 1/10th of a second to get to the next file, etc. Compare that to only spending ~16 ms (16/1000 of a second) for the same random read (1.28 MB out of 80 MB/s).

That random seek time and differing games reliances to it are the main reason why some games on PS3 were able to get huge load time boosts from an SSD while some didn't (versus same data on 7200 RPM 2.5" HDD).

Caching only partial data won't work if your game is designed around that because then it makes digitally downloaded games unplayable for quite a while as you download since you have to install the pre-cache assets first. It also means your optical drive game is no longer instantly playable because you must pre-cache all of your shared assets before you can start the game, otherwise you'll have a horribly long wait time as level loads deal with random seek times. And it also makes playing a game instantly off optical drives impossible for games that stream data if it requires that all shared resources have to be cached on HDD to avoid as many random reads as possible.

Playing a game while it is installing is nothing new. There's nothing magical involved. There's no need for exotic API's. And it's basically what Sony are planning to do if their intent for Digital Downloads (as stated by them in the PS4 reveal) is true. Since they can do that, then it's basically a no-brainer to expect the same for games released on optical media.

Regards,
SB
 
This tangent in the discussion started when I was answering to the notion that there would not be Mandatory Full Installs... explaining what I thought the words meant.
Not allowing to play the game from the BR disc would be the antithesis of Mark Cerny's vision presented at the press conference.
Install while playing, caching ODD to HDD, partial installs, and optional full install are more likely. And if I can play while it install, it's obviously not a mandatory full install.
Do I sound like I don't think the game would install while playing?
Every single one of my posts I was using the term Mandatory Full Install, and I proposed Partial Install, Install while playing and HDD caching.

That's my comment. It's about the word Full.
I don't disagree about Install. I don't disagree about Mandatory. I disagree about... Full.
 
That's what I felt. I think this is the main reason for the extra 4 GB of ram. Not for performance, but for caching... So loading performance. I guess this can be classified as 'user experience.'

Has the upgrade to 8 GB negatively impacted PS4 in any way? I'm asking only because as I understand none of the bandwidth changed. But each module of gddr has its own bandwidth correct? Has PS4 gone with more, slower modules... Or the same number of modules only larger? Am I asking this question correctly I cannot tell, or is it too early to ask this. Or does this not matter anyway since its all one pool of RAM regardless?

Caching is one of the most common techniques to improve performance.

Sometimes, you can buy time by using more space too. e.g., storing precalculated or reused/intermediate data in-memory.

Extra memory is also great for user generated content.

Another solution would be ps4 USB 3.0 flash drive. I sure would buy one...

Probably for user files like PS3 but I doubt it will be used for system storage.
 
Sony to push for 16 million PS4 shipments in 2013, say sources

Having high hopes on its Playstation 4 (PS4) game console, Sony internally expects the machine's annual shipments to reach 16 million units in 2013 with the supply chain expected to start mass shipments in August, according to sources from PS4 component makers. ..

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20130304PD221.html

That's a lot of PS4. 16 million annual shipments seems to signal the ability to launch worldwide in window of a few months if not everywhere at once.
 
World be nice with a worldwide launch instead of the staggered releases of old times: Asia first, Northern America second and then Europe.
 
Saw a message saying from Playstation Network on facebook saying "test the PS4" asking for pre-launch testers so maybe they are further along the process than we realise.
 
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