Ps3: Firmware 1.6

[Shifty Geezer]

The press release says: "because there're restrictions". So it would seem that downloading takes more resources than the memory reserved by and for XMB.

How does XB360 manage it with less RAM and CPU power reserved? Downloading needs very little. It's not like the whole file needs to be downloaded to RAM before being written to HDD! Whatever restrictions there are are on the software implementation, methinks!

 

[Gradthrawn]

How does XB360 manage it with less RAM and CPU power reserved? Downloading needs very little. It's not like the whole file needs to be downloaded to RAM before being written to HDD! Whatever restrictions there are are on the software implementation, methinks!

The issue could be HDD related. Some games may rely more heavily on the HDD than others, as such, the restrictions may be on a per game basis. I'm assuming that since every SKU comes with an HDD, the TRC allows for more liberal use of it than for the 360. As such, there may be provisions to ensure that background downloading does not interfere with certain games. Or, perhaps, every game until games implement a flag (or something of the like) indicating that background downloading is ok. This is all speculation, of course.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Better to offer the option of potential inferior gaming experience when background downloading, then no background downloading option at all.

 

[Gradthrawn]

Better to offer the option of potential inferior gaming experience when background downloading, then no background downloading option at all.

As a current owner and active user, I disagree. But to each his own. What they're offering, in my opinion, is background downloading. And suitable enough for my needs based on my own experiences with it in its current state (and with the 360's implementation of bd, I might add). This is assuming they at least have queuing enabled.

 

[Todd33]

As long as I can continue stopped DLs, I'm happy. Background DLing is pretty minor, I didn't even know the 360 did it until a few weeks ago. If people really want it, then I'm sure Sony will add it. I have higher priorities and I'm sure they do too.

 

[ban25]

Well, yes, like I said, the PSP can now access a 20Gb version PS3 through a domestic hotspot, where previously no connection was possible whatsoever.

Sounds like it's still limited to LAN access only. I only used the remote play function once, but if I remember correctly, security/authentication was handled through WEP/WPA. If they are going to allow access over wired ethernet, that will have to change.

It would be cool to stream my music to my PSP at work, but firewall issues aside, I'm not sure they are there yet.

 

[infinity4]

downloading whilst playing games is bad for me. it scratched my HDD on pc ages ago. not making same mistake with ps3. i will simply download something without doing anything else, whilst its downloading i will do something else away from ps3.

 

[jonabbey]

Better to offer the option of potential inferior gaming experience when background downloading, then no background downloading option at all.

Hisame on PS3Forums.com reports from reading some Japanese sites that Sony expects people to be using Cell and RSX in a much more closely-bound way than would be the case with the typical DirectX game, with the Cell producing display lists and such 'just in time' for live streaming into the RSX, and that games that lean on the hardware that closely would not take well to having the CPU taken from them on an ad-hoc basis.

Assuming there's any credibility to that, I'd expect Sony would need to produce a library call that game engines could call out to after they've finished their work for a frame, to allow the background downloading to proceed that little bit more.

On the other hand, TCP/IP downloading is an inherently interrupt-driven process, and the data would have to be pulled off of the ethernet/wifi interface pretty quickly in any event, so such close timings seem unlikely on the face of it..

 

[crystalcube]

Better to offer the option of potential inferior gaming experience when background downloading, then no background downloading option at all.

First priority should be better and consistent gaming experience than background downloading. As long as download stops while playing game and resumes later it should be fine but if they can have background download without impacting gaming experience it would be even better.

 

[Blazkowicz]

downloading whilst playing games is bad for me. it scratched my HDD on pc ages ago. not making same mistake with ps3. i will simply download something without doing anything else, whilst its downloading i will do something else away from ps3.

I blame this on the HDD, HDD are unreliable, they die at any time without a real reason; while some activity like a non-quick formating or defrag can trigger the death I don't think it's the main cause.
Ideally you'd want no HD at all, eventually we'll use P-RAM or M-RAM or ZXWYX-RAM instead, or holo stuff, but it'll take a while to reach HDD capacity and price (flash is not that hugely far behind, is useful for mp3 players now but still not up to the job)

 

[patsu]

Sounds like it's still limited to LAN access only. I only used the remote play function once, but if I remember correctly, security/authentication was handled through WEP/WPA. If they are going to allow access over wired ethernet, that will have to change.

It would be cool to stream my music to my PSP at work, but firewall issues aside, I'm not sure they are there yet.

Sounds like only local access to me too...

It's nice but WAN access is what I want/need.
Come on Sony... step on it ...unless you already have DLNA over LAN worked out.

Assuming there's any credibility to that, I'd expect Sony would need to produce a library call that game engines could call out to after they've finished their work for a frame, to allow the background downloading to proceed that little bit more.

First priority should be better and consistent gaming experience than background downloading. As long as download stops while playing game and resumes later it should be fine but if they can have background download without impacting gaming experience it would be even better.

Yes... leave the gaming experience untouched if downloading can slow things down. Even if they allow it, I hope the developers can turn it off.

But I would expect better multitasking in other applications though (Music playback, Photo viewing, SD or even movie playback since they only use 50% of it, web browsing, ...).

Full screen input is what I need too, and will allow people to use the web browser for forum posting, email, ... The current keyboard entry dialog is too small/annoying for these heavy duty use.

 

[Diamond.G]

Sounds like only local access to me too...

It's nice but WAN access is what I want/need.
Come on Sony... step on it ...unless you already have DLNA over LAN worked out.





Yes... leave the gaming experience untouched if downloading can slow things down. Even if they allow it, I hope the developers can turn it off.

But I would expect better multitasking in other applications though (Music playback, Photo viewing, SD or even movie playback since they only use 50% of it, web browsing, ...).

