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Xbox Series X’s BCPack Texture Compression Technique 'might be' better than the PS5’s Kraken

greencoder

Member
Microsoft might have an ace up its sleeve to trump the PS5′ Kraken tech.

Of the many things Mark Cerny explained in detail during Sony’s recent deep dive into the PS5’s tech, one thing he mentioned was the console’s new texture decompression tech, called Kraken. Though it’s too specific to be anything but technical jargon to the layman, it should prove to be quite useful to developers, owing to how much more efficiently it operates than the current gen consoles.

Texture decompression isn’t something that Microsoft have talked about for the Xbox Series X too much yet, but according to industry professionals, their solution might be better even than Sony’s Kraken. Richard Geldreich, who formerly worked at Valve and Ensemble Studios, took to Twitter to say that Microoft’s texture decompression, BCPack, is their “dark horse” and might be a stronger option than Kraken.

He posed that question to James Stanard, who works on graphics optimization R&D and engine architecture on Microsoft. Though Stanard was reluctant to divulge many details about it, he went on to explain it briefly, it is specifically designed for texture decompression, before Geldreich added that being dedicated tech for this purpose will allow it to function more efficiently than Kraken, which is more of a general purpose system.

One thing that’s becoming clearer in recent days is that the PS5 and the Xbox Series both have significant advantages over the other in different areas– but both of them are incredible pieces of hardware that developers are quite excited to work on. Here’s hoping both of them reveal more details about their next-gen consoles in the near future.

 

martino

Member
Really? So the Sony brute force SSD approach isn’t as big as suspected? Interesting.
Unsurprisely it's easy to be as dumb as the other "side" by turning more [something] into brute force
The two will try to use what they have with smart solutions...
Thoses who think one the two has the edge with nothing outside two PR presentations and no software that ended developpement on them (hell it's possible there is still api stabilisations on each side) only show brand bias.
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Microsoft might have an ace up its sleeve to trump the PS5′ Kraken tech.

Of the many things Mark Cerny explained in detail during Sony’s recent deep dive into the PS5’s tech, one thing he mentioned was the console’s new texture decompression tech, called Kraken. Though it’s too specific to be anything but technical jargon to the layman, it should prove to be quite useful to developers, owing to how much more efficiently it operates than the current gen consoles.

Texture decompression isn’t something that Microsoft have talked about for the Xbox Series X too much yet, but according to industry professionals, their solution might be better even than Sony’s Kraken. Richard Geldreich, who formerly worked at Valve and Ensemble Studios, took to Twitter to say that Microoft’s texture decompression, BCPack, is their “dark horse” and might be a stronger option than Kraken.

He posed that question to James Stanard, who works on graphics optimization R&D and engine architecture on Microsoft. Though Stanard was reluctant to divulge many details about it, he went on to explain it briefly, it is specifically designed for texture decompression, before Geldreich added that being dedicated tech for this purpose will allow it to function more efficiently than Kraken, which is more of a general purpose system.

One thing that’s becoming clearer in recent days is that the PS5 and the Xbox Series both have significant advantages over the other in different areas– but both of them are incredible pieces of hardware that developers are quite excited to work on. Here’s hoping both of them reveal more details about their next-gen consoles in the near future.



Really? So the Sony brute force SSD approach isn’t as big as suspected? Interesting.
Yeah, let’s act surprised this is not the 20-th time the BCPack decoder is not mentioned in a thread trying to both downplay PS5’s SSD speed advantage and pretend it has not been talked about yet (despite featuring prominently in the DF exposé and MS PR materials) :rolleyes:.
 
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TBiddy

Member
So on one hand the PS5 is stronger than the XSX, because the XSX is merely bruteforcing and the PS5 is much more elegant..... buuuuuut on the other hand, the XSX is faster than the PS5, because PS5 is merely bruteforcing and the XSX is much more elegant.

Or maybe.. just maybe.. both machines are incredibly well optimized with different strenghts, where Sony has opted for a bit slower APU with an extreme SSD, while MS has chosen a bit faster APU with a slightly less extreme SSD.
 

-kb-

Member
People acting like BC1-BC7 doesn't exist, this is merely a iteration on a existing concept that the PS5 and every modern graphics card supports.

Also people blindly saying what a xbox engineer says as ground truth but disputing everything said by Cerny? colour me shocked.
 
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DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
He also says this.
Yes, dramatically less demanding. However, PS5 devs can encode their textures in a special way (with rate distortion optimization or "RDO"), and this combined with Kraken should make up for the lack of a BCPack equivalent in hardware.

I would be surprised if Sony didn't have good RDO texture encoders for the GPU formats supported by their console in their SDK. It's a no brainier. If they don't have them now, they'll have them soon or they cannot compete.

One thing that seems inaccurate is that he believes they're just using Kraken, which is not true.
 
