Am I not remembering correctly as far as the arm processor in the PS4? I thought I remembered it not being powerful enough to deal with things like OS updates etc forcing the Jag to deal with most of those things...
Current Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [post GDC 2020] [XBSX, PS5]
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I looked up the video, unfortunately no lost knowledge, just someone talking shite, like a lot of viral videos (*)
heres an explanation video
(*)https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-51504484
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Deleted member 13524
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IIRC the ARM in the OG PS4 is not powerful enough to call the internet and make updates, but the PS4 Pro's is supposed to be.
No one mentioned any ARM in the PS5, but there hasn't been any reason to either, AFAIK.
Mentioning that, I recall an Indian AMD Engineer who worked on the Series X having a LinkedIn profile listing where they did mention ARM cores as part of the design. So if it's turning out Series X in standby is pulling 29 w, then if those ARM cores are on the APU, I guess they aren't being used for implementing a standby Rest Mode function like on PS4 Pro.
Wondering what those cores are being used for, then. Honestly don't have too good an idea there. I know some Nvidia GPUs have RISC-V and FPGA cores embedded in them, but those might not even be for commercial GPUs the more I think about it, could just be for data center-related environments.
That's what I thought for a while but I vividly remember this one AMD engineer's LinkedIn listing stating ARM cores were in the Series X design, in some fashion. They didn't elaborate on that any further, though.
I'll take their word and assume it to be the case, but if so then it asks the question what would those ARM cores be getting used for?
Security?
Per my Google-fu... https://hothardware.com/news/xbox-series-x-exotic-hybrid-gaming-chip-arm-amd-x86-cores
Tommy McClain
Hmm...yeah that could be it now that I think about it xD. Probably overthought it. If it's just for security though I dunno why he'd bother to explicitly list it. AMD CPUs already have some type of ARM block in them for handling security tasks, the PSP, that's been in their CPUs since 2013 if Wikipedia's listing is right.
There it is! Giving it a read tho, again I probably read too much into it xD. Seems like he didn't mention Series X specifically, just "SoCs", and he did work on the Series X but that specific element may not've been referenced to that system.
Though, maybe it could be something in the Azure server instance of Series systems....I guess :/
Kugai Calo
Regular
Microcontrollers can be used for all sort of purposes, sometime it's easier to integrate an existing design (i.e. small ARM core) and write code for it than designing dedicated logic. For example the Xbox One has a security enclave [see this] that handles... security stuff, that could very will run ARMv7. The command processors in GPUs? they could very will be small ARM/RISC-V/custom ISA CPUs, too.
Yeah, this makes a lot more sense now. I guess the engineer in question wanted to bolster their resume...not a bad thing to do at all, but that got me thinking maybe a bit too crazy on that specific design element (and why it probably wasn't highlighted in the Hot Chips presentation).
Kugai Calo
Regular
I think the all that console vendors want us to know about the hardware is RDNA GPUs and 8 cores Zen 2 and 5.5 GB/s SSD etc., but we enthusiasts sometimes like to dig a little too deep
I think the all that console vendors want us to know about the hardware is RDNA GPUs and 8 cores Zen 2 and 5.5 GB/s SSD etc., but we enthusiasts sometimes like to dig a little too deep
Once you get started, it's hard to stop. It's almost like a "substance", easily losing hours of time a week searching for any new info or details that could be used to chip away at how these systems really work.
It's strangely addictive. And quite the rush xD.
Quadbitnomial
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Sony already announced the PS5 standby state consumes 0.5W.
https://www.sie.com/en/blog/playstations-one-year-update-on-playing-for-the-planet/
https://www.sie.com/en/blog/playstations-one-year-update-on-playing-for-the-planet/
D
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So the presence of an ARM CPU is all but confirmed for the PS5.
Quadbitnomial
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Possibly but still begs the question of how efficient the ARM core they are using. In later revision of PS4 Pro the standby mode with game resume enabled consumed 1.7W. That is with the RAM being supplied power, how are they achieving 0.5W on PS5?
Edit: Possibly dumping RAM to SSD and resuming from the SSD when the system wakes up?
We know from Road to PS5 that it has 2 I/O co-processors (ARM processors according to patents). So in rest mode one of them takes over.
Similar to PS2, it has PS1 processor for backwards compatibility and as I/O processor
The PS4's southbridge chip was intended to perform a number of those tasks, but lacked performance. However, the PS4 jailbreak showed that the ARM processor also played a fundamental role in the system architecture, and served as a virtual IO and storage device for the main APU. The x86 system architecture has various low-level services and devices it relies upon to function, and Sony's quirky custom platform makes the southbridge pretend to be most of them.
Managing disk traffic was something I think I remember being something it was in charge of as well.
The heavy-duty auto-update processes are executed by the main SOC, after the southbridge activates it.
The AMD APU itself sees the world through a window provided and controlled by the southbridge, and the southbridge itself runs its own separate OS. That functionality is the main reason for the extra DDR3 in the PS4 and Pro.
One rumor about the PS5 devkit commented that the DDR (not GDDR6) capacity used as a buffer for the SSD seemed overly large.
There are a few extra points to ponder.
It could be that the dev kit needed more DDR for early functionality or development. However, there was a wave of speculation about the PS5 using a custom Sony SSD that didn't need that RAM at all. The PS5 teardown isn't high resolution enough to see the exact markings, but it appears there are still DDR chips near the custom controller. It might mean that Sony's patents for the SSD controller aren't in use, although even then it might not need the amount of DDR the PS5 has.
If the DDR isn't for the SSD or only some of it, perhaps there's an custom core that performs a similar function to the PS4's southbridge.
It would likely preclude instant-resume of a title in suspend mode, but a straight dump to the SSD would likely reach high read performance on activation.
If the PS5 has a similar architecture at the system level, the IO block may serve a similar purpose for controlling the PS5's devices.
The last model of Pro consumes 1.7W in standby mode (with one game suspended). And 1W with internet connected. The PS4 consumes about the same (respectively 1.8W and 0.9W). This is really impressive.
https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/legal/ecodesign/
No worries, no sure if you thought what you posted was correct or not, but just in case someone did, I linked to the info, I did find it interesting though so thanks.
its a shame that if an arm cpu is there that its not being used for the OS .
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