Current Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [post GDC 2020] [XBSX, PS5]

[chris1515]

But compare those compression rates, with the rates RAD Games supplies here for Oodle Textre + Kraken. There's a massive difference:

http://www.radgametools.com/oodletextureexamples.htm

These examples would support the 8-9GB/s already accounting for RDO.

https://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2020/06/oodle-texture-slashes-game-sizes.html

This is the blog of another guy working at RAD game tool

There is other example

And it is coming from a real game

And it seems 8/9 GB/s is more in line with Kraken only

127 MB block compressed GPU textures, mix of BC1-7

78 MB with zip/zlib/deflate

70 MB with Oodle Kraken

40 MB with Oodle Texture + Kraken

Modern games use a huge amount of BCN texture data. Many games are reaching 100 GB, and 80% or more of that size is in BCN textures. Shrinking the BCN textures to half their previous compressed size will make a dramatic difference in game sizes. While Kraken is a huge technological advance over zip/zlib, it only saved 8 MB in the example above (this is partly because BCN texture data is difficult for generic compressors to work with), while Oodle Texture saved an additional 30 MB, nearly 4X more than Kraken alone. The size savings possible with Oodle Texture are huge, much bigger than we've seen from traditional compressors, and you don't need to accept painful quality loss to get these savings.

EDIT: Sorry I did not see it was discussed

 

[pjbliverpool]

https://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2020/06/oodle-texture-slashes-game-sizes.html

This is the blog of another guy working at RAD game tool

There is other example

And it is coming from a real game

And it seems 8/9 GB/s is more in line with Kraken only



EDIT: Sorry I did not see it was disccussed

I think it could go either way based on the compression ratio's in the examples presented by RAD Game Tools so far. But the other aspect of this is the marketing one. As I mentioned above RDO compression isn't a new thing so Sony would already have been well aware of it at the PS5 reveal. It seems strange that they wouldn't have accounted for it given the massive marketing bullet point it could provide if 8-9GB/s really was Kraken only.

Also this seems like a good time to re-post these tweets:

https://gamingbolt.com/xbox-series-...hnique-reportedly-better-than-the-ps5s-kraken

Not in any way conclusive, but this compression expert does state the following:

We don't have any real details yet, but it's possible that BCPack will be stronger than RDO BCx encoding+Kraken compression.
...
I would be surprised if Sony didn't have good RDO texture encoders for the GPU formats supported by their console in their SDK. It's a no brainier. If they don't have them now, they'll have them soon or they cannot compete.(22nd March)

 

[Deleted member 7537]

17GB/s seems to optimistic. That's DDR4 2133 (sequential access) performance. But it is true that the numbers given by the RDO seem to be better that it was announced by Cerny. It's also true that Cerny mentioned they've seen peaks of 22GB/s when data is particularly well compressed, but I think we won't know what is its real performance until next GDC, or at least until the NDAs are lifted.

 

[chris1515]

I think it could go either way based on the compression ratio's in the examples presented by RAD Game Tools so far. But the other aspect of this is the marketing one. As I mentioned above RDO compression isn't a new thing so Sony would already have been well aware of it at the PS5 reveal. It seems strange that they wouldn't have accounted for it given the massive marketing bullet point it could provide if 8-9GB/s really was Kraken only.

Also this seems like a good time to re-post these tweets:

https://gamingbolt.com/xbox-series-...hnique-reportedly-better-than-the-ps5s-kraken

Not in any way conclusive, but this compression expert does state the following:

They have it now . Fabian Giesen(RAD Tools games) works with Sony not Richard Geldreich. He is probably have a better idea.

 

[JPT]

According to the twitter posts it saves everything. Memory footprint, bandwidth; so it pretty much seems like a win win for games using it

Not sure I agree on this.
It looks to me, that Oodle Texture size = BCn size, since it just re-organizes the data in the texture.

Oodle Texture + Kraken = win for SSD space and IO from SSD, but kraken decompresses to memory (right?). So in memory its back to the original 127MB BCn size. And that 127 MB BCn texture will use bandwidth between GPU and memory.

 

[Allandor]

Not sure I agree on this.
It looks to me, that Oodle Texture size = BCn size, since it just re-organizes the data in the texture.

Oodle Texture + Kraken = win for SSD space and IO from SSD, but kraken decompresses to memory (right?). So in memory its back to the original 127MB BCn size. And that 127 MB BCn texture will use bandwidth between GPU and memory.

Yes, and that's were the GPU-based texture-formats come into play. Oodle "compression" stops after the texture has been decompressed. Btw, oodle textures also works with most other compression techs, that's why it can also be used for ps4, xbox one, ....

But I wonder, can oodle texture been used on another texture compression, that is not lossless. Because the oodle-texture "compression" is not that great if you consider other texture-compression formats that sacrifice texture quality.

 

[JPT]

Yes, and that's were the GPU-based texture-formats come into play. Oodle "compression" stops after the texture has been decompressed. Btw, oodle textures also works with most other compression techs, that's why it can also be used for ps4, xbox one, ....

But I wonder, can oodle texture been used on another texture compression, that is not lossless. Because the oodle-texture "compression" is not that great if you consider other texture-compression formats that sacrifice texture quality.

Not sure why I am answering this, since I am clueless, but anyway.

When you say "another texture compression" do you mean not BCn? In that case I would venture to say that the answer is No. Since Oodle Texture RDO, takes the PNG or BMP and converts it to BCn. Or do you mean that Oodle Texture RDO works with other compression solutions than Zlib type ones?
Since Kraken is by RAD and Kraken is a Zlib type compressor/decompressor, then I am guessing they do not care so much for other compression solution than their own and things in that family of compressors.

