Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Blazkowicz]

it's creepy, so I'm sure there would be another authentication scheme as well.
some people would cover the thing's eyes unless for playing a party game.

 

[Prophecy2k]

it's creepy, so I'm sure there would be another authentication scheme as well.
some people would cover the thing's eyes unless for playing a party game.

Too right!

What if someone hacks your Nextbox and finds your image stored, and they takes all your details and uses it for fraud?

*Takes off tinfoil hat

 

[Rangers]

Why? PS3 can render all sorts of functions and uses up <100 MB. Efficient apps needn't consumer masses of RAM to run, and there isn't a real need for massive multitasking in a conventional box. So unless these consoles are to become app servers to the home, running everyone's web browsing and video playback and multiple games across TV and phones and tablet, the need for OS RAM consumption isn't high.

OS on PS3 was apparently started at something like 80 MB's? That's nearly 1/5 of the RAM. Just scale that. 512 MB is only 1/8 of 4GB.

And i cant find any figure for Vita OS but I want to say it was hefty, at least 128MB if not 256MB.

The 3DS apparently reserves 32 of it's 128 MB, or 1/4.

 

[Grall]

What use could a console OS possibly have for 512MB RAM? That's a HUGE amount of memory.

People today are so blind to numbers that they miss this entirely, but back in the mid-90s you could surf the web on a Commodore Amiga, fit an entire OS, browser, IP stack and so on in ~5MB. The software was less capable of course and typically ran in 16 colors VGA rez, but that doesn't make a hundredfold difference in memory consumption.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

OS on PS3 was apparently started at something like 80 MB's? That's nearly 1/5 of the RAM. Just scale that.

Why? You don't just reserve OS RAM to follow tradition. It's reserved to serve a purpose. PS3 RAM reservation was reduced when Sony learnt they didn't need it all. With that hindsight, and evaluating requirements for a next-gen system, the case for reserving 500 MBs is pretty extreme. It could be justified with some features, but I expect those features to be very niche and not particularly effective at selling the console. "Instead of opening a webpage on your phone, you can open it on your console and stream it to your phone!"

 

[Arwin]

OS on PS3 was apparently started at something like 80 MB's? That's nearly 1/5 of the RAM. Just scale that. 512 MB is only 1/8 of 4GB.

And i cant find any figure for Vita OS but I want to say it was hefty, at least 128MB if not 256MB.

Definitely 128MB or less - that 256MB rumor was based on a misinterpretation of a debug screenshot, where a debug screenshot for Uncharted showed a lot more memory in use by the game (400MB+). Last I heard, it was more like 32MB of VRAM, and 64MB of main RAM, but even that I'm not convinced of. Generally speaking 400MB should be more than enough for most Vita games mind you, considering its resolution and graphical prowess, and the system has 512MB of main RAM + 128MB of VRAM, so 128MB or less is 1/6th of its RAM or less.

The 3DS apparently reserves 32 of it's 128 MB, or 1/4.

I think next gen OS/s should not reserve a lot of memory for OS functions, but instead work on a graceful release of functions and background apps where possible. If they can have some kind of fast SSD type flash where they can dump memory contents to to suspend apps, that would allow them to be fairly lean otherwise. Good and universal notification services will be vital, and they can take some hints from iOS from that. Vita took a good step forwards on that, but there is plenty of room for improvement.

 

[bkilian]

What use could a console OS possibly have for 512MB RAM? That's a HUGE amount of memory.

People today are so blind to numbers that they miss this entirely, but back in the mid-90s you could surf the web on a Commodore Amiga, fit an entire OS, browser, IP stack and so on in ~5MB. The software was less capable of course and typically ran in 16 colors VGA rez, but that doesn't make a hundredfold difference in memory consumption.

Actually, The amiga resolution for 16 colours in PAL was 640x256, so ~80K of memory. The XBox 360 at 720p and assuming a 32bpp mode is around 3.5MB for just the framebuffer, so a 46X difference. Considering the 10MB EDRAM is considered too tight for doing proper 720p rendering without tiling, it absolutely makes a hundredfold difference in memory consumption.

In the 90s, 4MB of memory in your 386 was considered huge. Windows 3.1 required less than 1MB. Windows 7 requires 1GB. A thousandfold increase.

 

[RedVi]

I can see MS reserving 512MB-2GB and Sony 256MB-1GB. They can always pull it back, but can't increase it later. Anything up to 1/4 use of system memory could turn out to be the case quite easily IMHO. This will probably be reduced to 1/8th or less later on, but that depends on where the market goes and how the competitors product compares.

 

[Grall]

that wastes your slowest bandwith. (or, costs more to the cloud provider)

Unless your movie library isn't more than ~10 titles in size there really isn't any other alternative to streaming, if you're going to have a console being some kind of media hub that is. Also, getting a large number of movies onto that console is going to be a huge timesink that would annoy people. Streaming fixes that easily.

H.235 is coming, and promises same quality for half the bandwidth. While I haven't heard any actual confirmation of that, it does look promising methinks.

