I thought a bunch of insiders said developers would have access to 6GB? I guess Sony doesn't want to be caught with their pants down in regards to the system OS like they were last generation. If The Order is anything to go by, whatever they have access to at this point is more than sufficient. Can't wait to see what Naughty Dog brings to the table because they're easily some of the best in the game at graphics.
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Naughty Dog: PS4 has 5 GB RAM/6 CPU cores available to devs, talks using them
- Thread starter Wishmaster92
- Start date
It's a metaphor for job-based architectures for parallel computing. A job (or "fiber") is a small piece of computation that can be scheduled and processed (relatively) independently, and reports it's result asynchronously after it's completion. This model is relatively robust and simplifies the saturation of the underlying processing infrastructure. The main challenge is to split your computation into small, preferably isolated tasks. I qualify "independently" and "isolated" since they still use shared memory between tasks for performance reasons.
TouchMyBox
Member
I'm pretty sure they're just being conservative with how much RAM they give to devs. They didn't set aside extra ram for the OS on the PS3 and it made it a nightmare for them to add features.
This time around they take an excessive amount of RAM for the OS with the idea being that they can always give devs more RAM later, but they can't take RAM away.
Apophis2036
Banned
Very interesting.
I'm actually at a loss as to what developers can do to make games look much better than they currently do. I'm playing AC4 on PS4 just now and the image quality combined with the character models and environment detail is astounding, it made me think how much better could an Uncharted game look for instance ? (as they are both set in similar settings at times).
I'm sure ND will prove me wrong
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I'm actually at a loss as to what developers can do to make games look much better than they currently do. I'm playing AC4 on PS4 just now and the image quality combined with the character models and environment detail is astounding, it made me think how much better could an Uncharted game look for instance ? (as they are both set in similar settings at times).
I'm sure ND will prove me wrong
.Doctor_Thomas
Member
After the PS3 and 360, I think both Sony and Microsoft wanted to have "too much RAM" to do all the things they needed to do before optimising. The PS3, for example, got down to sub-50MB for the OS but the system struggles. Even bringing up the XMB in game is slow and clunky.
Now, both Sony and MS have huge RAM pools that they will never use entirely, that they can ensure they have enough overhead for future requirements without negative impact and also RAM to give back nearer the end of the platform's life.
How do you think that will happen while keeping the same features of the OS? while adding more over time?
The PS3's OS shrunk immensely and had lots of features added. It will happen again.
dragonbane
Member
They really shouldn't. I'm pretty sure most casual people expect ND to blow them away visually. Going for 60 FPS will make it pretty damn hard to get past The Order.
boredandlazy
Member
They make the current features more efficient? Sony reduced the memory footprint of the PS3's OS over time even whilst adding new features.
Kazuma Kiryu
Member
Both MS and Sony did this with the PS3/360 (Not totally sure on MS front, though).
TheRealTalker
Banned
there some ram in limbo
Most likely there's a huge amount that currently isn't used at all. Sony just wanted to have a buffer so they don't have another situation like where they couldn't add cross-game chat on the PS3. Whenever Sony is confident they won't need the extra space, they'll give some to devs without affecting current functionality.
vpance
Member
I think it was said more than 5GB is available to games by insiders. But even if it is 5GB, considering that the memory bandwidth is 176GB/s, that translates to around a maximum of 5.5GB accessible per frame in a 30 FPS game. And that's never going to happen.
And games aren't designed to constantly swap out or read the entire set of RAM all the time anyways. You'd be streaming in data in chunks and only be accessing a portion of it at any given time to render a scene. There would never realistically be a moment where you'd be wondering, gee, I wonder how much better this building my character is in would look if they had 6GB available rather than 5GB! Not how it works.
And games aren't designed to constantly swap out or read the entire set of RAM all the time anyways. You'd be streaming in data in chunks and only be accessing a portion of it at any given time to render a scene. There would never realistically be a moment where you'd be wondering, gee, I wonder how much better this building my character is in would look if they had 6GB available rather than 5GB! Not how it works.
Optimisation, and the fact that they are very unlikely to be using it all currently. Same way they added features to the PS3 while cutting their usage by nearly half over the first few years, they also have given themselves much more room to begin with and they don't need to cut it down to try and keep parity with other consoles like they did with the PS3.
Was the intial XMB OS bloated?
Thanks. I'd just never heard "fiber" to describe that, strange.
But it would still be under 5GB's of ram. Probably even under 3.
Wishmaster92
Member
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/02/23/70mb-of-additional-ram-unlocked-for-ps3-developers/
Who knows how much it will reduce on ps4. Could be 500mb-2.5gb nobody knows for sure.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
It is, I think 5.5. The last 0.5 being some memory that you have to allocate in a different way IIRC, so I can see that he'd just round it down when talking casually about it)
boredandlazy
Member
Like many other terms, this one has no single, official definition. Other people refer to other things as "fibers" in the context of parallel computing, but from the context of the talk and slides, they are definitely describing a job-based, asynchronous architecture.
Andrefpvs
Member
Oh, absolutely. It's great for conditional algorithms (AI, behavioural patterns, etc.), abstract input-output functions, stuff where state is redundant, etc.
I gained a new appreciation for Lisp-based languages after this talk.
dragonbane
Member
HDD is still pretty slow
They figured no one was going to use the whole pool right away and reserved more out of paranoia. A lot of the painfully slow PS3 OS problems stem from a very very conservative OS reservation to start with which limited what features they could add so they went paranoid with the PS4. Just as the XB1 will let go of GPU and RAM reservations as they get a handle on what they need and optimize the OS so will the PS4.
It was to begin with for what it was doing, It used around 120mb iirc when the PS3 launched which they got down to 48mb currently while adding a few bits and bobs along the way. The 360's OS for instance had a max of 32mb to start with and still uses 32mb now, MS were far more efficient with their software from the get go and over time optimisation allowed them to also add features.
Basileus777
Member
And Naughty Dog trumps them as a source for this.
Wasn't PS3 much more bloated than the 360 in the start? I seem to remember something like 90MB that they eventually reduced.
Edit: What CorrisD said.
insiders said 6: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=73268051&postcount=2748 and mods backed it up: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=73254796&postcount=2541
Kazuma Kiryu
Member
Insiders wrong? Well, I'll be damned!
Melchiah
Member
Loading a checkpoint after failure was almost instant though, unlike say Half-Life 2 and Mass Effect trilogy, which took up to 20-30 seconds to load the last checkpoint.
SneakyStephan
Banned
can you link to their posts? you just linked to the OP
HunterOfBananas
Banned
I cannot wait to see what Naghty Dog has in store for us.
And Eurogamer said 4.5GB for devs to use.
No body got it right,also this was back in freaking July.
vpance
Member
Melchiah
Member
I imagine that's one of the reasons the early PS3 ports paled in comparison to the 360 versions.
SEGAvangelist
Gold Member
With more available by request.
In before the next 3 pages turn into ghst trying to shame people and the thread going south.
OCaml says hello (thanks for nothing, Cornell faculty). The underhanded confirmation of six cores available to devs is a nice tidbit.
wsoxfan1214
Banned
Seriously?
SwiftDeath
Member
This was my takeaway and I thought it odd that if true, Sony didn't announce it
I think the official policy is if someone claims it and it gets backed up by multiple vetted posters, which this one did, then no one gets banned.