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

[Bagel seed]

Any details? Is it the actual TrueAudio chipset or something "based" on it? I think the actual tweet from AMD simply said that it has it, not based on it.

From what I understand, it, is basically just a custom programmed Tensilica audio DSP chip. The magic is in the code.

 

[Cyan]

Wow that's big news IMO. It puts the PS4 ahead of the XBO in the audio department doesn't it? In a way it's not surprising, it would have been crazy to strip that functionality out considering it's already right there in the chip but the fact that they didn't whisper a word about it despite all the SHAPE hype made me pretty much discount the possiblity.

This is great news for the PC anyway as it means adoption of TrueAudio should be much, much greater.

Well, it's a bit too much to suppose something like that.

I've read the PS4 hardware review on DF and I've seen the audio options and nothing there indicates that the sound is the same or better than in SHAPE, quality wise.

In fact, the options seemed to say otherwise.

Maybe I am wrong, I have a hunch I am not.

 

[scf]

According to gamespot Resogun loads in 10 sec on SSD and 20 on stock HDD.

 

[patsu]

Anandtech has a writeup on TrueAudio...

AMD Announces TrueAudio Technology For Upcoming GPUs:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7370/amd-announces-trueaudio-technology-for-upcoming-gpus

 

[Strange]

According to gamespot Resogun loads in 10 sec on SSD and 20 on stock HDD.

Time to switch out to a SSD

 

[scf]

I hope I heard it correct

 

[onQ]

Wow that's big news IMO. It puts the PS4 ahead of the XBO in the audio department doesn't it? In a way it's not surprising, it would have been crazy to strip that functionality out considering it's already right there in the chip but the fact that they didn't whisper a word about it despite all the SHAPE hype made me pretty much discount the possiblity.

This is great news for the PC anyway as it means adoption of TrueAudio should be much, much greater.

I don't think so I'm not sure but I think the Xbox One also has the same DSP as part of it's Audio chip.

 

[MrFox]

According to gamespot Resogun loads in 10 sec on SSD and 20 on stock HDD.

"no software throttling" confirmed!
"nowhere near 300MB/s" confirmed!

 

[scf]

Yes! I heard correctly! There is text version http://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-to-install-a-playstation-4-hard-drive/1100-6416162/

 

[pjbliverpool]

I don't think so I'm not sure but I think the Xbox One also has the same DSP as part of it's Audio chip.

As far as I'm aware TrueAudio gives developers access to the programmable DSP to allow custom audio algorithms to be run without impacting the CPU. I believe SHAPE locks this functionality away from developers at present.

 

[patsu]

As far as I'm aware TrueAudio gives developers access to the programmable DSP to allow custom audio algorithms to be run without impacting the CPU. I believe SHAPE locks this functionality away from developers at present.

I have read somewhere that Sony will implement a library of effects based on the developers' requests.

 

[patsu]

According to gamespot Resogun loads in 10 sec on SSD and 20 on stock HDD.

Good news ~

 

[3dilettante]

It'd be nice if the OS supported TRIM, or if it were announced that support was planned.
A large SSD might not experience significant degradation for a while, but without the flexibility afforded by PC tools, getting written into a corner is going to be a hassle. Some of the SSDs with the best GB/$ don't do as well without TRIM.

 

[RudeCurve]

I don't think so I'm not sure but I think the Xbox One also has the same DSP as part of it's Audio chip.

Actually I think the X1 has two of those DSPs in addition to SHAPE.

 

[onQ]

The CPU clock is 1.6GHz I seen it in the audio presentation & he said something about the CPU being 8 vectors at 1.6GHz vs the GPU being 16 vectors at 800MHz.

 

[patsu]

It'd be nice if the OS supported TRIM, or if it were announced that support was planned.
A large SSD might not experience significant degradation for a while, but without the flexibility afforded by PC tools, getting written into a corner is going to be a hassle. Some of the SSDs with the best GB/$ don't do as well without TRIM.

VGLeaks said Orbis is based on FreeBSD 9.0.

What file system does PS4 use ?

FreeBSD 8.1 seems to have some basic TRIM support:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.1R/relnotes-detailed.html#DISKS

The ada(4) driver now supports BIO_DELETE. For SSDs this uses TRIM feature of DATA SET MANAGEMENT command, as defined by ACS-2 specification working draft. For Compact Flash use CFA ERASE command, same as ad(4) does. This change realizes restoring write speed of SSDs which supports TRIM command by doing newfs -E /dev/ada1, for example.

Is this sufficient ?

FreeBSD 9.0:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.0R/relnotes.html

The FreeBSD Fast File System now supports the TRIM command when freeing data blocks. A new flag -t in the newfs(8) and tunefs(8) utilities sets the TRIM-enable flag for a file system. The TRIM-enable flag makes the file system send a delete request to the underlying device for each freed block. The TRIM command is specified as a Data Set Management Command in the ATA8-ACS2 standard to carry the information related to deleted data blocks to a device, especially for a SSD (Solid-State Drive) for optimization.[r216796]

FreeBSD 9.2:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.2R/relnotes.html

The ZFS filesystem now supports TRIM when used on solid state drives. ZFS TRIM support is enabled by default. [r251419] The following tunables have been added:

vfs.zfs.trim.enabled: Enable ZFS TRIM

vfs.zfs.trim.max_interval: Maximum interval in seconds between TRIM queue processing

vfs.zfs.trim.timeout: Delay TRIMs by up to this many seconds

vfs.zfs.trim.txg_delay: Delay TRIMs by up to this many TXGs

 

[onQ]

I don't want to go back & watch the video right now but I think I heard the guy say something about Virtual Reality when he was talking about the audio DSP.

 

[Bagel seed]

Designing a Game Audio Engine for HSA

Presentation by SCEA dude.

Stream link, 1 hr (You'll need to register on their site first to view it): https://vts.inxpo.com/scripts/Server.nxp?LASCmd=AI:1;F:SF!42000&EventKey=115505

Or search for 'audio engine for hsa' and click on the 4085 link.

 

[onQ]

Presentation by SCEA dude.

Stream link, 1 hr (You'll need to register on their site first to view it): https://vts.inxpo.com/scripts/Server.nxp?LASCmd=AI:1;F:SF!42000&EventKey=115505

Or search for 'audio engine for hsa' and click on the 4085 link.

This is the video I was talking about in my last post.


Edit: near the end he says something about offloading parts of the Audio pipeline to proprietary hardware & even external hardware. I wonder what he mean by that?

 

[Bagel seed]

Quote from presenter 'You wanna run audio dsp on a weak laptop CPU?'

So KZSF's audio dsp code took up less than half a Jag core.