Console Maker's OS

[(((interference)))]

As I've said in other threads reserving this amount of RAM would imply some fairly significant always available functionality, if they are also reserving significant CPU resources it implies significant always "active/running" functionality.
We've reached memory sizes where demand loading/unloading functionality is a less than stellar experience because of the time it takes to read from disk.

I think, as Joker said earlier, Kinect voice recognition (think Siri for games) might need to take up lots of memory if they need to have speech databases etc running (as unlike Siri, it'd have to work at least somewhat offline, for responsiveness).

Would such databases take up a lot of memory?

Of course instant app switching would also need this much memory, if it's going to run Windows 8 apps, IE, Skype, Netflix etc in the background

 

[Brad Grenz]

Are they going to try a full, natural language recognition system, or just a few recognized voice commands? That would make a big difference. They could still require an internet connection for natural language, though. Google Voice search is way faster than Siri typically.

 

[(((interference)))]

Are they going to try a full, natural language recognition system, or just a few recognized voice commands? That would make a big difference. They could still require an internet connection for natural language, though. Google Voice search is way faster than Siri typically.

Not sure, I think it's definitely going to be more like Siri than Kinect is at the moment though, so perhaps full natural language - I've heard things hinting that Kinect voice recognition is going to play a big part in games as well as the general OS.

This rumour seems increasingly accurate btw, not only did it get the Live Wall thing, but it's also mentioned the pulse sensors on the PS4 controllers:
http://dualpixels.com/2012/11/29/ru...y-hardware-and-third-party-softwear-next-gen/

 

[Nisaaru]

Ads, Kinect and bloatware.

The amount of bloat you need to piss away that much memory on a freaking console OS would be beyond my comprehension. And MS showed with the 360 that they can do a lot with small OS memory prints. If they reserve so much memory it needs to have a hardware reason.

 

[Nisaaru]

I think, as Joker said earlier, Kinect voice recognition (think Siri for games) might need to take up lots of memory if they need to have speech databases etc running (as unlike Siri, it'd have to work at least somewhat offline, for responsiveness).

Would such databases take up a lot of memory?

Of course instant app switching would also need this much memory, if it's going to run Windows 8 apps, IE, Skype, Netflix etc in the background

Why would you reserve memory for Kinect if not every game needs it. Makes no sense to me.

 

[Scott_Arm]

The amount of bloat you need to piss away that much memory on a freaking console OS would be beyond my comprehension. And MS showed with the 360 that they can do a lot with small OS memory prints. If they reserve so much memory it needs to have a hardware reason.

More likely a software reason. Kinect could probably eat up a good chunk of memory, but 3GB is a lot. Microsoft Surface RT has 2GB of RAM. Surface Pro has 4GB. I would hazard a guess that it's some indication of what the OS on the next xbox will look like.

IF there really is 3 GB for the OS.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Why would you reserve memory for Kinect if not every game needs it. Makes no sense to me.

So they can have Kinect functionality persistent through the entire OS, even when you're gaming is running. Maybe the game doesn't use it, but maybe I can still use voice commands to check my messages, accept chat requests or other OS prompts while I'm playing my game without pausing. Maybe I can say a voice command and automatically be directed to the DLC store etc. There's a lot of things they could do with voice navigation, facial recognition, PIP video chat etc. IF Kinect is bundled, I would expect it to be front and center of everything, and part of the core experience of the system.

 

[Arwin]

2GB in other words Which could make sense if you see it as something that can comfortably run Win RT

 

[Brad Grenz]

Not sure, I think it's definitely going to be more like Siri than Kinect is at the moment though, so perhaps full natural language - I've heard things hinting that Kinect coice recognition is going to play a big part in games as well as the general OS.

I think that's pretty plausible. If they make it require an internet connection like Siri they can lock it behind Gold. They can use a hybrid approach to process a subset of commands locally for responsiveness, as well.

This rumour seems increasingly accurate btw, not only did it get the Live Wall thing, but it's also mentioned the pulse sensors on the PS4 controllers:
http://dualpixels.com/2012/11/29/ru...y-hardware-and-third-party-softwear-next-gen/

Meh. Both those things appeared in patent applications.

 

[(((interference)))]

Why would you reserve memory for Kinect if not every game needs it. Makes no sense to me.

Maybe pretty much every game will incorporate it, it'd be an ubiquitious system feature and selling point.

And even if games didn't use it, you'd still need to reserver memory to access the OS and non-game apps when playing games.

