Naughty Dog talk about the internals of the PS4

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Video http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/03/11/naughty-dogs-lead-programmer-shares-the-studios-secrets-in-a-hour-long-talk/

Or text based

http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/03/11/naughty-dog-explains-ps4s-cpu-memory-and-more-in-detail-and-how-they-can-make-them-run-really-fast/

[JonnyLH]

I think the biggest news around this is some clarity on the OS reservations. I don't like the fact it comes from ND rather than Sony, very bad if you ask me.

 

3GB of RAM for the OS and 2 CPU cores reserved, no wonder there's a focus on GPGPU on there. All good though, more information the better.

[DeltaXray]

I think the biggest news around this is some clarity on the OS reservations. I don't like the fact it comes from ND rather than Sony, very bad if you ask me

Why would Sony make a point of telling the general public that information? Whilst it's not a secret, and that info has been known for some time, it has literally no relevance at all to joe public. The developers had all this information and that's all that matters....

[Aergan]

I want Core 0 to be a Berserker and Core 1 to go Red Mage.

[trooper11]

Very informative talk, thanks for sharing it. I agree that learning about the OS reservations is new. I know it was speculation before, but to hear it confirmed this way is nice.

Now we have more concrete info when trying to compare both consoles when it comes to stuff like OS reservation, etc. Its interesting to see that both companies seem to have taken similar strategies when it comes to OS allocation of resources.

Why would Sony make a point of telling the general public that information? Whilst it's not a secret, and that info has been known for some time, it has literally no relevance at all to joe public. The developers had all this information and that's all that matters....

It matters because many on the internet made a huge deal about the same details reveled about the X1. So of course it matters how the ps4 compares to that. We could only speculate based on some possible leaked info since Sony wasn't laying it out like MS had.

[neoadorable]

What needs to be clarified is the "secret" memory on both PS4 and X1. What is that extra 2GB of DDR3 on PS4 doing? What is X1 doing with that 8GB flash soldered onto the board? These are storage/memory capacities not to be laughed at. I mean flash isn't truly RAM, but it's almost the same idea...surely with 10GB and 16GB of capacity respectively these two are capable of so much more than we're seeing. Meaning developers don't even care to access those extra resources at this point. Shame.

[123456789A]

Interesting article, but looking at the comments on that site made me wish I never learned how to read.

[JonnyLH]

Why would Sony make a point of telling the general public that information? Whilst it's not a secret, and that info has been known for some time, it has literally no relevance at all to joe public. The developers had all this information and that's all that matters....

It hasn't been known, it had been heavily rumored and the exact number was never announced, the CPU reservation was never even speculated.

 

Transparency around a system is always a good thing, the more tech savvy consumers like myself and people on here have a general interest in this sort of information. Learning it through the developers and not the manufacturers is a bad image for me. 2 CPU cores is essentially 25% of the CPU gone, which is a massive point in terms of the performance of the system.

[XerXis]

All the things they described are relevant to PC games too. Physics have been GPGPU based for years now. Which once again proves it's a good thing that this generation of consoles uses normal pc hardware. Everything will be a lot easier to port

[DeltaXray]

It hasn't been known, it had been heavily rumored and the exact number was never announced, the CPU reservation was never even speculated.

 

Transparency around a system is always a good thing, the more tech savvy consumers like myself and people on here have a general interest in this sort of information. Learning it through the developers and not the manufacturers is a bad image for me. 2 CPU cores is essentially 25% of the CPU gone, which is a massive point in terms of the performance of the system.

 

But Sony has absolutely no business going to efforts to explain this sort of information to tech-savvy users.  If you care that much, build a PC.

 

Consoles are about the end-results.  It is no secret since they have laid all the information out for developers and they aren't exactly under any NDA so if it makes its way to the consumers than fair enough.

 

If you judge your opinon of a company on not explicity and personally sending you the internal specs of a console instead of spending time giving the information to people that had a genuine use for it then you have a problem.

[Blackhearted]

I still don't know how microsoft and sony BOTH managed to bloat their operating systems so badly that they need to reserve 3GB for them. And no, you don't need nearly that much reserved to be able to multitask.

 

Also, i'm pretty sure we already knew about the ps4 having a similar 2 core cpu reservation as the one from a killzone presentation or something last year.

