Did he ever post any updates on this post?
I would like to know what he meant by "eight very wide vector engines" ?
512-bit or 1024-bit?
& just how powerful can 8 very wide vector engines connected to a Jaguar CPU be?
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Did he ever post any updates on this post?
I would like to know what he meant by "eight very wide vector engines" ?
512-bit or 1024-bit?
& just how powerful can 8 very wide vector engines connected to a Jaguar CPU be?
Streaming from both BR and HDD should be faster than just using HDD streaming. A few PS3 games did that (e.g., stream dialogs and movies from BR, and others from HDD + dynamic caching from BR to HDD). The problem is it's complex and not so compatible with digital downloads because digital games can't stream from BR.
Full HDD streaming is easier. I think what people are hating on is mandatory install. They don't like the explicit install step, and the extra HDD space usage.
It may be possible to have the best of both worlds though.
You are vastly overestimating the bandwidth needed for compressed 4K video.
It won't require more with H.265 or even H.264. Even a 2.5" mechanical harddrive with a sustained read speed of 100 MB/s is more than adequate.
YouTube 4K is a bad example but it is still less than normal BD streaming (13 to 24 Mbit/s).
It won't require more with H.265 or even H.264. Even a 2.5" mechanical harddrive with a sustained read speed of 100 MB/s is more than adequate.
YouTube 4K is a bad example but it is still less than normal BD streaming (13 to 24 Mbit/s).
Well, from the BD-rom drive it can't because 6-speed BD-rom is only as good as a 200-mbit internet connection.
What I expect is that there won't be ANY bottleneck.
I think Full install can remain up to the player's preference (wait now versus wait later, waste or save space). The reason I say there's no bottleneck is because the HDD will still be there for devs to rely on, partial installs are still available for performance critical stuff (just like the PS3, but better planned, and possibly used as a form of caching instead), so there's no justification for forcing full installs on the console level. Personally I would still full-install the frequently played games, and minimal-install the ones I finished or don't play often to save space. There's no way a 500GB will be enough for me.
The advantages of the HDD are less this time around. On the PS3, the BR drive was about 8 times slower than the HDD, and the seek time was horrible, some games needed very big partial installs. This time the 6x BR averages 3 times slower. Because it's CAV, the seek will be much much better and the drive's maximum RPM should be only 1.6 times faster than the PS3 drive. It will not be noisy, nor unreliable.
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Lucid_Dreamer
Veteran
They need to support external drives and maybe NAS as well.
These peripherals are fairly common now.
If they're smart, they'll make a Playstation media server that is relatively affordable and easy to set up, so that people would be motivated to download media content from their stores, build up an ecosystem.
These peripherals are fairly common now.
If they're smart, they'll make a Playstation media server that is relatively affordable and easy to set up, so that people would be motivated to download media content from their stores, build up an ecosystem.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
If it really is CAV (which it seems all 6x BluRay drives are) that means it'll only be 6x faster on the outer track. On the inner track it'll be much closer to the old BRD drives (assuming they were CLV which I have no clue if they were or not).
Likewise seek times will be much faster on the outer track, but only minorly faster on the inner tracks. Seek times are also going to be massively worse than HDD.
http://www.cdrlabs.com/Reviews/sony...-blu-ray-disc-writer/Performance-BD-Read.html
Is a review of a Sony 6x Drive. At the inner track transfer speed is only 2x. you only get 6x at the very outermost track. Average is ~4.5x. Random seek is 94 ms, a seek over 1/3 of the drive is 193 ms, and a full seek of the disk is 290 ms.
That one has problems with full disk seeks, but has a fast random seek. Sony could instead use a new drive based on...
http://www.cdrlabs.com/Reviews/sony...-blu-ray-disc-writer/Performance-BD-Read.html
Transfer speeds don't change, but random seeks jump to 119 MS. 1/3 and full disk seeks however are much better at 5 ms and 4 ms.
So optimal (linear/sequential read speed) will vary from ~11.2 MB/s to ~27 MB/s with an average around 20.2 MB/s. Performance would be catastrophically bad on the inner tracks and just plain horrible on the outer tracks. Random read once you factor in the 95-120 ms seek times is going to just be overall catastrophic if you want to have improved game IQ over last gen.
Compare all that to a decent 5400 RPM 500 GB 2.5" HDD.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/937/2/
Sequential reads go from ~42 MB/s to ~85 MB/s with an average of ~67.5 MB/s. Random seeks are ~16.5 ms.
So if you look at just pure sequential reads then yes, ~3-4x faster for a HDD is about right. Once you factor in random reads which are going to dominate game data transfers during gameplay that 16.5 ms random seek versus 95-120 ms random seek (up to ~7.27x slower) for a 6x BRD is going to open up to a much larger gap.
If Sony doesn't go for mandatory HDD installs, then Durango is going to have a massively large advantage when it comes to loading game assets which will translate into better looking graphics if the game relies on streaming data but will only result in faster level loads if it doesn't.
Think of it another way. We've had this level of graphics and associated graphics data for quite a long time on PCs. There's a reason that nothing is ever streamed off an optical drive. And even on a 7200 RPM 3.5" HDD, levels can take a while to load and textures can take a while to pop in with games that stream data. But even that was already faster than the current gen consoles which had much MUCH smaller graphics data sets to load. With the next generation of console games you are talking about PC levels of game assets.
Instead of potentially loading up 256-300 MB for a level with some streaming, we're talking about potentially loading up 2-4 GB of data possibly with some streaming. This isn't a measly 3x increase in data. We're taking about potentially 10-20x the data.
