Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Laa-Yosh]

Would you care to send this as an email to Gabe Newell and Valve and any of the other developers of Portal 2? Damn loading screens every two minutes. Grrr.

That's what I'm talking about, no streaming -> bad user experence.

Coincidentally, Gabe just mentioned somewhere that Portal 2's PC SKU outsold the console ones...

 

[AlNom]

Would you care to send this as an email to Gabe Newell and Valve and any of the other developers of Portal 2? Damn loading screens every two minutes. Grrr.

I bet if they had ad support during the loading screens, it'd be that much more profitable (more like... I'd be playing it for free right now). *snicker* *


*I wish it were a crazy idea. Really.

 

[Tahir2]

Anyone remember the Kenwood CD-R released many years ago with a single laser split into multiple beams?

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=339&page=2

 

[Beef Stallmer]

Anyone remember the Kenwood CD-R released many years ago with a single laser split into multiple beams?

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=339&page=2

that is actually a great idea
It's also possible to have multiple independent laser/lens units, but this would drive the cost up significantly, also the size could increase a lot.

 

[Tahir2]

It didn't work so well though and a lot of those drives failed, repeatedly from a few posts on the internet - it also hasn't been followed up since 2002. Still I remember hearing about it and thinking it was very smart.

 

[reptile]

Why the hell do I have to sit 70-80 seconds in front of GTA 4 or Mass Effect 2 then? Are their programmers that bad or what?

Also, we're talking now abuot filling 8 GB with an optical drive that can read 50 MB/sec. I don't think it'd only take 7-8 seconds either...

Some game engines work differently than others. It's not rare to see games - even high profile ones, gt5 cough - opening/loading approx 1 gazillion files per level, which is just crazy, and will dramatically increase loading times. And when i say dramatically, i mean that, sometimes 10x.

We were talking about filling 512MB - that definitely doesnt take "minutes". However, if next-gen will have 8GB (which i doubt, unless they're delaying nextgen until 4-5 years from now), that definitely would be a problem to fill in time (again, assuming storage speed wont increase as well).

"no streaming = bad user experience" is just nonsense. Some genres/games just don't need it.

 

[BRiT]

Anyone remember the Kenwood CD-R released many years ago with a single laser split into multiple beams?

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=339&page=2

It didn't work so well though and a lot of those drives failed, repeatedly from a few posts on the internet - it also hasn't been followed up since 2002. Still I remember hearing about it and thinking it was very smart.

I had one or two of those. They were damn fast. They worked great ... until they started to fail. A downside to it was newer forms of DRM started causing major grief with the drives. The games would fail to load (play) when using the drive, but would work flawlessly for game install. I think it was unable to read some of their custom CD sectors or the fuzzy sectors with altered ECC data. They were also sensitive to some CD-R brands as well.

It would be interesting to see a BluRay drive with TruX so you could have higher read speeds without having the Jet Engine noise that happens above 8x DVD speeds.

 

[Proelite]

Is it reasonable for the PS4 to have an upgraded cell with out-of-order PPE(s) without changing the basic design philosophy (Spending a lot of extra R&D money to make it work).

 

[Squilliam]

GDDR5 vs DDR3/4.

GDDR5 is hotter and uses 30% more pins than DDR3. So a 128 bit bus for GDDR5 is equivalent to 166 bits for DDR3 and it is more expensive and it is less dense which means more chips are required for the same quantity of memory.

So for instance DDR3 + ED-RAM may require fewer pins whilst yielding the same effective bandwidth as GDDR5 whilst using less power. As a bonus that ED-RAM could be integrated into the main die at the expense of additional manufacturing steps for the chip.

 

[Beef Stallmer]

GDDR5 vs DDR3/4.

GDDR5 is hotter and uses 30% more pins than DDR3. So a 128 bit bus for GDDR5 is equivalent to 166 bits for DDR3 and it is more expensive and it is less dense which means more chips are required for the same quantity of memory.

So for instance DDR3 + ED-RAM may require fewer pins whilst yielding the same effective bandwidth as GDDR5 whilst using less power. As a bonus that ED-RAM could be integrated into the main die at the expense of additional manufacturing steps for the chip.

pretty sure ed-ram is more expensive, and will probably need tiling etc because it's never enough.
I can image Halo 5 running in 1764*894 instead of 1920*1080 and not being able to use a real HDR frame buffer because it's can't fit in the ed-ram without severe tiling penalties. Like last time really.

ed-ram is expensive, and will never be enough, aside from the fact that it is best used in non-deffered renderers, which are pretty much old news today.
gddr5 will benefit any renderer, and will also fit any 2011 imaginable frame buffer

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Is it reasonable for the PS4 to have an upgraded cell with out-of-order PPE(s) without changing the basic design philosophy (Spending a lot of extra R&D money to make it work).

