morphinapg
Newcomer
That's what I figured, but I thought I saw some people debating a while back whether encoding was happening on a separate chip, or if the APU was doing it.
PlayStation 4 (codename Orbis) technical hardware investigation (news and rumours)
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That's what I figured, but I thought I saw some people debating a while back whether encoding was happening on a separate chip, or if the APU was doing it.
The video recording is accomplished with a video encode block on the APU. Attributing it to the "secondary chip" is just the author of that article editorializing (incorrectly).
I think its a mixup with the separate chip that handles low power state functionality like downloading and state saving for resume features.
An AMD APU certainly has a block that is capable of doing it.
For the XB1 the official diagrams show something like the AMD block in it's traditional position.
For the PS4, I don't think we have a corresponding diagram.
AFAIR we know that Sony have some gaikai tech in the encoder, but whether it's a modified AMD block or a different block inside the SCE chip-thingy is unclear.
morphinapg
Newcomer
Okay, see, that's what I thought. However, the person I quoted from the article is not the author of the article, it's a quote from the Sony representative they were interviewing. If they say it's a secondary chip, I'm inclined to believe that's the case.
On the other hand, some interviews suggest that the secondary chip "only" does a few specific functions which don't include video encoding... whilst we know that the APU already has an decoder/encoder.
The chip is in the diagram on this page as "SCE System IO block", but there's no definitive list of what's in it.
http://www.vgleaks.com/orbis-devkits-roadmaptypes/
I'm not sure it makes much difference, but it is an interesting idea that MS was integrating new functionality onto the APU whilst Sony was moving functionality from the APU elsewhere.
D
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No, but the southbridge will be the home of the ARM core providing TrustZone, because that's the absolute best place to put it. Having deployed a few TrustZone solutions I'd be surprised if security is keeping that ARM core busy so Sony have very probably offloaded a bunch of other functions to this chip.
Son'y have said there is a custom chip doing background uploads and downloads and I'm certain that it's the ARM core doing this.
Just an FYI, but the PS4 update pup is actually comprised of two separate Updates (1+2). So if it's a rolling patch system then it might be possible that the final update may be larger!?
Is it confirmed that PS4 uses TrustZone ? The rumors were inconclusive (Some said yes, some said no). Sony may be doing something similar but proprietary here.
PSBlog FAQ:
Well, this is interesting. As I thought it would happen, 15 minutes of DRV video is stored in RAM. Its more than dooable, since we know that video will be 720p30
15min 720p30 @ 4mbit - 450mb
RemotePlay is running with 544p60 for Vita or 720p60 stream for VitaTV [confirmed with Gamersyde 60fps vid], and we still dont know if its gonna be 30 or 60fps for livestreaming. All in all, PS4 has a nice video encoder. Shame AMD doesent have something similar for its Radeon users on PC.
Well, this is interesting. As I thought it would happen, 15 minutes of DRV video is stored in RAM. Its more than dooable, since we know that video will be 720p30
15min 720p30 @ 4mbit - 450mb
RemotePlay is running with 544p60 for Vita or 720p60 stream for VitaTV [confirmed with Gamersyde 60fps vid], and we still dont know if its gonna be 30 or 60fps for livestreaming. All in all, PS4 has a nice video encoder. Shame AMD doesent have something similar for its Radeon users on PC.
If the trustzone chip is oustide the SoC (through PCIe?), how is it protected from hackers being able to sniff the bus? (this isn't a rhetorical question, I have no idea how trustzone communicates)
It doesn't say that the video is stored in ram. When you share video you need to continue record new gameplay and store exported part until it uploads. So it just says that until you share it will not occupy HDD space for this exporting piece.
They've got flexibility in how they do it. They could be paging to disk occasionally to reduce the ram requirement, or they may decide to start paging later on when they have more use for the system ram reservation.
Even if they were paging constantly to disk during game play, that'd be a lot less strenuous on the drive than a DVR which has to record two HD streams while playing back a third.
It wouldn't be hard to have an IO scheduler that postpones video paging to disk while the game is doing disk i/o, either. There should be plenty of idle time on the drive across a fifteen minute period even during the most intensive open world travel.
TheWretched
Regular
Oh come on... that would be the biggest waste of RAM I've ever seen in a console. Not that the new consoles don't have enough, but... You have got a 500GB HDD inside every system, able and ready to write 1mb/s down at any time, maybe with a little RAM buffer in front of it.
Saying it doesn't use any HDD space in this cases probably just means that it has dedictated HDD space for this stuff (even PS3 reserves a certain percentage of HDD space for things other than installing games and savestates), and thus doesn't ever eat away at the amount of space you have available.
Saying it doesn't use any HDD space in this cases probably just means that it has dedictated HDD space for this stuff (even PS3 reserves a certain percentage of HDD space for things other than installing games and savestates), and thus doesn't ever eat away at the amount of space you have available.
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