Alternative distribution to optical disks : SSD, cards, and download*

[upnorthsox]

eh, we didn't think of that possibility
manufacturer releases a 1TB HDD based console in 2013/2014, then a cheap model in 2018 with 256GB flash. with option for 512GB or even 1TB flash as a luxury SKU.

you can have it both ways, SSD could be the power user option just as on PC.

the argument seems to be about which kind of convenience we prefer as default. fast storage or huge storage.
my opinion is that huge storage is nice, else you would end up streaming from the bluray anyway.
or huge storage means, no need to cut your game into linear sections as I fear you might do no matter how intelligent is your caching.

You sell those nice high margin official XBox/Playstation SSD drives. $200 such a deal!!!

Mannux - The $99 console is done. Time to move on.

 

[-tkf-]

I don't follow what you are asking.
A platter-based hard drive stores data and writes it.
A flash-based game cartridge would store data and write it.

They do the same thing; it's just that one is potentially faster at it than the other, so some things would be faster.

So in your view it does not matter if it´s flash or optical/harddrive.

 

[3dilettante]

If the game is forced to go to the optical drive and to a lesser extent the hard disk, it can incur latency and bandwidth penalties.
This can lead to other things, such as more memory devoted to buffering or reduced performance.

There's no single game feature that becomes impossible with one or the other, because in the end the solutions do the same thing. One may just be faster than the other.

This thread is about using flash memory as a distribution medium, so we're comparing a flash drive to Bluray in the same manner as Bluray to a DVD.

 

[manux]

where i come from is cheap base sku is critical. History has shown where majority of console sales are. Expensive ps3 tanked pretty bad until price cuts.
allow for high performance cheap base sku and allow for optional power user features for those who are willing to shell out money.

i would be willing to go as far as say no optical, reasonable ssd baseline and optional 2.5hdd. I have room and wish to go digital distribution only. Im not close to maxing out comcast data cap.

only real reason i wish for blu-ray is 100GB+ discs containing 4k movies. And there blu-ray could very well be addon. I do like the idea of only having 1 media box on living room.

 

[-tkf-]

If the game is forced to go to the optical drive and to a lesser extent the hard disk, it can incur latency and bandwidth penalties.
This can lead to other things, such as more memory devoted to buffering or reduced performance.

There's no single game feature that becomes impossible with one or the other, because in the end the solutions do the same thing. One may just be faster than the other.

This thread is about using flash memory as a distribution medium, so we're comparing a flash drive to Bluray in the same manner as Bluray to a DVD.

I have been here since page 2, so i got a basic idea about what the thread is about.

But it´s been written between the lines that flash would add to the game experience, no need to wait for a slow optical drive, much better performance with streaming/seeking than both Harddrives and Optical.

My question was how does flash improve games, and i am kind a answering it myself now

The follow up question would be how to develop games on all platforms and still taking advantage of Flash, which i guess could be done in my example at least, question is if the graphics engine would suffer on other platforms.

 

[hoho]

But it´s been written between the lines that flash would add to the game experience, no need to wait for a slow optical drive, much better performance with streaming/seeking than both Harddrives and Optical.

Here you are talking about the "cartridge" flash, right? What kind of speeds do you think would be achieved there for streaming? Even my year-old laptop with just 120G HDD was able to provide constant 80MB/s write speed when moving tens of GB's worth of virtual machine images. Getting similar speed from flash card won't come cheap so you'll still need some kind of internal storage if you want half-decent streaming speeds.

8x bluray would be around 36MB/s (CAV, outer edge I guess), 32G SD card that gives me ~20MB/s read speed cost me ~60€ 6 months ago. Random small read-writes from the flash card are several times slower than streaming. Obviously they'll be slow from the BD as well but at least it's far cheaper and can provide decent streaming speeds.

 

[-tkf-]

Here you are talking about the "cartridge" flash, right? What kind of speeds do you think would be achieved there for streaming? Even my year-old laptop with just 120G HDD was able to provide constant 80MB/s write speed when moving tens of GB's worth of virtual machine images. Getting similar speed from flash card won't come cheap so you'll still need some kind of internal storage if you want half-decent streaming speeds.

