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

[Lalaland]

I know I'm OT and likely to get tremp-banned but I want to defend Windows here. I've been wrestling the beast since 3.1 but the one thing it has over all others is a deep, deep commitment to backwards compatibility (remember it was only Vista that killed 16-bit support). That means nothing to us on the cutting edge but to a lot of my customers it means beaucoup $$$ in saved costs mostly to public sector companies that would be looking at huge Line Of Business software costs if every new or every second release broke compatibility. PC gaming is like racing a pickup truck, you need way more power to move that thing than you do a lighter vehicle like a sports sedan but by God you can do a hell of a lot more with it.

Back OT I don't think 1.5GB is that unreasonable a reserve, if the reserve is less than the competitions anyway the likelihood of it being exploited by multi-platform devs is pretty low. Aside from Bayonetta did any other titles really exploit the power of the Xenos GPU in handling transparencies given how god-awful the RSX was at it? The 'social' is part of what gaming is now and making that swap back and forth instant is a big part of enabling that. I could care less as someone who doesn't even have a Facebook account but there are many who do.

As to why 1.5GB, well let's say I pause Netflix HD stream to game while my other half is quieting my kids I need maybe 100-200MB of video buffer to both enable instant playback and to allow time to resume the connection when I swap back. Also I need a few hundred meg for what I presume is a constant gameplay record feature to enable that 'share' button. I can't imagine there's much point in a share button that starts a recording rather than one which buffers the last N minutes of gameplay so I can share that 'sick' move/shot/assplant. I may not use all of the features at the same time but if the console didn't support doing so you can bet Sony would get a beating in the news wires

 

[MrFox]

What? I said if I was using my pc and there was a 3 second delay to alt-tab, I'd be annoyed with it, not because it actually happened (it doesn't), but because Shifty said loading apps from disc with a 3 second delay would be acceptable on a console.

Sorry I jumped the gun, I shouldn't have quoted you, just arguing about why 3GB can be enough for some OSes, and 1GB can be enough for others. It's where the discussion was going for anyway.

 

[MrFox]

As to why 1.5GB, well let's say I pause Netflix HD stream to game while my other half is quieting my kids I need maybe 100-200MB of video buffer to both enable instant playback and to allow time to resume the connection when I swap back. Also I need a few hundred meg for what I presume is a constant gameplay record feature to enable that 'share' button. I can't imagine there's much point in a share button that starts a recording rather than one which buffers the last N minutes of gameplay so I can share that 'sick' move/shot/assplant. I may not use all of the features at the same time but if the console didn't support doing so you can bet Sony would get a beating in the news wires

But none of those things require much ram. A 2Mbit stream is only 200kB/s. They'd need maybe 10 seconds in RAM (2MB) to be nice to the i/o scheduler, and anything more can be cached to the HDD. There's no reason to keep a streaming data in ram. 200kB/s won't bog the HDD either in input or output, the running game still has 99% of the HDD bandwidth available.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't know about that. If I was using my pc and I had a 3 second pause every time I alt-tabbed I'd be pretty annoyed with it. On top of that there are a lot of background services that could be run on a console, pretty much what you'd see on a phone or tablet: weather, calendar, mail, IM, dlna server, Skype or Google voice, instagram, pinterest, ebay, photo editing, Internet radio, picture - in - picture video from YouTube etc, and probably a million things I'm not thinking of. If you use many or all of those things frequently, I can't see a 3 second pause being a good experience. And what is the computing world going to look like 3 - 5 years from now when the console is supposed to be peaking. Don't want to leave yourself in a corner, unable to keep up.

Alt-TAB switches between open apps, resident in RAM. That's because on PC some people (not most, I'd even say very few) swap between activities regularly. If consoles users aren't swapping from activity to activity, they don't need the responsiveness. If something is presented as an 'application' rather than a 'utility', then there's no great concern with load times IMO. Games don't have to be instant loaders, not does a browser necessarily. I think load time needs to be proportional to time spent using. If you are going to sit down for two hours watching a film, 5 seconds to boot up NetFlix is not going to seem unwieldy. If you're going to spend two seconds banging out a calculation, 5 seconds to boot your calculator app will be excessive.

