PlayStation 4 (codename Orbis) technical hardware investigation (news and rumours)

[tuna]

Sure it makes no sense... even 1GB makes no sense.
512MB was already decided, and it was WAY MUCH MORE than what they really needed... PS3 has 32MB... so 256MB is really enough, it´s all the cpu ram in PS3. 512MB is already waaay too much room to grow, I´m 99% sure Sony will not double it to 1GB. The fact they have doubled total RAM from 4GB to 8GB changes nothing the fact that 512MB is way beyond their practical needs.

OMG, it is not about having enough ram for the OS, it is about having enough ram to be able to run apps together. Game + browser + netflix + skype + whatever without having to quit any of them while switching.

 

[Npl]

sure, why not watch blurays, browse the web and skype while playing. hope it comes with 2 disc drives for that matter.

 

[Deleted member 86764]

Sure it makes no sense... even 1GB makes no sense.
512MB was already decided, and it was WAY MUCH MORE than what they really needed... PS3 has 32MB... so 256MB is really enough, it´s all the cpu ram in PS3. 512MB is already waaay too much room to grow, I´m 99% sure Sony will not double it to 1GB. The fact they have doubled total RAM from 4GB to 8GB changes nothing the fact that 512MB is way beyond their practical needs.

Why is Shadow Fall only using 6GB?

 

[Gitaroo]

I thought it would be good to reserve a larger amount then give back later down the road than having not enough later. So it won't ended up like PS3 not being able to do cross game chat. 6 GB is still a plenty now I think.

 

[dobwal]

I thought it would be good to reserve a larger amount then give back later down the road than having not enough later. So it won't ended up like PS3 not being able to do cross game chat. 6 GB is still a plenty now I think.

Agreed. Better to be conservative and reserve RAM than aggressive. You can always release additional ram for game use.

Its not like PS4 developers are going to efficiently make use of the RAM out the box and next year this time they will be complaining about the lack of available memory.

 

[patsu]

It's probably more important to cap the memory by looking at the concurrent/multitasking needs.

The number of launched apps is not so effective in determining that limit because ultimately the user can open an unlimited number of them. I have 70 apps opened right now on my iPad.
iOS handles them with only 1GB.

If they are serious about general computing needs, they can't rely on the 8GB solely. They need a more general solution.

They don't really need to reserve a lot of memory for future OS needs. PS3 ran out of memory because the h/w only has 256MB system RAM, not because of the OS footprint. PS4 has 8GB. 1GB for the OS is aplenty (imagine 2 PS3s running GT6 and TLoU in parallel).

 

[ERP]

It's probably more important to cap the memory by looking at the concurrent/multitasking needs.

The number of launched apps is not so effective in determining that limit because ultimately the user can open an unlimited number of them. I have 70 apps opened right now on my iPad.
iOS handles them with only 1GB.

If they are serious about general computing needs, they can't rely on the 8GB solely. They need a more general solution.

And an IPad 3 will kill any app that exceeds about 250MB of memory even with nothing else running. It issues the first memory warning to the app at about 40MB. And IPad apps aren't crippled with garbage collection. (I have no idea if PS4 "apps" do use a GC or not).

If your apps are small and can be loaded very quickly then you can get away with a lot less memory to switch between them because you can always reload them. As apps get larger you can no longer do this without impacting the user experience.

 

[patsu]

And an IPad 3 will kill any app that exceeds about 250MB of memory even with nothing else running. It issues the first memory warning to the app at about 40MB. And IPad apps aren't crippled with garbage collection. (I have no idea if PS4 "apps" do use a GC or not).

If your apps are small and can be loaded very quickly then you can get away with a lot less memory to switch between them because you can always reload them. As apps get larger you can no longer do this without impacting the user experience.

Games don't use GC.

The games already reserve their own chunk of memory. There is no need to reserve another chunk for the OS (for future needs).

None of the Vita and PS360 apps need a lot of memory. They are all "straightforward" media or communication apps. If it's complex like a game, both XB1 and PS4 can't run 2 games and switch seamlessly at the same time anyway.

On the XB1, they need to grab a big chunk for the OS because they are running 2-3 at the same time. They need to be always there because reloading even just 1 OS will take too much time. Much more than reloading 1 app.

If they designed PS4 to be lean like everyone else, then 1GB should be (more than) enough. If they need to reserve more RAM, there may be some concurrent apps running (e.g. RemotePlay 1 game and run 1 app on TV).

Edit: iOS dropped GC a number of years ago.

Edit 2: The other possibility is a full-blown, concurrent Android run-time.

 

[ERP]

I guess I don't understand why people are assuming that PS4 will not be running "concurrent" "apps" and I use the term to differentiate from games.

I've actually seen very little of the UX, and no actual apps, so you could be right.

 

[patsu]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exv-vReXXm8

I watched the video halfway.

