| DarkTemplar said: For thoses that do not know, caches (like Wii U's eDram) exist because of the Locality of Reference. While the unified PS4 memory hierarcy is very simple and consequently easy to use, the funny thing about eDRAM is that a developer can easily write a program to sniff the RAM memory accesses while playing a game so you will be able to know what are the best assets to be promoted from the RAM to the eDRAM. |
That right there is developer overhead, something developers don't need to worry on the PS4.
Xbox one at least has the Move engines which in a way try to automate that process you described in hardware, again reducing developer overhead.
Moving data required for rending to Edram will become more and more a headache as developers try to squeeze more juice out of the GPU in later years...this is exactly the hurdle that Cerny thought about and why he pushed forward with the much developer friendlier architecture in the PS4.