I don't imagine the console is going to be a hub of activity. I think it'll be focussed on doing one thing at a time with the occasional distraction. Maybe it'll have background tasks like serving media, but they'll be low overhead. Most of your suggestions are handled with little RAM requirement - my phone does all that with 256 MBs. More RAM is shovelled onto newer phones mostly because it can and they want to compete on numbers (450 ppi screens and counting...), but like RAM in PCs, it's mostly wasted on consumers. Very few people buying a 6+ GB PC now will ever use more than a couple of gigs at a time, but it's no cheaper to put in less RAM. So more RAM than 512 MB, say, isn't really necessary for a good base standard experience. Adding more RAM enables more service side stuff at the cost of game performance. As I agree, if games can't use it, there's no harm (except in offending internet fanboys) in allocating more RAM for services. But I still find it very hard to justify in excess of 1 GB for apps and services. That only seems valid to me if running massive bloatware. Efficient, streamlined services can be achieved in much less. Compare what XB360 does with its reserved 32 MBs RAM PS3's much larger reservation and less features - throwing memory at the problem isn't efficient. Although granted, it may be the quickest and easiest solution especially if committed to 8GBs when only wanting 6 GBs for games.

 

[szymku]

And PS3 is using what - 50 MB for OS? And it is doing plenty and more with it, all in FullHD... Is it really worth to take more than 0,5 GB of RAM for services that are important for 5% of users? Sure, the rest will use gameplay recording once or twice and then forget about it, just like in GT5 which have this functionality. It should be up to developer if he want to use it or not and spend all the resources that could be used for improving gameplay.
It is a game console, not a PC and it should excel at games not word processing, social networking or streaming... I think that additional services should be limited (while playing) to browser, PSN communicator, TiVo and maybe FB, whcih shouldn,t take more than 0,5 GB.. Other services should be fully available if there is no game started...

 

[ERP]

I don't have anything to do with UX, but I'd imagine the goal is to have the console be the box people choose as their primary interest point. Whether that be gaming, movies or what ever. And that the experience of swapping between the activities be as seamless as possible.
I think this is also the primary driver for all the social features.
I can come up with a lot of interesting scenarios that involve swapping between a browser and another activity, especially when coupled with decent voice input.
The second screen will be there, but it's mostly a given now that people multitask their attention.

IMO consoles will not be what they are this gen, they will be much closer to the entertainment hubs MS has been pushing for years. Yes they will be designed primarily for gaming, but all of the other facets will be seamlessly integrated.

I suspect tomorrow at the MS event this experience is what MS will be focusing on, but we'll have to wait and see.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I can agree to that vision, but I'm still hard pushed to see how it can't be realised in 1 GB OS RAM! A phone with 1 GB does everything multitasking quickly and seamlessly, and will keep resident more apps than a console will need, no?

Basically, assuming an HTML5 basis for apps and services, you'd want a concurrent browser capable of fitting a few pages for live feeds and reference. Is 1GB not enough for that?

 

[ERP]

I gave up wondering where memory goes a long time ago, my first game ran in 16K including code and data. The kill zone exe alone in the slides they presented was 70MB I think... I wouldn't own a Mac with <8Gb and they run better with 16....

I think you could do a pretty good experience in say 1GB, I could see it being better with more memory, I wouldn't want to guess where the optimal point is.

I would worry if my competitor were reserving considerably more than I was that I would not be able to compete on features later in the consoles lifetime.

I mean PS3 reserves more memory than 360 and still doesn't manage to match it feature for feature. I also know there were features MS wanted to add but couldn't because of the very limited RAM budget, and perhaps this time they are just being conservative.

Having said all of that the rumored 3GB on 360 sounds like a lot to me, but I could certainly imagine it being used relatively easily.

 

[MrFox]

Maybe there's little harm in reserving more at launch, and as time progresses, they'll see what their competitors are doing with it, and they can decide if it's okay to lower the reserved ram amount.

The problem with HTML5 and web apps in general, is that the amount of memory is unpredictable and often ridiculously bloated, lots of caching required, javascript JiT etc... In the 90's a webpage would use at most 50k, now we're at many MB, who know what will happen in the next 6 years. An important service might become a dominant provider and require a lot of RAM, who knows...

 

[Scott_Arm]

I can agree to that vision, but I'm still hard pushed to see how it can't be realised in 1 GB OS RAM! A phone with 1 GB does everything multitasking quickly and seamlessly, and will keep resident more apps than a console will need, no?

Basically, assuming an HTML5 basis for apps and services, you'd want a concurrent browser capable of fitting a few pages for live feeds and reference. Is 1GB not enough for that?

I don't know. I'm looking up Android 4.2's RAM usage and it requires 350 MB at a bare minimum, without the RAM required to support any hardware components or apps. I'm not even clear that it incorporates all of the UI. I see a lot of people reporting their Android phones consume 600 - 800 MB of RAM on a clean boot. I imagine that varies based on what apps/widgets they've installed that run on startup.

