Stumbled across this story:
http://www.innerbits.com/blog/2007/05/09/ps3-memory-footprint/
Its from a PS3 developer blog - some of the things that are said I find quite worrying from a development point of view. The whole point of developing on a console (vrs a PC) is the knowledge that you have a "fixed" piece of development hardware. This implies that the PS3 is not like this at all - which runs the risk of installing something in the future that "breaks" existing games (etc...).
It should be remembered that the PS3 makes 256MB of main memory available for applications (and 256 for VRAM/textures, etc..).
"First, the base memory footprint of the PS3 OS in main memory has been reduced from 56 MB to 52 MB. These values will lead to some confusion, as we’ve previously reported that the memory footprint was 64 MB. 8MB of memory was given back to developers sometime before Christmas, and now a further 4 MB has been returned. Currently, as of SDK 1.60, the PS3 operating system takes up 52 MB of main memory and 32 MB of graphics memory (84 MB total). As a comparison, the Xbox 360 still only uses 32 MB of shared memory for all its system utilities."
"We have also learned that processing-wise, games are expected to maintain at least 30 frames per second, regardless of how much CPU time is used by the OS. Specifically, there is a Sony technical requirement that states that titles cannot rely on the CPU processing speed. There is no explicit ceiling set on how much processing time the OS can use through its higher priority threads."
"Full support of the NP Friend List utility is currently a staggering 24MB of extra memory (on top of the 8MB needed for the startup). This utility provides the support of the NP friend’s list, allowing players to add, remove, block and communicate with their friends along with the corresponding GUI interface. The extraneous demand on memory has been met with with concern from developers."
...
All this may explain why PS3 games seem to be lagging 360 titles at the moment. With "NP friend list" support, the PS3 is down to (256-52-24-8 = 172) 172MB of main RAM (which should still be heaps for most applications).
Still - that number is much lower than the (512-32 = 480) 480MB of main memory available for use on the 360 (although this is shared with textures/VRAM, etc..).
This also sounds to me like development on the PS3 is in its "early" stages, and that the console will be significantly better in 2-3 years time.
Gesta Non Verba
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