 

[MrFox]

Cerny did not say PS5 games would be 8-9. This is not the PS5 specs. Digital Foundry should post a correction I think. The specs is 5.5GB raw and 22GB peak.

He said PS4 games were compressing 1.5x with zlib, for PS5 they moved to kraken because it's 10% better, so 5.5 would typically become 8-9 if you do the math (8.25 to 9 to be exact). That was just a preamble to the point he wanted to emphasize: it can do up to 22GB/s if the data "compress particularly well".

 

[MrFox]

I'm going to put this prediction here before we get official PS5 dimensions:

ODD slot: 124mm
Longest Dimension (white shell): 382mm

I'm pretty sure this is accurate within 2mm

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think it could go either way based on the compression ratio's in the examples presented by RAD Game Tools so far. But the other aspect of this is the marketing one. As I mentioned above RDO compression isn't a new thing...

So why are RAD announcing texture compression now if it's not new?

so Sony would already have been well aware of it at the PS5 reveal. It seems strange that they wouldn't have accounted for it given the massive marketing bullet point it could provide if 8-9GB/s really was Kraken only.

Exactly. So they likely did, and the 8-9 GB/s is what they are seeing with typical data streaming for game workloads using Kraken and RDO. That average figure might be as low as 5.5-6 GB/s when streaming textures which don't compress highly with Kraken, and way higher for other data formats like geometry, maybe, resulting in this average figure. Alternatively, it includes RDO as you say

Not in any way conclusive, but this compression expert does state the following:

That's just a question. I think it most likely both BCPack and Oodle Texture Compression are doing the same thing, leveraging Basis RDO to greatly increase BCn packing. How probable is it that MS have a completely different system to Basis to do the same job that works much better?

MrFox's follow up is key. 8-9 GB/s is not a system spec. RDO compressed textures will be something between 5.5 GB/s and 11-12 GB/s with lambda = 40 from your link. I think BCPack will be doing exactly the same.

 

[AzBat]

I'm going to put this prediction here before we get official PS5 dimensions:

ODD slot: 124mm
Longest Dimension (white shell): 382mm

I'm pretty sure this is accurate within 2mm

So not including the vertical stand?

Tommy McClain

 

[pjbliverpool]

Cerny did not say PS5 games would be 8-9. This is not the PS5 specs. Digital Foundry should post a correction I think. The specs is 5.5GB raw and 22GB peak.

He said PS4 games were compressing 1.5x with zlib, for PS5 they moved to kraken because it's 10% better, so 5.5 would typically become 8-9 if you do the math (8.25 to 9 to be exact). That was just a preamble to the point he wanted to emphasize: it can do up to 22GB/s if the data "compress particularly well".

He specifically said "we built a custom decompressor into the I/O unit, one capable of handling over 5GB of Kraken format input data a second, and after decompression, that typically becomes 8 or 9 GB, but the unit itself is capable of outputting as much as 22 GB/s if the data happened to compress particularly well".

I don't think anyone's claiming it's an actual hardware spec, but it is what Cerny was expecting just 3 months ago to "typically" get out of decompression unit. Perhaps he didn't know about RDO at that point (although it has been around for years, see below), or perhaps he simply got his numbers wrong. In either case I'd expect Sony to revise their compressed throughput off the back of this fairly soon.

So why are RAD announcing texture compression now if it's not new?

This is just their implementation of it. This blog post from Rad Game Tools in 2018 talks about RDO using a different tool set called Crunch.

Exactly. So they likely did, and the 8-9 GB/s is what they are seeing with typical data streaming for game workloads using Kraken and RDO.

Yup I agree.

 

[goonergaz]

I'm going to put this prediction here before we get official PS5 dimensions:

ODD slot: 124mm
Longest Dimension (white shell): 382mm

I'm pretty sure this is accurate within 2mm

yeah, I don’t want to piss on your parade, but I had it down as 15” - which is 381mm lol

 

[MrFox]

yeah, I don’t want to piss on your parade, but I had it down as 15” - which is 381mm lol

I agree to split the difference at 381.5 !

 

[BRiT]

But how many Splats is it in Dreams?

 

[Metal_Spirit]

Has anyone ever saw any Xbox series X documentation or any Xbox engineer claiming AVX 2.0 support on the console?
I´m not saying the console lacks the support, after all, Zen 2 has support for it. But my doubt has to do with the locked clocks. AVX 2.0 requires you to drop clocks since it's heavy on processing, and since Xbox has locked clocks, having not seen or heard anything related to it leaves me this doubt.

 

[Esrever]

AVX 2.0 requires you to drop clocks since it's heavy on processing.

Not on AMD according to AMD.

 

[AlNom]

Maybe we'll hear more about it at HotChips.

 

[Metal_Spirit]

Not on AMD according to AMD.

Strange, since AVX is highly intensive on calculations.
Where can I read that?
On "the road to PS5" Cerny mentioned that AVX 2.0 required to drop clocks. And it´s also a Zen 2.

 

[Allandor]

Strange, since AVX is highly intensive on calculations.
Where can I read that?
On "the road to PS5" Cerny mentioned that AVX 2.0 required to drop clocks. And it´s also a Zen 2.

AVX2.0 on PS5 might require to drop the clockspeed. But that is because they decided to use one "pool of energy" that can be used by GPU & CPU. If one requires more energy, the other must spend it. If one requires more energy than the system is designed for, clocks must be lowered.
On xbox series x it is the opposite (as far as we can know). The power-supply must just deliver enough energy for all edge-cases. Not infinite, else they wouldn't drop clock-speed if you use HT.
After all, PS5 and xbox series x use relative low clocks for ryzen 2, so the CPUs aren't that energy-hungry like higher clocked models.

The other thing is, games not really require AVX2.0 (or AVX) all the time. There are only very limited scenarios where this is used intensively.