@ 6:50, they introduced the second technology called "Cloud Delivery" (first technology is "Cloud Gaming" which is the instant streaming we know)

@ 8:08, they coined the second technology, Non-Linear Asynchronous Progressive Crowd-Sourced Proximity Accelerated File Delivery

It sounds like a specialized form of progressive download (perhaps with peer-to-peer downloading enhancement + background/silent install + servers close to the ISPs).

 

[bkilian]

@ 8:08, they coined the second technology, Non-Linear Asynchronous Progressive Crowd-Sourced Proximity Accelerated File Delivery

I believe that's technically called "BitTorrent"

 

[Brad Grenz]

I guess I don't understand why people are assuming that PS4 will not be running "concurrent" "apps" and I use the term to differentiate from games.

I've actually seen very little of the UX, and no actual apps, so you could be right.

That "20 facts about the PS4" Sony Europe put out last week explicitly confirms multitasking between games and apps.

 

[Kb-Smoker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exv-vReXXm8

That was really cool. I wonder how much of this will make it into the PS4. I did try out gaikai back when the news brought about sony buying it. The site was hammer but i still was able to play crysis 2 flawlessly. I was impressed and i could not notice any input lag.

PS+ has the 1 hour game trails and it would be amazing if you could play the game over the cloud instead of downloading 25GB+ files just to play an hour....

Really they wouldn't have to make officials demo any more... But again sony have yet to show off any of these features.

 

[patsu]

I believe that's technically called "BitTorrent"

Almost !
Plus silent install (No UI), and "fast start" game bundle so that we can start playing while the rest of the game is being downloaded.

That "20 facts about the PS4" Sony Europe put out last week explicitly confirms multitasking between games and apps.

I only managed to catch "Most of the time, you can switch instantly between the game and the apps on the Dynamic Menu"

Before that, the narrator mentioned that the Dynamic Menu pulls together the community, the game you're currently playing, plus the games you're likely to play next. (e.g., Most recently played games like the current "What's New" pane in XMB ?).

The Playstation Dynamic Menu is the name of the (new) PS4 UI. [size=-2]Ugh ![/size]

That was really cool. I wonder how much of this will make it into the PS4. I did try out gaikai back when the news brought about sony buying it. The site was hammer but i still was able to play crysis 2 flawlessly. I was impressed and i could not notice any input lag.

PS+ has the 1 hour game trails and it would be amazing if you could play the game over the cloud instead of downloading 25GB+ files just to play an hour....

Really they wouldn't have to make officials demo any more... But again sony have yet to show off any of these features.

Yap, the "Top 20 Things You Don't Know about PS4" reiterated PS3 Gaikai game support. I'm very curious about their roll-out plan and quality of service.

 

[Strange]

Yeah, very dangerously clocked cpus can open swormholes!.But maybe the FCC guys are Nintendo fans and dont give a shit about those things

Extreme CPU clocks may cause fragmentation in the time-space fabric and lead to fissures in our universe opening up possibilities for other multiverse to send kaijus though the fissure under the Pacific Ocean.

It would be nice if it led to Jaegers

 

[archie4oz]

Edit: iOS dropped GC a number of years ago.

Edit 2: The other possibility is a full-blown, concurrent Android run-time.

iOS never had GC...

 

[pMax]

And the first point about bypassing the GPU caches, this can be controlled already in the original GCN architecture through the SLC (system level coherent) bit in the encoding for each individual memory instruction (it bypasses all caches, the also existing GLC bit causes the bypass of just the L1). If the original GCN would have been integrated in an APU with unified memory (as PS4), this would (and in Kabini it does) cause exactly the behaviour Cerny described.

Interesting bit, I did miss it in manual - thanks.
Still, I think that such instructions would use garlic bus for I/O?

 

[patsu]

iOS never had GC...

Yeah I think you are right. It's the Mac OS side that dumped GC in favor of manual ref counting and later, ARC.

Edit:
archie4oz, assuming you are still with Sony...
Next time you meet the marketing dude who came up with the name, Playstation Dynamic Menu, would you kindly kick his nuts for me pretty please ?

If it's a gal then never mind.

 

[AstoundingHolmes]

Nah, you've got it all wrong, Patsu. With Playstation Dynamic Menu, we can refer to the OS as the "DM". Now all we need is a DnD theme and we're set!

PSN1 : "Hey guys, can I play?"
PSN2 : "Ask the DM."
DM : *beep boop beep* "ONLY IF YOU ROLE A NATURAL 20" *beep boop beep*
PSN1 : "Ah nuts!"

 

[Brad Grenz]

I only managed to catch "Most of the time, you can switch instantly between the game and the apps on the Dynamic Menu"

Exact verbage: "In most situations you will be able to switch instantly between playing a game and other apps OR the dynamic menu."

Here's a gif of that part of the video, clearly implying media apps as part of the multitasking.