DeanoC blog PS3 memory management

[chris1515]

http://rattie.demon.co.uk/?p=43

DeanoC speak about the PS3 and memory management.

And Mattias woch alias langsuyar will do another presentation in GDC 2006 about lair asset:

http://www.langsuyar.com/news/news.html

 

[Titanio]

Thanks for the heads up!

Off the top of my head its in the region of about 300Mb in total! This is all streamed as well, so be glad you have a nice big disk to put things on…

I'm gonna guess he's talking about optical media here. And ask if they're thus hoping to use Blu-ray for HS?

Lots of other interesting commentary in there, some interesting predictions for the future too. Nice update

 

[dodo3]

My favorite part is the predictions of the evolution of PlayStation 3 games.

 

[rabidrabbit]

if the art assets are only 300MB, I'm sure there'd be enough room for other things on even a single sided DVD.
I think he is talking about the HDD, reading the comments further down, I think gives more hint.
Though, with streaming I think that 300MB is to be replicated to make it more effective, right?
So, I think he's talking about the BD after all.

 

[London Geezer]

if the art assets are only 300MB, I'm sure there'd be enough room for other things on even a single sided DVD.
I think he is talking about the HDD, reading the comments further down, I think gives more hint.
Though, with streaming I think that 300MB is to be replicated to make it more effective, right?
So, I think he's talking about the BD after all.

... 300MB for any given scene.... Plus streaming... :smile:

 

[drpepper]

Track everything - Every allocation, every free. Have different memory policies and make people stick to them. Its easier to keep to a limit, than have to scramble to make things fit later on. Decide early, how much memory each system gets and don’t budge unless the person is really convincing (Any of my team reading this… I have been known to take bribes ;-) )

they're running into memory managment issues already? I must admit, universities do spend less time with memory management despite it's generally within the first 4 chapters of any C/C++ book. I have a hard enough time with Objective-C's retain/release model and it's supposed to be easier.

I hard a very hard time grasping memory issues for some time, but I found my first year comp sci classes didn't make it any easier as they conveniently used Java and it's childplay memory managment system. I was forced to learn on my own with C. There's not much I miss from the day's when I took software engineering.

I think DeanoC should show some tough love to the young ones and hammer in some memory managment skills.

 

[BlueTsunami]

So is Deano finding importance in using Blu Ray disks? I also find the comment about PPU and SPU utilization down the line to be very cool

Note: This type of info being released must be a precursor to something?...SOMETHING!!!???

Note#2: Whats with the OS comment? Appearently the OS takes up a sizeable chunk of the system memory....is this some type of Development Operating System or is it the ACTUAL OS that will be in the PS3?

 

[Synergy34]

Was wondering that myself. What exactly is a "sizeable chunk" of RAM? 50MB? 25? Also are they actually dealing with the OS or just numbers they are provided by Sony to work with so they don't code for the wrong spec and get screwed down the road? I think maybe if they are interacting with it there could be the possibility that isn't optimized yet? Maybe it could shrink in the final form?

 

[blakjedi]

I wonder if devs are having the same issues on 360 with unified memory system (if that makes a difference at all). Although the 360 has more memory (522MB) I think that the 10MB of Edram is its own problem...at least thats ten more MB of space within system RAM to play with.

BTW I think his assessment of PS3 generations are spot on. 2nd and 3rd gen PS3 games will be incredible.

 

[BlueTsunami]

Deano has commented on the blog (in the blog page) and he has confirmed that "large disk" means Blu Ray disk. This must mean that Heavenly Sword is going to be shipped on Blu Ray disks?

 

[drpepper]

Deano has commented on the blog (in the blog page) and he has confirmed that "large disk" means Blu Ray disk. This must mean that Heavenly Sword is going to be shipped on Blu Ray disks?

Sounds great!

BTW I think his assessment of PS3 generations are spot on. 2nd and 3rd gen PS3 games will be incredible.

Good for me, thats when I typically make a console purchase.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

if the art assets are only 300MB, I'm sure there'd be enough room for other things on even a single sided DVD.

Deano was talking about RAM consumption. At any given moment out of 512 MB of RAM, some 300+ are used for graphics assets, leaving 212 MB for game code, physics, AI, universe details, yadayada. Out of which a 'sizable' amount is consumed by OS (I'd place that at around 48-64Mb myself if it's sizeable).

For persistant worlds, streaming to flash storage would be nice. Could temp files/scratch pads be created on the Mem card? PS2 had miserable access times but PS3 should get some decent transfer speeds.

 

[hey69]

300mb out of 512 is a big chunk
300 out of 1024 is not

ok i crawl back inside the giant wintersleep hole

 

[dukmahsik]

wow very interesting read!

are there any 360 devs on here? we seem to have 2-3 resident ps3 devs

 

[Npl]

wow very interesting read!

are there any 360 devs on here? we seem to have 2-3 resident ps3 devs

Well, the 360 the same amount of Memory and CPU not unlike the PPE. If one Camp has trouble with Memory then the other will too.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Why do people keep talking about EDRAM on the GPU like a "problem?" When did it ever cause a problem before? Lots of the more system-pushing stuff we saw on the Cube and PS2 this generation was absolutely dependent on having a huge amount of dedicated bandwidth to a large, low latency on-chip cache, preventing it from eating main memory bandwidth. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Xbox was the only console this gen to use all its GPU's silicon for shaders, and that its successor isn't taking the same approach.

 

[pipo]

Well, the 360 the same amount of Memory and CPU not unlike the PPE. If one Camp has trouble with Memory then the other will too.

One word: unified.

Edit - you can't compare them like that...

 

[Titanio]

One word: unified.

I'm not sure how relevant that is in the context of what Deano's talking about. The challenges he discusses seem to relate solely to how much RAM is there, not what goes where..

 

[pipo]

It's relevant in the context Npl is talking about.

BTW: if it's purely the size - I agree with you both...

 

[Titanio]

It's relevant in the context Npl is talking about.

I think the "problems" he's referring to is what Deano's talking about, hehe Maybe if you're talking in a general sense about any challenges memory presents it might be relevant, but if we're looking at simply those Deano outlines I'm not so sure..