Reasonable from a chip design idea. Cell's design allows for pretty much any PPE architecture to be used. May not be reasonable in terms of manufacturing cost (rivals may be cheaper) or developer interest or useful performance (if devs can't turn everything into streamed number-crunching)

 

[Elan Tedronai]

Reasonable from a chip design idea. Cell's design allows for pretty much any PPE architecture to be used. May not be reasonable in terms of manufacturing cost (rivals may be cheaper) or developer interest or useful performance (if devs can't turn everything into streamed number-crunching)

the good news for sony with regards to the cell next gen is that they have a whole manufacturing plant which they bought back from toshiba. they have also don't need to pay anyone to use the processor unlike the GPU and xdr ram which they pay royalties to nvidia and rambus.

They have at the moment a whole lot of mature dev tools which they can easily transfer over to next gen. Instead of throwing everything out when they moved from ps2 to ps3. These means ease of development and faster dev cyles

 

[Shifty Geezer]

the good news for sony with regards to the cell next gen is that they have a whole manufacturing plant which they bought back from toshiba.

Being used to make imaging sensors.

 

[Elan Tedronai]

Being used to make imaging sensors.

i thought in addtion to that, they were using it to manufacture the processor as well. still though they pay no royalties to use the cell

 

[Brimstone]

Are some data available for the seek times of these holographic disks?

According to the General Electric blog the claim is they are faster than other optical formats.

Commercial viability of a micro- holographic material hinges on two performance parameters – Hologram reflectivity and material sensitivity in addition to the ease of handling and processing into the disc form-factor. Hologram reflectivity represents how much data can be recorded and the material sensitivity characterizes how fast the data can be recorded into the material. The higher the sensitivity, the faster the recording speed. The latest breakthrough represents a 100x enhancement in material sensitivity, building upon the reflectivity performance demonstrated in 2009. With this breakthrough, the micro-holographic threshold material can support data recording at the same speed as Blu-ray discs which renders micro-holographic technology more poised than ever for success. Additionally, micro-holographic data storage provides data access and transfer rates greater than those attained by traditional optical storage formats. With higher recording speeds required in the professional archival industry, this latest breakthrough by GE researchers will also advance the company’s interests in commercializing GE’s micro-holographic technology. We are witnessing an exciting time in this technology and are privileged to be at the center of it all. Stay tuned!!!

http://ge.geglobalresearch.com/blog/breakthrough-in-micro-holographic-data-storage/

 

[Ninjaprime]

According to the General Electric blog the claim is they are faster than other optical formats.



http://ge.geglobalresearch.com/blog/breakthrough-in-micro-holographic-data-storage/

Seek times aren't any better, that is a product of it being a spinning drive with plastic media. Transfer rates are higher, but that is a product of data density. You're still going to have ~100ms seek times, its the nature of a plastic media that must be spun up slowly so it doesn't unbalance and/or explode.

 

[wco81]

Seems a lot of investment and momentum would be with making flash memory cheaper. Of course it won't ever get as cheap as optical media.

But as distribution media, it may be moot if digital distribution takes further hold.

 

[TheWretched]

Seek times aren't any better, that is a product of it being a spinning drive with plastic media. Transfer rates are higher, but that is a product of data density. You're still going to have ~100ms seek times, its the nature of a plastic media that must be spun up slowly so it doesn't unbalance and/or explode.

If that was true, then harddiscs should have abysmal seek times, too. And 360s use CAV, so the drive doesn't change RPMs when reading different sectors.

 

[Brimstone]

Seek times aren't any better, that is a product of it being a spinning drive with plastic media. Transfer rates are higher, but that is a product of data density. You're still going to have ~100ms seek times, its the nature of a plastic media that must be spun up slowly so it doesn't unbalance and/or explode.

Yes, the actual drive will be very similar to a Blu-Ray drive. GE is improving the disc medium which as you say will improve transfer rates thanks to higher density. If a next-gen consoles have 4 GB of ram or more then higher data rates are a boon obviously.

If the direction of ID Tech 6 with infinite geometry is the next step in improving visual fidelity for video games, then the higher capacity is going to be needed. I can't imagine downloading 300 GB games.

 

[Beef Stallmer]

seek times don't matter that much if you have enough ram to load in whole chunks of data in linear read mode. Of course you would also need to have a lot of medium space to begin with (BD anyone? )

p.s. seek time have nothing to do with the spinning of the optical disc. It has to do with the laser/lens unit; the disc is always spinning.