He also says this.




One thing that seems inaccurate is that he believes they're just using Kraken, which is not true.

When talking about kraken, Cerny referred to a custom decompression chip builti n the IO unit, the one that in a very specific case could allow to reach 22GB/s. Wait, need to see MrX forum and how they claiming victory about this. Surely something must be there.
 
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Allandor

Member
Btw, what do you want to compress with Kraken other than textures?
Gamecode? Compiled code is really small. What makes compiled files big (like DLLs) are Resources (like pictures etc). Yes it can be compressed, but we talk about a few Megabytes here.
Audio? is already compressed, not much to win here.
Text-Files? Well compression works quite well on them, but they don't need that much resources.
Models & Level-Data? Well yes, models and level-data can still get compressed. Expect up to 10% difference here. But actually those are only coordinates for the triangle setup etc. Not that much data. What makes level packages big are the textures.

Don't get me wrong, kraken ist still good, but outside of textures, there is not much to win here.

What can get a small bottleneck is the 6GB/s the hardwaredecoder can handle. But we don't know if it is 6GB/s that gets in or 6 GB/s that gets out. But still not bad at all.
The 20GB/s from the PS5s "decoder" chip is just so high, so it doesn't get to a bottleneck. This is just theoretical peak-performance so it can handle any load at all time, that the ssd delivers data.

All in all, both techniques are really fast. I really don't see how this can get a bottleneck in the next gen. Streaming is still essential, because yes SSDs are fast but the latency is still much worse than the latency of the main memory (especially with compression, because this still adds the latency of the compression process). But the streaming-buffer can be decreased by a lot this gen. Those consoles are the first that can run the texture tiling-feature, which would save much, much main memory and bandwidth. Funny enough, you don't need that much bandwidth to the SSD with texture tiling. Just the ssd latency is what you need.
 
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Wait, need to see MrX forum and how they claiming victory about this. Surely something must be there.

Well

SDUYFKi.jpg


:messenger_tears_of_joy: :messenger_tears_of_joy: :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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ZywyPL

Banned
Well, in theory, the better the compression the lesser the file size, hence less bandwidth required, so who knows, maybe the bandwidth delta won't be really that bing in practical real world applications ;)
 

Shin

Banned
Not surprising, he's right up there with how some PlayStation/Xbox fans of this board behave, so there's that.
For the same people here are doing the same thing (if not worse, the amount of threads with a defensive stance).
 
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Not surprising, he's right up there with how some PlayStation/Xbox fans of this board behave, so there's that.
For the same people here are doing the same thing (if not worse, the amount of threads with a defensive stance).

Not even close. Really, you don't know how that forum is really a toxic one. This board is a good compared to that one.

Even though in last few days some suspicious accounts were created :

Real_Agent_K Real_Agent_K PostMar 23, 2020PermanentTimdog apostle. Find something better to do with your time.
 
And why would you knowingly go to that board when you have no business there?
And no it's not much different, you incl. but it's easier to point fingers to others than to take blame.

The same crap they don't have business here. It's funny to read their comments about this board. It is different. Really.

mC9wItN.png
 

Shin

Banned
they don't have business here.
That's not up to you to decide and no it's not the same "crap", that's a dedicated Xbox board I reckon?
You don't like Xbox that much is clear with the plethora of threads and defensive posts, why would you knowingly go to a place you absolutely dislike then come back here to mock them?
 
That's not up to you to decide and no it's not the same "crap", that's a dedicated Xbox board I reckon?
You don't like Xbox that much is clear with the plethora of threads and defensive posts, why would you knowingly go to a place you absolutely dislike then come back here to mock them?

And surely it's not up to you to decide why i shouldn't read that forum. Yeah, defensive post when bunch of Xbox fans DELIBERATELY spreading FUD. Just look at the "bans" section why they are banned.

Btw. bye! Take care!
 
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GymWolf

Member
is there a practical way to measure how a compression technique is better than another one? like df analysis et similia?
 
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Vroadstar

Member
Imagine your reaction if someone said the brute force TF approach isn't as big as suspected.

Just imagine.

Lol, he's the 11th one and counting. Most probably won't last until both console released by then he will probably be in to his 25th alt account
 

Goliathy

Banned
Lol, he's the 11th one and counting. Most probably won't last until both console released by then he will probably be in to his 25th alt account

is there anything else you can do than derail any thread with baseless claims? seriously? you dont provide ANYTHING to the discussion. ANYTHING.


6hwai7n.png



wtf man?? is this the only thing you can do?
no wonder your reaction score is so low, because you only post shit:
V3tnVIq.png

anyway, report me to the mods if you believe that, ok? no need to derail every thread with your bullshit.


BACK TO TOPIC:

I would like to see a real world example, where they can directlry compare both techniques. this would be interesting. currentlym ist all just guessing.
 
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