There are some possible technical advances could be done in SSD, such as better error correction codes (there's a recent paper about Error-Prediction LDPC which claims the possibility to extend SSD's lifespan by 10 times). Furthermore, there are also alternative SSD technology such as HP's memristor which may become practical in a few years.
Alternative distribution to optical disks : SSD, cards, and download*
- Thread starter Cheezdoodles
- Start date
This discussion started out with the next gen consoles in mind. Is it feasible to use SSD in the next gen consoles and or Flash Cards.
With Vita launched we might get some more insight into this discussion, Uncharted for Vita is around 3GB
If you just want to talk about "next gen consoles" why did you bring up that article which talks about something extrapolated to 2024?
The article/research paper is one of the few i have found that gives good numbers to the disavantage of shrinking nand sizes. One of the main points in using SSD/Flash cards was that eventhough the need for more space for games grew, the aggressive shrinking would help reduce the price for the storage.
There are two different situations here. If you just want to use flash for "distribution," then the disadvantages are not big problems even if there's no new technologies. You don't really need to modify data on your distribution media (at least not much), so you can even use TLC for distribution, even though many TLC flash can only be erased for a few hundred times.
If you want to use SSD in a console, and distribute through internet downloading, of course the problem will be much bigger. If a next gen console has no optical drive, and solely use flash and internet downloading for distribution, you'll want to have a large internal storage to store these games. If you use a smaller SSD to store games, it won't be able to fit many games and gamers will have to delete some to make place for new games (and will have to re-download the deleted games later if they want to play them again). This is hardly an acceptable solution.
IMHO the only possible situation that a next gen console only have SSD as storage is that the storage is used as a cache, and games still are distributed through normal channels (i.e. optical discs or other physical media). It's possible to distribute games with flash, although they are still expensive (you are looking at about US$1 per GB and that's much more expensive than a Blu-ray disc).
But anyway, extrapolating to twenty years later based on current technology is, well, not a wise move. As I said, there are and will be more advances in flash storage, and it's not as bleak as that article said.
Prophecy2k
Veteran
The notion of SSD as a possible delivery medium for games is dead for next-gen consoles. Next-gen consoles will use blu-ray/DVD drives and i wouldn't be surprised if even Sony allowed for games to be printed on DVDs with PS4 to allow for faster read/write speeds.
I can see a small pool of solid state memory included within each console, however that would entirely depend on the demographic Sony/MS are gunning for with their boxes (i.e. uber next-gen boxes or wii-ified current-gen ones).
I can see a small pool of solid state memory included within each console, however that would entirely depend on the demographic Sony/MS are gunning for with their boxes (i.e. uber next-gen boxes or wii-ified current-gen ones).
Can't they just use faster BD drives? PS3 used 2x BD drive while 12x should be the max. Though I admit I'm not quite sure how big is the latency difference between BD and DVD
A 12X BR drive would probably sound like a hair-drier in a cardboard box. It'd be spinning way faster than the 360's DVD drive, something like 10,000 rpm iirc.
How loud would the "faster than BD" DVD drive be? I had XB360 and PS3 for a while and XB was horribly loud while only being relatively tiny bit faster than PS3.
All this has been discussed at great length
Read up on the topic.
Read up on the topic.
uh.. BD-ROM has about twice the transfer rate at similar speed.
But yes, there is no reason to use DVDs, except maybe negligible cost advantage (or disadvantage if you have to use DL DVD-Rom)
Blu ray
1x 4.5 MB/s or 36Mbit/s
6x 18 MB/s or 288Mbit/s
12x 54MB/s or 432Mbit/s
Flash could hit really high speeds. The patriot superconic 64 gig can hit 125MB/s .
Of course we have all had these conversations multiple time over the course of this thread.
I will say that flash is faster , makes less noise and cost to include in the console is much lower than an optical drive.
Others will say that its more expensive and has limited space .
Same stuff diffrent day
1x 4.5 MB/s or 36Mbit/s
6x 18 MB/s or 288Mbit/s
12x 54MB/s or 432Mbit/s
Flash could hit really high speeds. The patriot superconic 64 gig can hit 125MB/s .
Of course we have all had these conversations multiple time over the course of this thread.
I will say that flash is faster , makes less noise and cost to include in the console is much lower than an optical drive.
Others will say that its more expensive and has limited space .
Same stuff diffrent day
If sony launches very late 2013 or 2014 I wouldn't be surprised to see support for 4k blu-ray and some new 3 or 4 layer version of Blu-ray discs on ps4. It might take some time to finalize the actual spec for 4k but the physical media standard should be doable in that timeframe. HEVC standard should be ratified in 2013 too which makes 4k launch for 2013 quite plausible. I just hope they don't try to cram 4k+3d on 50GB discs, that would spell disaster for the picture quality compared to what could be with 100GB+ space per movie.
I hope we don't suffer another ps3 because of their desire to push another home video format.
3 or 4 layer discs would be useless for gaming
Sony don't need to force the format like they did BRD. BRD is already established, and there isn't anyone else threatening to steal the 4k/3D disc format. If the drive would push the cost up considerably, they can always have a dual-SKU model with a 4k version and a normal BRD version.
I'm sure Rage would have benefitted from some 200GB storage
Also, what caused the suffering then and what could cause it now? Price was mostly due to insanely expensive BD device but that is dirt-cheap nowadays.
A BD track holds 2.5 times as many bits as a DVD track does. A DVD rotating 2½ times faster has 6 times the rotational energy and thus generates a lot more noise.
Cheers
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And anything above 9GB is useless for games as well?
From what i have read and have been posted around on the web, there isn´t anything pointing to 3-4 layer Discs requiring anything expensive from the Disc Drive. But it´s very likely that at layer 3 or 4 that the maximum transfer rate might go down. Which must likely would leave games to 25-50GB
Should Sony go for Blu-Ray again, i am certain that they will be spending more time and energy on making the drive fast for games. Which.. shouldn´t be a problem compared to the PS3... Zing