Device implementations MUST have at least 340MB of memory available to the
kernel and userspace. The 340MB MUST be in addition to any memory dedicated to
hardware components such as radio, video, and so on that is not under the kernel's
control.

Anyway, 1 GB does not seem like a lot of RAM for a modern app environment on a phone or tablet. I don't think the console would be any different, especially when the console is supposed to last for at least 5 years. It'll peak in the 3-5 year range when the price comes down a bit.

 

[patsu]

iPhone 5 and Retina iPad have 1GB RAM for OS and apps.

I doubt it's for switching apps. It *could* be for RemotePlay plus an additional app in the foreground concurrently. It would depend on what exactly those parallel apps/games do.

Switching apps should be efficient and optimizable with custom h/w. Doubt Sony introduce expensive GDDR5 just for app switching.

In Sony's tradition, they usually compromise the general app experience for games (i.e., let developers override the system behavior). This time round, they interviewed the major developers to plan their moves. If most of them only use 5GB, Sony will need to think of ways to use the remaining resources.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Maybe there's little harm in reserving more at launch, and as time progresses, they'll see what their competitors are doing with it, and they can decide if it's okay to lower the reserved ram amount.

The problem with HTML5 and web apps in general, is that the amount of memory is unpredictable and often ridiculously bloated, lots of caching required, javascript JiT etc... In the 90's a webpage would use at most 50k, now we're at many MB, who know what will happen in the next 6 years. An important service might become a dominant provider and require a lot of RAM, who knows...

In the 90's you also weren't streaming 1080p video (a browser tab with a 720p video stream easily takes up 250-400 MB or more depending on length and quality, I'm not sure on 1080p video since 720p is good enough for my TV at my viewing distance).

Images were also universally low resolution (less than 20k) as most displays were either 1024x768 or 1280x1024 at 14-15" diagonals. If you had money to splurge you might have had a 17" or 19" display. Multimedia also wasn't very prevalent. Most web pages were "flat" without much in the way of CSS (I personally like web pages without much interactivity).

One more thing a console won't want to resort to is dumping memory to virtual disk. Something which can degrade OSX and Windows experiences if you don't have enough memory. Even when doing only "basic" things.

Then again, just be glad Apple finally ditch MacOS 9.x and earlier. That was truly horrendous with memory and swap file useage.

People tolerate certain things in a PC (Apple or Windows) because they are a PC. So things like waiting for data to be loaded from a swap file is tolerable.

People do not tolerate those things in electronics devices for the most part. They expect instant functionality. For either PS4 or the competition to widen their audience and bring in more revenue for Sony and MS, that needs to be there. And it isn't the case on PS3/X360 currently. PS4/Xbox next is where both companies make a move for a more home electronics type of experience, but with greatly expanded and greatly enhanced experience.

So, for a console everything has to be useable without resorting to virtual memory, and without tombstoning applications. Tombstoning an application as someone mentioned earlier means you'd then have to load it from disk. Requiring multiple seconds as we're using mechanical HDDs versus flash memory. Transfer times will be similar (emmc for mobile devices versus 2.5" mechanical) but the seek times are orders of magnitude greater for the HDDs. Hence, tombstoning isn't an option as it is for mobile devices. Everything will have to be able to stay resident in memory without being evicted unless the user closes it. And even then an argument could be made to keep it resident in memory so that it opens instantly the next time the user wishes to use it.

Regards,
SB

 

[patsu]

I can agree to that vision, but I'm still hard pushed to see how it can't be realised in 1 GB OS RAM! A phone with 1 GB does everything multitasking quickly and seamlessly, and will keep resident more apps than a console will need, no?

Basically, assuming an HTML5 basis for apps and services, you'd want a concurrent browser capable of fitting a few pages for live feeds and reference. Is 1GB not enough for that?

Should be enough. Look at Vita. 512MB system RAM, 128MB video RAM. I can keep about 4 PC-style webpages opened with a game and other apps in the background. The system takes 1 out of 4 cores I think.

 

[patsu]

I gave up wondering where memory goes a long time ago, my first game ran in 16K including code and data. The kill zone exe alone in the slides they presented was 70MB I think... I wouldn't own a Mac with <8Gb and they run better with 16....

I think you could do a pretty good experience in say 1GB, I could see it being better with more memory, I wouldn't want to guess where the optimal point is.

I would worry if my competitor were reserving considerably more than I was that I would not be able to compete on features later in the consoles lifetime.

