Baseless Next Generation Rumors with no Technical Merits [pre E3 2019] *spawn*

[chris1515]

I agree with bgroovy. Prior to Sony's 'moar speed' publicity, we all thought any SSD would do as it's such a huge improvement and only considered costs and capacity, not speed, when discussing them. Why would any console company going from 5.25" laptop HDDs to several GB/s low seek-rate SSD feel it wasn't fast enough? If MS and Sony had both gone with a cost-effect 20x speed-up, none of us would bat an eye-lid. It only sounds 'weak' because Sony has decided to prioritise it. Unless the fanboys turn frickin' load-times into next-gen's 'flops', it shouldn't be an issue of contention. A choice between 2 TB NVMe 2 versus 1 TB NVMe 4, hypothetically speaking, may see the larger, slower option picked, with good reason and without that being a dumb move. Of course if NVMe 4 is faster and cheaper and MS went with NVMe 2, that would be a dumb move.

We should just look at MS's options in terms of costs and benefits to hit on the best long-term value, as that's most likely the choice they'll go with. What's the price difference between the latest and older techs?

SSD is not only load time but streaming too.

 

[Globalisateur]

I agree with bgroovy. Prior to Sony's 'moar speed' publicity, we all thought any SSD would do as it's such a huge improvement and only considered costs and capacity, not speed, when discussing them. Why would any console company going from 5.25" laptop HDDs to several GB/s low seek-rate SSD feel it wasn't fast enough? If MS and Sony had both gone with a cost-effect 20x speed-up, none of us would bat an eye-lid. It only sounds 'weak' because Sony has decided to prioritise it. Unless the fanboys turn frickin' load-times into next-gen's 'flops', it shouldn't be an issue of contention. A choice between 2 TB NVMe 2 versus 1 TB NVMe 4, hypothetically speaking, may see the larger, slower option picked, with good reason and without that being a dumb move. Of course if NVMe 4 is faster and cheaper and MS went with NVMe 2, that would be a dumb move.

We should just look at MS's options in terms of costs and benefits to hit on the best long-term value, as that's most likely the choice they'll go with. What's the price difference between the latest and older techs?

Yes. But the difference is also in the planning of the whole thing. I see 2 different strategies.

Sony has being designing their custom SDD since 4 years ago, so in 2020 it would have being designed for 5 years. In the long term (and producing 100-120 million of it) it could be both faster and cheaper than standard off the shelf NVMe + 1TB SSD.

But if MS intend to sell like 50 million of XBX2, then using the available SSD + NVMe tech available on PC could be cheaper for them while still giving them much faster loadings (x20) than HDD.

Also a compatible PC solution might be better suited for their needs. As MS design games for PC and console, a off the shelf SSD is better suited for them for the compatibility with their games also running on PC (so pretty much all of them since recently).

 

[iroboto]

f I said I plan to eat many dinners, would you assume I'm eating them all at the same time?

He could have meant he anticipated multiple Xbox over the long-term. He is a terrible communicator, you're never quite sure what he's said and he never wants to clarify comments.

Absolutely. Which is of course why I find the leaks to have totally directed the forum for MS. We have no real info.

Like Sony, until actual information is revealed we don’t actually know. And we did not largelythink SSD was part of the mix due to cost. Now that we do we take those specs for granted but until they did we were speculating elsewhere.

 

[iroboto]

Sony has being designing their custom SDD since 4 years ago, so in 2020 it would have being designed for 5 years. In the long term (and producing 100-120 million of it) it could be both faster and cheaper than standard off the shelf NVMe + 1TB SSD.

Without knowing what Sony did to cause the speedup we don’t actually know if it’s a major customization they requires a lot of investment or not.

MS should have been working on similar design goals, they have been largely grilled by their fans for their load and install times on Xbox. They made some improvement on X1X, they will definitely need to go further to appease their fans for next gen.