 

Some of the other bits are interesting though.

[NoClipMode]

What needs to be clarified is the "secret" memory on both PS4 and X1. What is that extra 2GB of DDR3 on PS4 doing? What is X1 doing with that 8GB flash soldered onto the board? These are storage/memory capacities not to be laughed at. I mean flash isn't truly RAM, but it's almost the same idea...surely with 10GB and 16GB of capacity respectively these two are capable of so much more than we're seeing. Meaning developers don't even care to access those extra resources at this point. Shame.

wat... Theres nothing secret about them.

The 8GB flash memory is used to store data like a page file does, which allows the XB1 to switch between multiple open apps and allows you to resume a game right away when you turn on the console with the "resume games quickly" feature. MS have said this themselfs. The PS4 obviously uses the 2GB DDR3 for similar stuff. And Flash is nothing like RAM, it's nowhere near fast enough to be used like RAM would for a game.

[Brian M. Veteran]

I still don't know how microsoft and sony BOTH managed to bloat their operating systems so badly that they need to reserve 3GB for them. And no, you don't need nearly that much reserved to be able to multitask.

 

Also, i'm pretty sure we already knew about the ps4 having a similar 2 core cpu reservation as the one from a killzone presentation or something last year.

 

Some of the other btus are interesting though.

 

 I imagine it's future proofing more than anything.

 

The PS3's UI is horrifically slow, and has gotten worse as they've been fiddling with it over the years. The reserved capacities should allow both Sony and Microsoft to add new features without having to start taking away resources from games.

[JonnyLH]

But Sony has absolutely no business going to efforts to explain this sort of information to tech-savvy users.  If you care that much, build a PC.

 

Consoles are about the end-results.  It is no secret since they have laid all the information out for developers and they aren't exactly under any NDA so if it makes its way to the consumers than fair enough.

 

If you judge your opinon of a company on not explicity and personally sending you the internal specs of a console instead of spending time giving the information to people that had a genuine use for it then you have a problem.

I have a problem because I'm generally interested in the technical specifications of a console? No, more like I have an interest into the details. Maybe because like you, I've built PCs since I was young and work and study in IT.

 

I like transparency, this wasn't transparent. I have built PCs, I no longer want to build a PC. When you spend 9-12 hours a day behind 3 monitors I don't want to get home and do the same. I hate when people say "Build a PC" as a blanket response to anything negative around the technicalities of a console.

 

It'll be no secret to the developers, since they actually are working on the system but like this and many things, it was a secret to the consumers who're placing their hard earned cash on the boxes. 

 

Why are you so insulted that I don't agree with how this information was announced?

[XerXis]

JonnyLH, on 13 Mar 2014 - 10:48, said:

I have a problem because I'm generally interested in the technical specifications of a console? No, more like I have an interest into the details. Maybe because like you, I've built PCs since I was young and work and study in IT.

 

I like transparency, this wasn't transparent. I have built PCs, I no longer want to build a PC. When you spend 9-12 hours a day behind 3 monitors I don't want to get home and do the same. I hate when people say "Build a PC" as a blanket response to anything negative around the technicalities of a console.

 

It'll be no secret to the developers, since they actually are working on the system but like this and many things, it was a secret to the consumers who're placing their hard earned cash on the boxes. 

 

Why are you so insulted that I don't agree with how this information was announced?

Except that it wasn't a secret at all.

[Blackhearted]

 I imagine it's future proofing more than anything.

 

The PS3's UI is horrifically slow, and has gotten worse as they've been fiddling with it over the years. The reserved capacities should allow both Sony and Microsoft to add new features without having to start taking away resources from games.

 

Yea, the ps3 ui can be a bit slow in some places but didn't sony actually give back some memory to games over time while adding new features(like an in-game home menu)?

[MikeChipshop Member]

Interesting article, but looking at the comments on that site made me wish I never learned how to read.

 

I know right. There sheer blind fanboy-ism mixed with the general lack of intelligence made for eye-bleed inducing reading.

 

Thanks for interesting read though Boxer.

[JonnyLH]

Except that it wasn't a secret at all.

Pull out the information to prove that and I will stand corrected.