 

[Grall]

Actually, The amiga resolution for 16 colours in PAL was 640x256

Serious users ran their computers on a monitor though.

The XBox 360 at 720p and assuming a 32bpp mode is around 3.5MB for just the framebuffer

You're trying to defeat the example by pointing at irrelevant details. You're going to have a framebuffer regardless of what you do with that console, so counting its memory use into the comparison is just flawed logic.

 

[Rangers]

What use could a console OS possibly have for 512MB RAM? That's a HUGE amount of memory.

People today are so blind to numbers that they miss this entirely, but back in the mid-90s you could surf the web on a Commodore Amiga, fit an entire OS, browser, IP stack and so on in ~5MB. The software was less capable of course and typically ran in 16 colors VGA rez, but that doesn't make a hundredfold difference in memory consumption.

Another one: Wii U rumored 2GB Ram, rumored 512 MB OS.

Anyways, the web we surf today must be infinitely times more rich than mid 90's web to be fair.

 

[Rangers]

Why? You don't just reserve OS RAM to follow tradition. It's reserved to serve a purpose. PS3 RAM reservation was reduced when Sony learnt they didn't need it all. With that hindsight, and evaluating requirements for a next-gen system, the case for reserving 500 MBs is pretty extreme. It could be justified with some features, but I expect those features to be very niche and not particularly effective at selling the console. "Instead of opening a webpage on your phone, you can open it on your console and stream it to your phone!"

i have no idea and not enough knowledge to argue on this point.

just pointing out the data points including most recent ones (Vita, 3DS, and Wii U), point to a significant chunk of os reserved for RAM, trending up if anything.

And even if PS3 is down to ~40 some MB's, that is still in line with the 1/8 a .5GB would represent to 4GB.

Sure, all can adjust the amount down over time though if deemed desirable.

 

[Squilliam]

Will there be hardware decoding of H.265 by the time the next generation consoles released and if not could they release a revision if it was worth it?

 

[itsmydamnation]

Will there be hardware decoding of H.265 by the time the next generation consoles released and if not could they release a revision if it was worth it?

According to the Cisco/Tandberg VC/TC guys H.265 isn't any more complex or processor intensive then H.264 its just better. What that means for hardware is anyones guess. But the reality is final draft isn't going to be ready until 2013, from there it needs to be ratified and then actually make it into hardware. So its unlikely to make it into a next gen console.

 

[AlphaWolf]

The plan is that 265 will only need about double the performance for decode, but much more for encoding.
from here

 

[Acert93]

H.235 is coming, and promises same quality for half the bandwidth. While I haven't heard any actual confirmation of that, it does look promising methinks.

The plan is that 265 will only need about double the performance for decode, but much more for encoding.
from here

Another question for those who have looked at H.265 is not just the bit rate but how well it performs on single frame compression. iirc H.264 has various compression methods and there is a difference between taking multiple frames (temporal aliasing) and individual frames one off. Any technique for game streaming will need to be not only fast but offer a good single frame quality or do some neat tricks (like using previous frames). I will concede this discussion to others from here... interesting topic as I think Cloud-Gaming is part of the future, if not near future for a lot of gaming.

 

[aaronspink]

According to the Cisco/Tandberg VC/TC guys H.265 isn't any more complex or processor intensive then H.264 its just better. What that means for hardware is anyones guess. But the reality is final draft isn't going to be ready until 2013, from there it needs to be ratified and then actually make it into hardware. So its unlikely to make it into a next gen console.

I'll reserve judgement until spec encoders and decoders are available. I would wager that at least encoding will be significantly more intensive( which is a normal trend). Decoding will likely be both more complex and more intensive but to what degree we won't know until reference and production codecs are available.

 

[Arwin]

According to the Cisco/Tandberg VC/TC guys H.265 isn't any more complex or processor intensive then H.264 its just better. What that means for hardware is anyones guess. But the reality is final draft isn't going to be ready until 2013, from there it needs to be ratified and then actually make it into hardware. So its unlikely to make it into a next gen console.

Would a next-gen console need any dedicated hardware for decoding it at all? I highly doubt that to be honest. They eventually got the PS3 to manage 3D video playback at full 1080p even with 3D menus (which Java made a challenge) in the end (just tried it ), so surely next-gen should breeze through H.265. It'll be more important to have hardware support I guess in mobile devices, I guess for power consumption benefits ...

 

[aaronspink]

Another question for those who have looked at H.265 is not just the bit rate but how well it performs on single frame compression. iirc H.264 has various compression methods and there is a difference between taking multiple frames (temporal aliasing) and individual frames one off. Any technique for game streaming will need to be not only fast but offer a good single frame quality or do some neat tricks (like using previous frames). I will concede this discussion to others from here... interesting topic as I think Cloud-Gaming is part of the future, if not near future for a lot of gaming.

high quality realtime encoding of HEVC is a ways off. Realistically, the encoders are looking at roughly an order of magnitude (or multiple orders of magnitude) in increased complexity. Think 2020 timeframe, not 2015.

 

[fehu]

I'd like if when playing a level intro movie, my console still has enought resources to be able to load the level