2014

https://twitter.com/x/status/471494507578404864

2018
“
Spencer moved onto game installs, admitting it’s an area Microsoft has stumbled on in the past. “I’m always wishing games would start quicker,” he continued. “We’re as guilty as anybody … one game I’m playing a ton of, State of Decay, it says ‘Ready to Start’ and I get to [sit at the title screen] and install the rest of the game.” Spencer points to newly-announced FastStart features as one way the company hopes to resolve this problem.
“

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Is there any reason to think they wouldn't just settle on an SSD though? There was certainly no reason to think Sony wouldn't just settle on an SSD!

 

[BRiT]

Is there any reason to think they wouldn't just settle on an SSD though? There was certainly no reason to think Sony wouldn't just settle on an SSD!

Is there any reason to think they'd go out of there way to go with only 2 Lane PciExpress connection when all NVME are 4 Lane?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Is there any reason to think they wouldn't just settle on an SSD though? There was certainly no reason to think Sony wouldn't just settle on an SSD!

SSDs have controller electronics that include licensed standard-based patented technology that have to pay for but may be redundant in a console. If you can remove that, roll your own controller and do it for less, then that's a cost reason. Generally speaking, removing layers of controller/arbitration results in increased performance and gives you more control about the solid state cells are used.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Is there any reason to think they'd go out of there way to go with only 2 Lane PciExpress connection when all NVME are 4 Lane?

I don't know. Is there a cost difference? Is it possible for a config of two lanes for one device and two lanes for another device, for example? Why does the two-lane B-key module exist?

 

[iroboto]

Is there any reason to think they wouldn't just settle on an SSD though? There was certainly no reason to think Sony wouldn't just settle on an SSD!

*shrug*
I guess it depends on where the bottleneck for performance is. They know that SSD over USB3.0 doesn’t have any significant advantages over a 7200rpm external drive so? I’m going to assume the person they hired for storages (old post listing ssd and nvme requirements) would have been able to guide them through bottlenecks. What they did and how much invested to solve it is unknown.

All things considered;

It would be a reasonable guess that someone could make thinking they invested a lot more effort into ray tracing given the information we have with its announcement and release in 2018.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

*shrug*
I guess it depends on where the bottleneck for performance is.

The bottlenecks are electrons and the interfaces used by the controller electronics. Controller electronics are built on standards which are there for interoperability so if you don't need those then removing the controller removes the bottlenecks.

Look at what Apple started doing in 2015 with their custom SSD controllers on Mac which were much faster than anything in the Windows world. They've continued with this initiative and now deploy a crazy fast SSD controller in their T2 chip. The key to the speed is not some 'Apple magic' but Apple removing all the interoperability standards they don't need for the custom SSD modules made for them by OWC and SanDisk.

 

[AlNom]

It'd probably be worthwhile for the cloud racks for on-demand streaming (or electron-spinning up from low power)

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Electrons do indeed spin!

 

[iroboto]

The bottlenecks are electrons and the interfaces used by the controller electronics. Controller electronics are built on standards which are there for interoperability so if you don't need those then removing the controller removes the bottlenecks.

Look at what Apple started doing in 2015 with their custom SSD controllers on Mac which were much faster than anything in the Windows world. They've continued with this initiative and now deploy a crazy fast SSD controller in their T2 chip. The key to the speed is not some 'Apple magic' but Apple removing all the interoperability standards they don't need for the custom SSD modules made for them by OWC and SanDisk.

Right but we're not seeing that with say the speed differences between nvme and SSD when it comes to loading on PC despite the difference in controller speeds; so there are other bottlenecks in the chain or other things that require consideration.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Right but we're not seeing that with say the speed differences between nvme and SSD when it comes to loading on PC despite the difference in controller speeds; so there are other bottlenecks in the chain or other things that require consideration.

In a typical PC architecture there are many bottlenecks, including two RAM pools separated what is a relatively slow bus and what could be a disparate CPU-GPU combination and RAM (RAM/VRAM) pools. On console the speed of accessing storage is a big bottleneck, as is the way data is packed (i.e. does the CPU need to unpack it, which hits CPU, read/write/cache from/to RAM), then the CPU being able to meaningfully use the data along with the GPU being able to render what it needs too. We've seen the disproportionate CPU/GPU bandwidth on PS4's bus as well. Consoles have traditionally been a bunch of bottlenecks which slows everything down.