The only thing that background downloading should slow down is your internet connection. So if you are playing a game that requires online acess it pauses the download till you are done. I say this only because you can't possibly be downloading fast enough to noticable slow down the reading of information from another part of the hard drive (all assuming the drive is at least a 5400 rpm drive). I mean I can run Bittorrent and download files to my computer and still run programs and other games at the same time. I don't know how/why the ps3 would be any different.

Of course if (and I probably am) I am wrong I will be corrected.

 

[patsu]

The only thing that background downloading should slow down is your internet connection. So if you are playing a game that requires online acess it pauses the download till you are done. I say this only because you can't possibly be downloading fast enough to noticable slow down the reading of information from another part of the hard drive (all assuming the drive is at least a 5400 rpm drive). I mean I can run Bittorrent and download files to my computer and still run programs and other games at the same time. I don't know how/why the ps3 would be any different.

Of course if (and I probably am) I am wrong I will be corrected.

There are a few possibilities, like limitations/bugs in the kernel level pre-emptive scheduling (if any to begin with !)... or the Cell may already be running something else in the background, so additional load would slow things down beyond a very narrow limit. Problem is we don't know much about PS3 to indicate either way.

They should also let the games yield to the OS though (e.g., when in game welcome screen and lobby)


EDIT: Ok, I just remembered the innerbits article. It seems that Sony has already released the API to game developers.

 

[PiNkY]

Since an SPU cannot access main memory (on its own), I'd guess downloading requires at least one additional process to be running on the Power core. Furthermore Cell certainly isn't more capable than Xenon for running (control flow heavy) OS tasks, as these e.g hardly include any vectored/fp math.

 

[Sis]

downloading whilst playing games is bad for me. it scratched my HDD on pc ages ago. not making same mistake with ps3. i will simply download something without doing anything else, whilst its downloading i will do something else away from ps3.

You can't be serious.

 

[LunchBox]

about the background downloading thing...

IMHO, it's going to be very hard to implement it because there's only one hard drive in the PS3. Since the machine came equiped with a hard drive, game developers can assume that it's always there, they are free to utilize it as needed. Since there isn't a given limit on how much the Hard drive can be used on a per game basis (AFAIK), it's hard to include a background downloading scheme when the hard drive usage of a game is relatively unknown. not a tech expert but I've had an experience where I was downloading some files while playing a pc game and one time my download finished and started to copy it from the temp folder to my designated directory ( 1 think the file was about 1.2 GB) while the game that I was playing (Civ 3) was in the middle of loading a level... suffice to say it took my computer about 10 minutes before it "unfroze". This happened when i only had 1HDD on my computer.
Now that I have 3 separate HDDs in my computer (OS on one, video editing clips and games for the other, and downloaded stuff on the last one) I only get a little jerk from time to time when it happens.

 

[Diamond.G]

IMHO, it's going to be very hard to implement it because there's only one hard drive in the PS3. Since the machine came equiped with a hard drive, game developers can assume that it's always there, they are free to utilize it as needed. Since there isn't a given limit on how much the Hard drive can be used on a per game basis (AFAIK), it's hard to include a background downloading scheme when the hard drive usage of a game is relatively unknown. not a tech expert but I've had an experience where I was downloading some files while playing a pc game and one time my download finished and started to copy it from the temp folder to my designated directory ( 1 think the file was about 1.2 GB) while the game that I was playing (Civ 3) was in the middle of loading a level... suffice to say it took my computer about 10 minutes before it "unfroze". This happened when i only had 1HDD on my computer.
Now that I have 3 separate HDDs in my computer (OS on one, video editing clips and games for the other, and downloaded stuff on the last one) I only get a little jerk from time to time when it happens.

Wouldn't that not have been a problem if your browser didn't insist on saving the file in a temporary folder first before putting it in it's final location?

It seems like the largest concern would be seek and random access times for the hard drives. As that may be impacted if the head is currently reading/writing data in a location that is not where the games needs it to be. Also do PS3 drives get fragmented? What file system do they use in the XMB?

 

[infinity4]

You can't be serious.

well i had to compensate for that!!! it wasn't my pc.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Hisame on PS3Forums.com reports from reading some Japanese sites that Sony expects people to be using Cell and RSX in a much more closely-bound way than would be the case with the typical DirectX game, with the Cell producing display lists and such 'just in time' for live streaming into the RSX, and that games that lean on the hardware that closely would not take well to having the CPU taken from them on an ad-hoc basis.

It's not taken on an ad hoc basis. There's a whole SPE reserved for the OS, and 96 MBs of RAM. It's sitting there doing nothing at the moment, it seems.

Whether people are bothered about background DLs or not, the major issue here is the OSSPE still doesn't appear to have been put to use. It doesn't download files in the background. It doesn't scale output to any resolution. It doesn't allow switching between game and XMB, or music playback from HDD while gaming - at least, nothing like that has been announced. The wuestion remains - why reserve that much for the OS? What is it doing? Is it just waiting to do other stuff, and if so, what stuff will that be?

PiNkY : You seriously underestimate the SPE and overestimate downloading! Presumably the PPE is needed to write from memory to HDD, but for those sorts of tasks, if Sony were serious about multitasking, they'd have a plan to manage that.

Lunchbox : There's only one HDD in XB360. Does it crash out on games that use the HDD when downloading? I can appreciate issues with multitasking, but they're not critical as evidenced by people being able to work around them in many, many situations.

 

[Sis]

well i had to compensate for that!!! it wasn't my pc.

On any multitasking OS, no one program will ever have a dedicated lock to some global resource such as the hard drive. As such, "background" downloading is no different than the OS writing out its page file or a search indexing indexing the drive, all of which happens all the time without "scratching" the hard drive.