8x bluray would be around 36MB/s (CAV, outer edge I guess), 32G SD card that gives me ~20MB/s read speed cost me ~60€ 6 months ago. Random small read-writes from the flash card are several times slower than streaming. Obviously they'll be slow from the BD as well but at least it's far cheaper and can provide decent streaming speeds.

Actually i was trying to find out what the advantage was with flash, i am on the Blu-Ray/Harddrive side since so far the only 2 reasons have been weakly supported idea that it was cheaper to go with flash and killing of used games(?).

 

[function]

A solid state cart would be good for virtual texturing for one thing. Look at Rage on PS3 - the 50GB Bluray drive combined with a HDD (about $100 worth of fixed cost) with an 8GB mandatory install and the game would run better off a $10 usb pen drive. Actually, can you run the 360 version from a USB pen drive? That could be an interesting test.

No need to worry about virtual texturing though - you can just use 16GB of RAM instead of 2GB and load everything into it from your $40 HDD after installing it from your case-inflating $50 bluray drive during a lengthy mandatory install process. Hurrah! What could a cart possibly offer compared to that!

But seriously, you could cut a huge amount of bulk and cost from your base unit while simultaneously allowing it to operate more efficiently and benefiting just about any kind of just-in-time data loading. Yes there's a down side - pressure on total storage per game - but there's enough upside to at least make it worth considering IMO.

Bigger and more joined up environments, fewer loading screens and less pop in plz.

 

[manux]

A solid state cart would be good for virtual texturing for one thing. Look at Rage on PS3 - the 50GB Bluray drive combined with a HDD (about $100 worth of fixed cost) with an 8GB mandatory install and the game would run better off a $10 usb pen drive. Actually, can you run the 360 version from a USB pen drive? That could be an interesting test.

No need to worry about virtual texturing though - you can just use 16GB of RAM instead of 2GB and load everything into it from your $40 HDD after installing it from your case-inflating $50 bluray drive during a lengthy mandatory install process. Hurrah! What could a cart possibly offer compared to that!

But seriously, you could cut a huge amount of bulk and cost from your base unit while simultaneously allowing it to operate more efficiently and benefiting just about any kind of just-in-time data loading. Yes there's a down side - pressure on total storage per game - but there's enough upside to at least make it worth considering IMO.

Bigger and more joined up environments, fewer loading screens and less pop in plz.

Seriously, 4-6x CLV blu-ray would be plenty for virtual texturing. It's the random stuff that kills perf and there regular hard drive or preferrably SSD would shine(and the install doesn't need to be huge). Just read this post to understand the requirements of virtual texturing better: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1580827&highlight=bandwidth#post1580827

And on other serious note, fast flash costs, it requires multiple chips and better IO controller. Just check out how horrible flash cart perf on vita is It would be seriously much cheaper to have 32-64GB SSD on next gen console motherboard+optical drive than deliver each game on similarly performing 8-24GB cart (assuming game sizes don't really grow, we already have those multi dvd games like rage, mass effect, forza, etc.) I doubt 32-64GB reasonably fast and robust flash + io controller would cost too much on 2014. Especially as part of the ssd price can be soaked by people buying the regular hdd's to add extra storage space. Also the SSD would benefit from Moore's law if we assume manufacturing technology keeps getting better.

Making assumption game sizes stay flat favours flash delivery and on the other hand favours comparatively better optical perf next gen than this gen(jump from 2x to 4-6x). If if assume game sizes grow significantly, flash carts are out as fast as a snowman in south africa.

 

[manux]

What I assume proper super fast low latency media to use for streaming random stuff would do is let us get away from the world of clones. Next grand theft auto could populate models much more freely as there would be no seek penalty. Also closeups could be done quite a bit better again because the bandwidth is there without significant seek penalty even if fetching multiple unique contents out of random pool. For virtual texturing and whatnot that is predictable slower media is just fine(to keep cache+installation sizes under control)

Ofcourse it could be solved PC style, just have in enough memory and load everything in once. Forget about efficiency and just brute force it. I doubt this makes sense on a 399$ box though Also this would make for horrible load times or huge popup/lowres stuff when content is not yet loaded.

For cross platform the superior platform would get dev praise and far less popup + more unique detail. How did it work for xbox360 this gen to be universally thought to have better versions of the games? Not bad position to be in, especially if it's just smart hardware instead of pouring in more money.