[notuptome2004]

Still the PS4 is more powerful then the  xbox one   and at the same time  look how busy the  windows 8.1 esq UI looks  on the xbox one compared to the  simple   PS4 UI   

[XerXis]

JonnyLH, on 13 Mar 2014 - 11:15, said:

Pull out the information to prove that and I will stand corrected.

Sorry, I'm not going to spend too much time looking for it. But it has been generally known for months now (forum threads on neowin have discussed it) that both the xbox and ps4 reserved some cores for Kinect/os/etc...

 

But if you really want, here is forum thread from ign dated in january (but it has been known a lot longer) that discusses it:

 

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/whats-the-real-difference-between-ps4-and-xbox-one.453725165/

 

 

As for architecture the PS4 and XOne are using customized PC parts while it's still possible to optimize on a lower level than something meant to run on PC they are programmed for more or less like PC's. Xbox One should also have DX support the PS4 can only use OpenGL and custom graphics libraries.

Both are using 8 core AMD based CPU so as far as multithreading they are the same both consoles have 2 cores reserved for OS functions I believe.

[DeltaXray]

Yeah the details have been known since at least last July (with devs speaking anonymously) . However since release I guess the NDA was over at that point because the devs have been speaking pretty openly about it since November.

 

Just because Sony haven't called a press conference to announce this information doesn't make it a secret, they just have no need to specifically tell joe public how many gigs is system reserved.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

The memory side of things isn't exactly a secret, information from dev manuals were kicking about last July - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-system-software-memory

 

Sony did follow up with this

 

We would like to clear up a misunderstanding regarding our "direct" and "flexible" memory systems. The article states that "flexible" memory is borrowed from the OS, and must be returned when requested - that's not actually the case.

 

The actual true distinction is that:

 

"Direct Memory" is memory allocated under the traditional video game model, so the game controls all aspects of its allocation

 

"Flexible Memory" is memory managed by the PS4 OS on the game's behalf, and allows games to use some very nice FreeBSD virtual memory functionality. However this memory is 100 per cent the game's memory, and is never used by the OS, and as it is the game's memory it should be easy for every developer to use it.

 

We have no comment to make on the amount of memory reserved by the system or what it is used for.

 

 

But to be fair that was in July months ahead of the launch and as we know things like memory allocation will change over the course of the consoles lifespan. The PS3 OS started at a much higher size than it is now.

[McKay]

Im glad they have this much memory. I hated it when bringing up the 360 guide, and having it open like a slideshow because you were running a game at the time,  and then you stare at a loading circle for 10 seconds before you can read that message or look at your friends list.

 

Or if you bring up the PS3 menu in game and stare at 30 loading circles for 10-15 seconds before anything appears. I don't want a similar experience to occur this gen. I love how both the PS4 and XO jump back to the homescreen smooth as butter even when a game is running.

[trooper11]

Yeah the details have been known since at least last July (with devs speaking anonymously) . However since release I guess the NDA was over at that point because the devs have been speaking pretty openly about it since November.

 

Just because Sony haven't called a press conference to announce this information doesn't make it a secret, they just have no need to specifically tell joe public how many gigs is system reserved.

For some reason, right past the launch of the ps4, people online often brought up the X1 reservations and claimed they were so much worse than the ps4. The X1 info was bandied about as confirmed and accepted, but when these leaks of info regarding the ps4 were brought up, it was quickly shot down.

Fast forward to today and its clear to anyone looking at it that both are reserving about the same amount of resources for things like the OS. Those silly claims earlier turned out to be false.

Sony wasn't actively hiding the info, but for some reason the info did not reach the online community and spread like the X1 info did.

[firey]

For some reason, right past the launch of the ps4, people online often brought up the X1 reservations and claimed they were so much worse than the ps4. The X1 info was bandied about as confirmed and accepted, but when these leaks of info regarding the ps4 were brought up, it was quickly shot down.

Fast forward to today and its clear to anyone looking at it that both are reserving about the same amount of resources for things like the OS. Those silly claims earlier turned out to be false.

Sony wasn't actively hiding the info, but for some reason the info did not reach the online community and spread like the X1 info did.

MS Was keeping a lot more resource wise than sony was.  Their latest patch is meant to address that.