 

[(((interference)))]

More likely a software reason. Kinect could probably eat up a good chunk of memory, but 3GB is a lot.

IF there really is 3 GB for the OS.

It's not just Kinect though, it's Kinect and all the other Windows 8 apps, DVR, Smartglass, IE, Skype etc that all gave to run in the background as well.

I think there really is 3GB or so reserved, we have thuway and Andy H saying so on GAF, even Karak (who said 1.5GB and 1 core, has now changed his tune) and Rich from DF has got it confirmed from two separate sources (one from CES)

 

[Silent_Buddha]

More likely a software reason. Kinect could probably eat up a good chunk of memory, but 3GB is a lot. Microsoft Surface RT has 2GB of RAM. Surface Pro has 4GB. I would hazard a guess that it's some indication of what the OS on the next xbox will look like.

IF there really is 3 GB for the OS.

One possibility is precaching game assets in memory for nearly instantaneous level load times. This may require some effort on the game developer's part to fully take advantage of.

And as mentioned there's always the possibility of keeping a larger library of words to be recognized via voice recognition. Larger database of potential skeletal positions to be used with Kinect. Never having to unload the dashboard/UI when in a game for potential multitasking/task switching (instant on full dashboard when in game for example). Background recording of video content while playing games (DVR example) without interrupting any required HDD access the game might require. That much reserved RAM would allow for significant video buffering to avoid HDD stalls while playing games (IE - writes to HDD for video would be scheduled around game access requirements to the HDD).

The possibilities are immense for what MS could put that much reserved memory to use for.

And considering how cheap RAM is currently, why not use it to enhance the user experience beyond just games?

Regards,
SB

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Console Makers' OS (CMOS!1111)

Over time the memory footprint of the OS goes down, meaning more memory can be used for gaming and other things.

I wouldn't hold my breath on that. Assuming the 3 GB reservation for the OS is true that does NOT mean the OS itself is using 3 GB of memory. Basically it just means that 3 GB is offlimits to games. That 3 GB will presumably be used for everything else that isn't a game.

Hence it doesn't matter if the OS uses 256 MB or 512 MB or 384 MB at launch or whatever else number it ends up being. If that footprint is reduced in the future there will still be a 3 GB reserved space. In a case like that, it'll just mean more memory available for applications other than games.

Think of it another way. 3 GB are reserved for the OS and applications. 5 GB is reserved for games.

So the OS and applications cannot steal memory from games and the games can't steal memory from the OS or applications.

The practical benefits is that background tasks and applications in theory never have to be unloaded when playing a game. Video transcoding, video messaging, skype, video recording, whatever, doesn't have to be evicted from memory and if required doesn't have to be put on hold. Likewise games don't have to be evicted from memory if you wish to check e-mail, watch a youtube video on how to get X secret in game, look up information on the internet in the browser or whatever.

If rumors are true that 2 or 3 cores are reserved for the OS, that definitely guarantee's that you can have multitasking always on background applications (the above mentioned video conferencing, video recording, video transcoding, for example) without impacting gameplay in the the slightest. The games will always have exclusive access to 5 or 6 cores. The OS and applications will always have exclusive access to 2 or 3 cores. Or however things end up being split.

In fact, with things reserved in such a manner it already gives an advantage over say a PC in that there are set resource boundaries over which there won't be contention over resources. A game for example would never be in a position where it would share a CPU core with applications or drivers as an example.

For PS4, I'm going to guess it'll have the more traditional model of having to unload a game to fully utilize all of the non-game home media center type tasks. Assuming it wants to provide a similar living room experience to the next Xbox. Basically the always on services and applications will be far more limited. With more feature rich applications requiring a game not be running in order to use them.

Regards,
SB

 

[XpiderMX]

. The OS and applications will always have exclusive access to 2 or 3 cores.

Every time someone talk about reserved resources, the numbers go higher and higher than the original rumor

 

[LightHeaven]

I wouldn't hold my breath on that. Assuming the 3 GB reservation for the OS is true that does NOT mean the OS itself is using 3 GB of memory. Basically it just means that 3 GB is offlimits to games. That 3 GB will presumably be used for everything else that isn't a game.

Hence it doesn't matter if the OS uses 256 MB or 512 MB or 384 MB at launch or whatever else number it ends up being. If that footprint is reduced in the future there will still be a 3 GB reserved space. In a case like that, it'll just mean more memory available for applications other than games.