That's why you've seen Arwin and I sit here and wish that consoles would at the very least have 7200 RPM 3.5" drives. But the reality is that they will likely have 5400 RPM 2.5" drives due to cost and heat.
Regards,
SB
The CLV spinup and spindown was the killer for PS3's drive seek, it has been solved here with CAV.
PS4 is 3.3x inner track up to 6x clamped according to vgleaks, P-CAV.
That would mean half of the data is at 27MB/s. The game layouts can be planned accordingly, whatever needs speed is placed on the outer half. Whatever needs LOTS of speed is on the HDD partial install, or can be cached while loading the level. You can't do that kind of layout with the HDD, the guaranteed speed is the inner HDD track, because it's a dynamic storage and a file system, the game will be anywhere there was some place left. So the streaming speed limit is 42MB for the HDD, while if the outer half is used for the BR, it's 27MB/s.
This is complete BS and FUD. There's no bottleneck compared to Durango, it's just more choices, and much less waiting to start playing the game. There's no justification for forcing full installs, and it's the Durango gamers that will have to wait 30 minutes before playing their game, while PS4 would only have to do the minimal install.
Why is everyone acting as if "full install is not mandatory" is the same thing as "the user cannot do any full install" and "devs can't use the HDD"?
Bagel seed
Veteran
A peculiar thing about this CTO guy.. he left Sony in Oct and is now with Samsung. Was he even involved with PS4 or was he just in his Ivory Tower doing stuff completely unrelated?
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Without mandatory install the Developers can only target the lowest speed a user can stream data from. In this case it would be Optical media. You also very blindly gloss over the rather massive random seek times that all optical drives suffer from when compared to any speed of HDD. There really isn't anything that anyone can do about that.
If you have a game designed around streaming from optical media then you are going to be anywhere from 3-8x slower than streaming the same data off a modern 5400 RPM HDD.
That means that either your level takes 3-8x longer to load or you have to load in data that is 3-8x smaller in order to maintain the same streaming asset speed.
Then again if developers create games to the lowest common denominator then that would mean Durango would also get limited to the speed of the PS4 optical drive. In which case everyone loses.
Mandatory HDD installs will already be bottlenecked by the HDD speed. Streaming from Optical just means the bottleneck is almost an order of magnitude larger.
These are all problems that plague PC games. Console games haven't suffered as much from optical drive speeds (transfer AND random seek) due to limited amount of data that can ever be loaded at any given time. They will most definitely suffer from it if you want to improve visuals significantly over the current gen, however.
Regards,
SB
Depends on what you mean by mandatory install.
I thought it was mentioned on here there was little point to using a SSD as opposed to simply adding lots of RAM, at least for the base model. To truly receive the effect of what an SSD can offer are they not still expensive? As in lots of memory control hardware and a PCIE controller expensive?
Lucid_Dreamer
Veteran
And, it's streamed from both, like Uncharted 3...?
I was wiating for the question, but it never came.
Ha, quite true. Anyway, I think if the PS4/720 are going to have digital downloads play a larger role, then both systems have to move back to 3.5" hard drives for the sake of storage sizes.
Yep they made good on price reduction, problem is the demand for space has grown as expected, we have 2 x "8GB" consoles on the way, 4K movies and BR based media.
Nothing is stopping them from allowing USB drives on the PS4, it's a part of the PS3 so there is no reason it shouldn't be a part of the PS4. So space is not an issue with movies (most likely encrypted anyway) and the transfer speed is not an issue, even with 100MB sized movies. They could also allow for games to be installed on USB3 drives as well, just a simple media test to confirm that the drive is fast enough.
Sure, it could be allowed, but that just seems inelegant. Plus, it clutters up the area where your console is.
I'm sure they'll offer systems starting at 500GB storage, but if its a 2.5" drive, getting a high-end 1TB drive will only store a few games and movies. But a 3.5" drive is so much more capable.
I actually think that might be a contributing reason why even a PS4 prototype wasn't shown off because even that would give a ton of info to Microsoft early enough that they could theoretically make minor changes to their own system.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
A 3.5" drive would be nice and they are actually cheaper per GB. But there is a rather large cost associated to them in terms of heat and failure rates with regards to heat. When neither manufacturer knows whether a consumer will put their console into a home theater A/V cabinet with insufficient airflow, that becomes a rather significant issue. Even 5400 RPM 3.5" drives run a fair bit warmer than 5400 RPM 2.5" drives. The larger actuator arms and magnets required to move them also induce much more stress on the entire motor assembly leading to potentially greater failure rates.
Personally I'd love to see a nice fast 7200 RPM 3.5" drive in there, but I'm don't see that as being very likely.
However, since games will be, in theory, tied to user accounts and their associated machines then in theory one can install them on any external drive. USB 3.0 basically provides the same data throughput as can be achieved with SATA, hence you could add an SSD external drive if you wanted. Providing for faster load times and faster streaming.
Just be aware that going by PC games, even using a fast SSD some games can take up to 30 seconds to load a level. And that is with using on average 2 GB or less of game assets. Granted there's often other things happening during that time other than just transferring data.
Hmmm, that just made me think. Just loading 2 GB worth of data from a 6x BD would take almost 1.5 minutes in ideal conditions (sequential reads, all data in outer tracks), that increases to potentially 3-5 minutes if there's some random data (non-sequential blocks) to load especially if there's many small files. Potentially increases to 7+ minutes if data is located on the inner tracks. Yeowza.
Regards,
SB
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