| sales2099 said: dont fully understand why its different then any multitask feature PS4 has |
With the Xbox One, the Apps VM is constantly running, consuming its own piece of that 3GB of memory. Switching between the Apps and Games VMs is just a matter of which one you're giving priority to the screen or what part of it.
In multitasking (PS4), you physically define priority in memory. You're caching data active in physical memory to the HDD so that apps or games have priority. This is the virtual memory discussed last week as a part of how memory works on the PS4. In Sony's correction of Eurogamer, they referenced virtual memory. If you do a search on virtual memory on FreeBSD, it's the same as cached memory (a HDD cache) found in Windows.
Virtual memory can be used for saving active data for three reasons. One, task switching, where the operating system needs access to memory. Two, when an application must prioritize an operation, moving data active in physical memory to the cache (virtual memory) and freeing up the physical memory. And three, when two different applications are running, and one has an operation that has priority over the any other operation the other application has.
With the Xbox One there isn't caching within the 5GB and 3GB walls. The Apps VM and HyperVisor have 3GB available to them. So an app in memory stays in memory. When the user switches from say playing Ryse to Skype full screen, the Games VM is suspended. The Virtual Machine is simply frozen as are the contents of the memory. Likewise when the user switches back to the game, the Apps VM may suspend depending on the context of the application.
There is no latency to unsuspend the VM. You're not starting and stopping the VM. It's like pausing a movie, then hitting the pause button to play it.
Technically speaking, what Microsoft is doing is WAY cooler. However, that said, to the consumer they will look virtually the same.