Think of it another way. 3 GB are reserved for the OS and applications. 5 GB is reserved for games.

So the OS and applications cannot steal memory from games and the games can't steal memory from the OS or applications.

The practical benefits is that background tasks and applications in theory never have to be unloaded when playing a game. Video transcoding, video messaging, skype, video recording, whatever, doesn't have to be evicted from memory and if required doesn't have to be put on hold. Likewise games don't have to be evicted from memory if you wish to check e-mail, watch a youtube video on how to get X secret in game, look up information on the internet in the browser or whatever.

If rumors are true that 2 or 3 cores are reserved for the OS, that definitely guarantee's that you can have multitasking always on background applications (the above mentioned video conferencing, video recording, video transcoding, for example) without impacting gameplay in the the slightest. The games will always have exclusive access to 5 or 6 cores. The OS and applications will always have exclusive access to 2 or 3 cores. Or however things end up being split.

In fact, with things reserved in such a manner it already gives an advantage over say a PC in that there are set resource boundaries over which there won't be contention over resources. A game for example would never be in a position where it would share a CPU core with applications or drivers as an example.

For PS4, I'm going to guess it'll have the more traditional model of having to unload a game to fully utilize all of the non-game home media center type tasks. Assuming it wants to provide a similar living room experience to the next Xbox. Basically the always on services and applications will be far more limited. With more feature rich applications requiring a game not be running in order to use them.

Regards,
SB

But not sharing resources is not necessarily better. Take your ram scenarios for example, Okay, you don't have to unload applications, that's great. But what if you never load these applications in first place? You end up with a monstrous pool of memory that's being wasted while the application you are running right now could use more memory.

A memory management like they have in W8 would be better because if the system needs to use more memory it suspends the apps (while providing enough resources for those apps do tasks in background), and if the app is ever opened it can be almost instantly restored to it's running state. And MS already has such memory management in place, why not use it on 720 just for the sake of having almost half the ram wasted most of the time?

I'm thinking, if the 3gb memory is true, that a huge part of it will be for services the OS can provide to games... Say for example an in memory cache, to reduce subsequent load times, or to alleviate streaming problems on installed games, that were designed to run of the disk and counted on the Hdd caching too (like Halo games)... All the other stuff, being able to pause apps, streaming content everywhere even over the internet, simply does not justify that memory usage.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Console Makers' OS (CMOS!1111)

Rumours actually don't say that Orbis reserves one whole Jaguar core for its OS.

The assumption being either that the OS will use whatever CPU cycles are available when the game app is running, or that they'll possibly have some little ARM core on die for the OS.

Eurogamer specificall says that Orbis doesn't reserve any of its CPU cores for the OS. All 8 are available to the game app.

 

[XpiderMX]

Rumours actually don't say that Orbis reserves one whole Jaguar core for its OS.

The assumption being either that the OS will use whatever CPU cycles are available when the game app is running, or that they'll possibly have some little ARM core on die for the OS.

Eurogamer specificall says that Orbis doesn't reserve any of its CPU cores for the OS. All 8 are available to the game app.

No OS at all? Lol...

Maybe some kind of ARM cpu?

 

[3dilettante]

It's not a hard requirement that an OS has statically dedicated core for its own use. Desktop systems don't.
edit: Although reserving resources like that can simplify a lot of things.

 

[Prophecy2k]

It's not a hard requirement that an OS has statically dedicated core for its own use. Desktop systems don't.
edit: Although reserving resources like that can simplify a lot of things.

Indeed.

 

[Rangers]

Some other facts:

Every Durango will come with Kinect and HDD since those are super expensive and we want Durango to be as weak as possible.

The RAM OS in Durango cant ever be lowered.

And so forth and so on.

Indeed.

Indeed, one core will have to be available to the OS always, making it basically useless for a game. Similar to the PS3's 2nd OS SPU today IIRC.

What if Durango's OS functions are good enough they cause many more people to buy a Durango than an Orbis.

MS reserved a lot for OS apparently for a reason. When consumers look at the total package, there will be a lot of factors go into what box sells. What MS is cooking up very well might be pretty compelling.

What if Sony was shortsighted not reserving more for OS, and consumers dont care Orbis games look 10% better (if they do), they flock to 720's special OS features, whatever they may be, and Kinect 2 in every box. I for one am at least interested.

We can start speculation now that PS4 has a special core just for the OS of course, just like we want it to have special DDr3 just for the OS