 

[function]

Seriously, 4-6x CLV blu-ray would be plenty for virtual texturing. It's the random stuff that kills perf and there regular hard drive or preferrably SSD would shine(and the install doesn't need to be huge). Just read this post to understand the requirements of virtual texturing better: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1580827&highlight=bandwidth#post1580827

It's not the bandwidth that causes problem it's the seek time. A 4 or 6X CLV drive would probably suck for virtual texturing because seek time from random reads would be really high from speeding up and slowing down the disk by so much all the time. Plus that would put heavy wear on the drive and also increase power draw. Even on the PS3 - where seek times should be lower than on a faster CLV drive - the machine can't handle Rage without a whopping 8GB install - and even then the game has pop in issues with a stock HDD.

A 4X CLV BR drive would have to spin very, very fast while reading the inside edge of the disk - something like 12X CAV speed - and that's even faster than the Xbox 360's disgustingly noisy, vibration and failure prone DVD drive. I don't think 6X CLV BR drives even exist (and if they do I bet they're even more awful!)

And on other serious note, fast flash costs, it requires multiple chips and better IO chip. Just check out how horrible flash cart perf on vita is It would be seriously much cheaper to have 32-64GB SSD on next gen console motherboard than deliver each game on similarly performing 8-24GB cart (assuming game sizes don't really grow, we already have those multi dvd games like rage, mass effect, forza, etc.) I doubt 32-64GB reasonably fast and robust flash + io controller would cost too much on 2014. Especially as part of the ssd price can be soaked by people buying the regular hdd's to add extra storage space. Also the SSD would benefit from Moore's law if we assume manufacturing technology keeps getting better.

Carts benefit from Moore's law too! Plus if you have a 32GB SSD on the motherboard you're still left with the problem of getting your game into there fast enough when the user want to start playing. A 4X or even 6X CAV BR drive will give you a slow start to your game and unpredictable access patterns could see your slowly building cache (in the internal SSD) being missed leaving you going straight to the slow BR drive. A HDD will fill it quickly - perfect for digital downloads - but then you'll still need to install from the optical disk for physical purchases.

Making assumption game sizes stay flat favours flash delivery and on the other hand favours comparatively better optical perf next gen than this gen(jump from 2x to 4-6x). If if assume game sizes grow significantly, flash carts are out as fast as a snowman in south africa.

Cart sizes can grow over the lifetime of the platform, and you aren't going to go from a 2X CLV BR drive to a 6X CLV BR drive. Saving $100 on the manufacturing of your base system and reclaiming some of the billions lost in the used market can go a long way towards paying for those $5 -10 carts.

I can currently buy an 8GB SD card for less than £6. That's including VAT, packaging, retailer margin, everything. 16GB can be found for just under £10. By 2014 those kind of sizes for carts might be cheap enough to make BR drives look expensive.

 

[manux]

It's not the bandwidth that causes problem it's the seek time.

If you bothered to read the link(post from dev) you would realize virtual texturing is highly predictable. Good cache outside optical(like ssd or hard drive) would take care of random access just fine. And it's not a memory hog either

Care to give the maths how flash carts work against 25GB single layer blu-rays. Blu-ray manufacturing cost + shipping including profit for replicator is 1.03$ per 25GB disc. Let's assume reasonable blu-ray drive would add 20-30$ to a consoles price and it would consume less than 10W. Let's not go over 4x or 6x drive whichever hits the 20-30$ mark. Where I look at it 1 or 2 20GB launch games for 2014 will tip the scale for blu-ray if cost is issue and you want to have highspeed flash media. (and that's not including the money needed to build those factories to replicate flash memories)

 

[manux]

I can currently buy an 8GB SD card for less than £6. That's including VAT, packaging, retailer margin, everything. 16GB can be found for just under £10. By 2014 those kind of sizes for carts might be cheap enough to make BR drives look expensive.

How "fast" are those cards, how long would it take to copy the data into those cards on the factory compared to pressing million blu-rays? (time is money). I doubt cheapest cards even compete with optical on speed(just look at ps vita and how it's carts are doing, I doubt its anything but cost why those ps vita game cards are so slow).

