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Forums - Sony - Sony's PlayStation 4 Is Running Modified FreeBSD 9

allenmaher on 24 June 2013

...

The overhead between Windows and a Unix running with Xorg and Gnome is mostly the same, also ram-usage. It's only better when acting as a server. Also there are no amd-drivers - Sony has a special team for drivers. Take a look at this guy: https://twitter.com/postgoodism

Also keep in mind that also MS knows of overhead - that is why the dashboard only uses 32 mb on 360 :)

Both have optimized drivers, API and in general kernels for gaming.

On my hardware the ram usage is 1.5 times as much on Windows 7 and io read write benchmarks are only 50% as fast. (I use Unity because I don't like where Gnome Shell went... plus X is slowly but surely going to be supplanted by MIR and/or Wayland... and it was too long in coming)  

There is an interesting set of benchmarks comparing a few BSD and linux varients on the same hardware here, sadly windows is not in the mix in this one:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=16_way_linux&num=1

(note: proprietary AMD drivers are only installed by default in one test case so a few of the benchmarks are skewed but they make a note of that in the comparison)

But you are right, If MS strips away a lot of the OS for XBOne they can clear up a lot of the overhead gap.  Windows display drivers get extra love and tend to be quite good (Intel and AMD particularily), but DirectX is slower than OpenGL, even on windows acording to Valve benchmarks due to the extra level of abstraction.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133824-valve-opengl-is-faster-than-directx-even-on-windows

FreeBSD + a good sony in house display driver should work very well for the PS4.



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ethomaz on 24 June 2013

walsufnir said:

Guy... I think you are wrong :) I think some things aren't modified, e.g. the file-system. This is also not an easy task, they will use something usual. And hopefully ntfs-support built in :) And I think they will also use some existing drivers, like for USB. But performance-crucial parts are of course manually crafted.

Still, I want a shell on a ps4! :) But yes, we won't notice it's a bsd. MS will do the same with their win8-kernel.

Sony uses a custom filesystem on PS3 and will use again in PS4... and it will be based in some light filesystem for BSD or other (or maybe based in FAT32 again)... NTFS is slow even when compared with FAT32 and no console needs all the options attached to NTFS.

You won't see a shell in PS4 lol

And I agree common drives will be the same... like USB, Wireless, etc.



walsufnir on 24 June 2013
allenmaher said:

...

The overhead between Windows and a Unix running with Xorg and Gnome is mostly the same, also ram-usage. It's only better when acting as a server. Also there are no amd-drivers - Sony has a special team for drivers. Take a look at this guy: https://twitter.com/postgoodism

Also keep in mind that also MS knows of overhead - that is why the dashboard only uses 32 mb on 360 :)

Both have optimized drivers, API and in general kernels for gaming.

On my hardware the ram usage is 1.5 times as much on Windows 7 and io read write benchmarks are only 50% as fast. (I use Unity because I don't like where Gnome Shell went... plus X is slowly but surely going to be supplanted by MIR and/or Wayland... and it was too long in coming)

There is an interesting set of benchmarks comparing a few BSD and linux varients on the same hardware here, sadly windows is not in the mix in this one:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=16_way_linux&num=1

(note: proprietary AMD drivers are only installed by default in one test case so a few of the benchmarks are skewed but they make a note of that in the comparison)

But you are right, If MS strips away a lot of the OS for XBOne they can clear up a lot of the overhead gap.  Windows display drivers get extra love and tend to be quite good (Intel and AMD particularily), but DirectX is slower than OpenGL, even on windows acording to Valve benchmarks due to the extra level of abstraction.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133824-valve-opengl-is-faster-than-directx-even-on-windows

FreeBSD + a good sony in house display driver should work very well for the PS4.


and io read write benchmarks are only 50% as fast.

What? Than there is definitely something wrong with your Windows-setup :) There is no io-advantage in Linux compared to Windows.

And yes, freebsd is actually a good choice.



walsufnir on 24 June 2013
ethomaz said:

walsufnir said:

Guy... I think you are wrong :) I think some things aren't modified, e.g. the file-system. This is also not an easy task, they will use something usual. And hopefully ntfs-support built in :) And I think they will also use some existing drivers, like for USB. But performance-crucial parts are of course manually crafted.

Still, I want a shell on a ps4! :) But yes, we won't notice it's a bsd. MS will do the same with their win8-kernel.

Sony uses a custom filesystem on PS3 and will use again in PS4... and it will be based in some light filesystem for BSD or other (or maybe based in FAT32 again)... NTFS is slow even when compared with FAT32 and no console needs all the options attached to NTFS.

You won't see a shell in PS4 lol

And I agree common drives will be the same... like USB, Wireless, etc.