I mean PS3 reserves more memory than 360 and still doesn't manage to match it feature for feature. I also know there were features MS wanted to add but couldn't because of the very limited RAM budget, and perhaps this time they are just being conservative.

Having said all of that the rumored 3GB on 360 sounds like a lot to me, but I could certainly imagine it being used relatively easily.

Depends on what you do with it.

I have friends with 4GB MacBook Air and they are happy. I have a fully loaded one just because I sometimes develop on it. I don't think people will use Photoshop or Xcode on PS4 though. If Sony have interesting nextgen use cases, I would like to see it firsthand before discussing whether 3GB is worth it. ^_^

PS3 has a different architecture and model. A regular flavor one like Vita doesn't seem to hog memory. There is little reason why BSD needs more resources than Windows kernel and userland

 

[Scott_Arm]

iPhone 5 and Retina iPad have 1GB RAM for OS and apps.

I doubt it's for switching apps. It *could* be for RemotePlay plus an additional app in the foreground concurrently. It would depend on what exactly those parallel apps/games do.

Switching apps should be efficient and optimizable with custom h/w. Doubt Sony introduce expensive GDDR5 just for app switching.

In Sony's tradition, they usually compromise the general app experience for games (i.e., let developers override the system behavior). This time round, they interviewed the major developers to plan their moves. If most of them only use 5GB, Sony will need to think of ways to use the remaining resources.

Developers will use what they're given. If they were asked they'd probably say we want 7.9999 GB for games.

They didn't use GDDR5 for app switching. They used it to feed the gpu. They have a unified architecture. It's much simpler that way. So the whole system gets GDDR5, instead of putting some kind of split pool and the complexity that adds.

I'm not saying they'll reserve 3 GB, I just think 1 GB is short sighted. How long do you think iPhone and iPad stay with 1 GB? This console has to last 5+ years.

 

[patsu]

Depends on how you phrased the questions. The Sony folks are developers too. They can of course probe deeper and reason the costs.

I'm not saying they'll reserve 3 GB, I just think 1 GB is short sighted. How long do you think iPhone and iPad stay with 1 GB? This console has to last 5+ years.

Depends on how they design it. Apple certainly doesn't reserve even 1GB for the OS today. 1GB is for everything.

Reserving 3GB GDDR5 for app switching while the other 5GB is used actively for gaming is wasteful. If they reserve beyond 1GB, they should use the resources for concurrent apps/games.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Depends on how you phrased the questions. The Sony folks are developers too. They can of course probe deeper and reason the costs.



Depends on how they design it. Apple certainly doesn't reserve even 1GB for the OS today. 1GB is for everything.

Reserving 3GB GDDR5 for app switching while the other 5GB is used actively for gaming is wasteful. If they reserve beyond 1GB, they should use the resources for concurrent apps/games.

What are you even talking about? Concurrent apps/games, of course. What do you mean by reserving memory for app switching?

 

[patsu]

There were a few posts talking about slow vs fast switching. ^_^

 

[Scott_Arm]

There were a few posts talking about slow vs fast switching. ^_^

Yes, from pushing apps that are out of focus out of memory.

 

[Gradthrawn]

I'm not saying they'll reserve 3 GB, I just think 1 GB is short sighted. How long do you think iPhone and iPad stay with 1 GB? This console has to last 5+ years.

I don't know. Every app available on the PS3 and 360 now can run with a total of 512MB. Lest we forget, that includes DVR functionality (Tome). Seems to me that any feature that can't fit in a 1 GB reserved partition, will just have to be a feature that can't run concurrently with games. Voice, video, text chat, web browser, music playback, streamed music playback and SEN access all while in game would be a pretty decent feature set that I think would meet most gamers regular needs. Almost all of that is done (concurrently with an active game) in some form with currently available consoles/handhelds with a mere fraction of the available memory. It would be very nice for heavy media users like me to be able to swap between a game and a media app like Hulu, but I would consider that a secondary nice to have feature. I would think that with a half gig reserved for OS features, and a half gig reserved for other apps (the most any app has access to right now) that that would be obtainable. Leaving developers ample memory to do whatever the hell they want to do with.

EDIT

Not to discount your point about that potentially being shorted sighted. It could be, and that could limit system wide support for some cool future feature (is system level Oculus Rift support possible, or does that require per game support as well?) Conversely, reserving too much and impacting launch games as compared to your competition (before you've had a chance to decrease that reservation) could have a negative impact as well right when you're trying to make a first impression of your console with the public.