A few dropped frames here and there won't ruin most console gamer's days, nor will non-native HD resolutions but long loading screens are really in your face. Fixing all the bottlenecks to make this a non-issue is a non-trivia. It'll be interesting if instead of prioritising CPU and/or GPU Sony have prioritised the actual guts of the console to the overall gaming experience is better.

 

[bgroovy]

Is there any reason to think they'd go out of there way to go with only 2 Lane PciExpress connection when all NVME are 4 Lane?

Uh, there are absolutely 2 lane nvme drives on the market. They could have chosen that for cost reasons or because of how PCIe lanes are apportioned in their designs.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I agree with bgroovy. Prior to Sony's 'moar speed' publicity, we all thought any SSD would do as it's such a huge improvement and only considered costs and capacity, not speed, when discussing them. Why would any console company going from 5.25" laptop HDDs to several GB/s low seek-rate SSD feel it wasn't fast enough? If MS and Sony had both gone with a cost-effect 20x speed-up, none of us would bat an eye-lid. It only sounds 'weak' because Sony has decided to prioritise it. Unless the fanboys turn frickin' load-times into next-gen's 'flops', it shouldn't be an issue of contention. A choice between 2 TB NVMe 2 versus 1 TB NVMe 4, hypothetically speaking, may see the larger, slower option picked, with good reason and without that being a dumb move. Of course if NVMe 4 is faster and cheaper and MS went with NVMe 2, that would be a dumb move.

We should just look at MS's options in terms of costs and benefits to hit on the best long-term value, as that's most likely the choice they'll go with. What's the price difference between the latest and older techs?

Hey, don't lump us all in that boat.

I also had concerns about it as my experience on PC shows that even SSDs are going to be problematic if you're attempting to utilize 16-24 GB of memory.

While what was shown for Spiderman is certainly promising and much better than PC SSDs, it remains to be seen just how well it'll cope with the increased demands from games in the next generation of consoles. It'll certainly be better than PS3 with current gen games, but will it lead to a reduction in load times even with developers taking advantage of the new hardware? I'd suspect it will, but the improvement in load times is unlikely to be as dramatic as the Spiderman demo would lead some to believe. But I guess if it at least maintains or slightly reduces load times in next gen. games compared to current load times on PS3, most console gamers would consider that a win.

I guess I'm a bit of a PC snob in that sense as I find load times on current generation consoles to be excruciatingly long. So my hope is that it'll lead to a more dramatic increase to at least match current gen game load times on PC with an fast SSD.

It's another one of those little things that I'd like to see that might nudge me slightly more in the direction of getting back into console gaming.

Regards,
SB

 

[Barrabas]

Electrons do indeed spin!

Big talks in Norway these days https://newsbeezer.com/norwayeng/marthas-shaman-lover-says-he-can-turn-atoms/

 

[RDGoodla]

Why Sony makes much effort on super-fast SSD which is maybe 10GB/s of read speed?

Is there other technical reason apart from streaming assets and loading (for example, better system performance)?

 

[Lukebg]

https://www.reddit.com/r/PS5/comments/bso1jg

new rumor about the ssd...

 

[temesgen]

Is there any reason to think they wouldn't just settle on an SSD though? There was certainly no reason to think Sony wouldn't just settle on an SSD!

My guess it comes down to the design, a device which can move assets quickly presumably wouldn't need as much memory as a design that holds more data and slows down when accessing data off a hard drive. A streaming, procedurally generating approach is just another way to address the issues with potential benefits to startup times for games being an easy way to talk about the benefits of the approach, even if it's secondary to cost savings.

To say it another way, I doubt Sony took this approach to speed up game initiations... But if they were looking at >20GB of reasonably quick memory at a high cost or a adopting a streaming approach, it makes sense.

Frankly, the very real need to adopt at least an SSD transfer speeds and the potential cost probably forced both platforms to adopt a higher bandwidth solution with less but much quicker memory.