Any details on the filesystem? I don't think it's their very own filesystem, still. And they don't need to use ntfs as their filesystem, they just should support it so that people can hook up their ntfs-usb-devices :) And who knows, if PS4 gets hacked, I will also get my shell



allenmaher on 24 June 2013

I thought they were using a UFS2 system with an encryption extension for the PS3 (a modified stock BSD file system).



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ethomaz on 24 June 2013

walsufnir said:

Any details on the filesystem? I don't think it's their very own filesystem, still. And they don't need to use ntfs as their filesystem, they just should support it so that people can hook up their ntfs-usb-devices :) And who knows, if PS4 gets hacked, I will also get my shell

lol I misundestood your comment... yeah NTFS support for external devices is a nice add.

The PS3 filesystem (based on the hacker community) is a custom FAT32 with encryption support (in fact I think the only custom part is the encryption).

Why custom? Most encryption apps do the encrypt over a file into the filesystem... so you have the FAT32, can read the name and the folder but can't read the content of the file withou decrypt... so you are only encrypted the content of file over the FAT32 filesystem.

PS3 uses the FAT32 encrypted already... so even the index tables is already encrypted... you can't read anything (folder, filename, filesize, etc) without decrypt.

So you don't use a default FAT32 driver and write the content of file encrypted... you need a customized FAT32 driver to write and read using the encryption keys.

The Hackers called this custom filesystem "encrypted FAT32"... it uses XTS-AES-128 encryption.

Read more here: http://www.ps3devwiki.com/wiki/HDD_Encryption

PS. If you decrypt all the HDD it works like a FAT32 system



walsufnir on 24 June 2013
ethomaz said:

walsufnir said:

Any details on the filesystem? I don't think it's their very own filesystem, still. And they don't need to use ntfs as their filesystem, they just should support it so that people can hook up their ntfs-usb-devices :) And who knows, if PS4 gets hacked, I will also get my shell

lol I misundestood your comment... yeah NTFS support for external devices is a nice add.

The PS3 filesystem (based on the hacker community) is a custom FAT32 with encryption support (in fact I think the only custom part is the encryption).

Why custom? Most encryption apps do the encrypt over a file into the filesystem... so you have the FAT32, can read the name and the folder but can't read the content of the file withou decrypt... so you are only encrypted the content of file over the FAT32 filesystem.

PS3 uses the FAT32 encrypted already... so even the index tables is already encrypted... you can't read anything (folder, filename, filesize, etc) without decrypt.

So you don't use a default FAT32 driver and write the content of file encrypted... you need a customized FAT32 driver to write and read using the encryption keys.

The Hackers called this custom filesystem "encrypted FAT32"... it uses XTS-AES-128 encryption.

Read more here: http://www.ps3devwiki.com/wiki/HDD_Encryption

PS. If you decrypt all the HDD it works like a FAT32 system


Where does your link say "fat32"? Of course they do some encryption but why fat32? UFS would make more sense. I never saw a unix-like system running "/" on fat32, ever. Because the file-system itself lacks *any* support for extended file-attributes and file-system access restrictions...



ethomaz on 24 June 2013

walsufnir said:

Where does your link say "fat32"? Of course they do some encryption but why fat32? UFS would make more sense. I never saw a unix-like system running "/" on fat32, ever. Because the file-system itself lacks *any* support for extended file-attributes and file-system access restrictions...

I read in other forums... FAT32 is confirmed... and consoles don't need extended file-attributes or access restrictions.

FAT32 is fast.

PS. I'm readin more... not confirmed... I don't know, nobody knows... in fact it is custom based in FAT32, ext3 or other FS lol



walsufnir on 24 June 2013
ethomaz said:

walsufnir said:

Where does your link say "fat32"? Of course they do some encryption but why fat32? UFS would make more sense. I never saw a unix-like system running "/" on fat32, ever. Because the file-system itself lacks *any* support for extended file-attributes and file-system access restrictions...

I read in other forums... FAT32 is confirmed... and consoles don't need extended file-attributes or access restrictions.

FAT32 is fast.

PS. I'm readin more... not confirmed... I don't know, nobody knows... in fact it is custom based in FAT32, ext3 or other FS lol


Ah, ok - just wanted to write something against it but you edited it :D



ethomaz on 24 June 2013

walsufnir said:

Ah, ok - just wanted to write something against it but you edited it :D

I'm trying to look at most "famous" hacking site but it is confuse lol... I found another saying that "thinks" the FS is a " (possibly customized) variant of UFS2, which is the typical filesystem of modern BSD systems".

Makes sense that one because the PS3's kernel is BSD... but there are proprietary/encrypted code into it... I think Sony modified the drivers to fit the results they wanted.