My bet is that once flash cards are reasonable pricewise we are already past physical media on western markets. Digital distribution and slim model consoles here we come... Blu-ray to africa and other remote parts where network isn't yet good enough.

 

[Elan Tedronai]

Nintendo is already using 25 blu ray disks for the wii U. Sony will use bigger ones for the ps4. You seriously think MS is going to open up a new production baseline for flash cards?

good luck. I actually would love them to try that just to see the train wreck that ensues

 

[AlphaWolf]

yes no one has ever done anything but optical media before, it's not possible.

 

[Brad Grenz]

It's not that it's not possible. It's just financially ruinous.

 

[Acert93]

yes no one has ever done anything but optical media before, it's not possible.

Which, for a refresher for me (I have not read every page of this thread), what are the legit options going forward?

Optical (Blu Ray, DVD, or a failed format like HD-DVD, etc)
Flash
Digital Distribution

I have no clue where ROM technology is at at this point but I would guess the sheer volume of Flash makes it irrelevant in terms of price and performance (I could be wrong) but there is the question who would even manufacture such. I don't think Holographic Optical Disk tech is anywhere near deployment.

Are there other options I am overlooking?

I guess you could throw in something ala the system storage is mobile (think like a phone, hand held, in a controller, etc) that you take to a point purchase/transfer, but that is basically a twist on digital distribution. (LOL, imagine if HDD tech ever hit $10, games could come on their own HDD).

 

[3dilettante]

My google-fu turned up a few non-flash ROM chip prices, which were cheap but incredibly low capacity.


Mask-programmed ROM is impractical, since it would be creating and fabbing multiple unique chips per game. Other standard types are too small and too slow in manufacture and performance.
For the sake of mass-production, it would probably require EEPROM memory.


However, an EEPROM with sufficient capacity that can be written fast enough to be practical for mass manufacture or download is able to do so because it will collect its bits into arrays or pages in order to "flash" many at once during a write operation.

This gives us the flash part of "flash memory".

 

[-tkf-]

It's not the bandwidth that causes problem it's the seek time. A 4 or 6X CLV drive would probably suck for virtual texturing because seek time from random reads would be really high from speeding up and slowing down the disk by so much all the time. Plus that would put heavy wear on the drive and also increase power draw. Even on the PS3 - where seek times should be lower than on a faster CLV drive - the machine can't handle Rage without a whopping 8GB install - and even then the game has pop in issues with a stock HDD.

A 4X CLV BR drive would have to spin very, very fast while reading the inside edge of the disk - something like 12X CAV speed - and that's even faster than the Xbox 360's disgustingly noisy, vibration and failure prone DVD drive. I don't think 6X CLV BR drives even exist (and if they do I bet they're even more awful!)



Carts benefit from Moore's law too! Plus if you have a 32GB SSD on the motherboard you're still left with the problem of getting your game into there fast enough when the user want to start playing. A 4X or even 6X CAV BR drive will give you a slow start to your game and unpredictable access patterns could see your slowly building cache (in the internal SSD) being missed leaving you going straight to the slow BR drive. A HDD will fill it quickly - perfect for digital downloads - but then you'll still need to install from the optical disk for physical purchases.

Cart sizes can grow over the lifetime of the platform, and you aren't going to go from a 2X CLV BR drive to a 6X CLV BR drive. Saving $100 on the manufacturing of your base system and reclaiming some of the billions lost in the used market can go a long way towards paying for those $5 -10 carts.

I can currently buy an 8GB SD card for less than £6. That's including VAT, packaging, retailer margin, everything. 16GB can be found for just under £10. By 2014 those kind of sizes for carts might be cheap enough to make BR drives look expensive.

There is little reason to run everything of the Optical drive when you have a big harddrive in the Console, and the data we found earlier inducated around 10 watt for a 12xBlu-Ray drive, which doesn´t have to pure CLV. Besides do we have some math on the rotation speed vs transfer speed?

Just a note, i have a i7 PC with a dual SSD Raid 0 setup and i saw texture LOD problems in rage as well, i guess the Cache om my Graphic Card was the problem.

 

[AlphaWolf]

It's not that it's not possible. It's just financially ruinous.

As financially ruinous as launching with blu-ray in 2006?