I can't stand this bunch of amateurs from ND telling again some PR bullshit about gpu, cache, memory optimization or whatever lie they like.

There are only two things that matters nowadays. Cloud. And Secret Sauce.

None of its new, its just proprietary, methods for optimizing PlayStation platforms.

Can't really be used much elsewhere

Given the context, its appropriate.

No, this is exactly what we were taught in the first semester *of the course*.

ISA, computer architecture, data paths, single cycle vs. multi-cycle data paths, branch prediction, score boards, caching (strategies, layout, misses), victim caches, data hazards, pipeline stalls, memory layout, cache snooping... All what is on these slides. All the did is fill it up with actual values.

When I read "PS4 has “really really good” branch prediction hardware" then it's not because of the wonder machine PS4 but that AMD has implemented good branch prediction in their CPUs so this applies to all processors of this kind.

Yeah, that's kind of interesting... Seems to be exactly what MS is doing. Both are subject to change, though, over time, in my opinion.

I'm suprised there isn't much interest about the RAM reserve.

Wasn't everyone expecting much higher?

Reported for trolling the glorious power of the cloud!

thismeintiel said: If I'm understanding the first part correctly, the reason they can only use 5GB is because the dev kits only use 8GBs (most likely due to costs), part of which is used for debugging. So, once Sony gets out dev kits with more RAM (when prices lower), they should be able to use more. Could just be misunderstanding that, though.

Absolutly not. RAM allowed for game is dependent on how much is reserved for system and future uses, it has nothing to do with devkit. PS4 devkit already has more than 8GB memory for debugging. 

There is a chance that Sony will optimise OS to use less memory, so games could use more. That was the case with PS3, when initially there was much less ram, but sony increased that amount by optimalisation.

I imagine this is as much to do with selling the PS4 to potential game/app coders as it is explaining the technical side of optimising for the machine.

No way are you learning that in first semester, first year possibly. But computer architecture might be an introductory course, it is frankly irresponsible to teach it as the first semester, even in an honors course it would be touched on tangentially.

Furthermore, in an introductory course your learning general stuff for standard x86 and x86-64 architectures, sure that might help you understand what they are talking about and its relatively simple, but without hands on practice, which would be rare in a college course if not and implasible in an introductory course, you wouldn't know how to implement any of this which is what matters when building an engine.

That why saying Devs who work with this and have had experience with this are familiar with it but suggesting that the system architecture that one learns in introductory , not first semester -_- courses, is ludicrous.

Much higher free ram? Yes, many said back then 3gb of reserve would be bad for Xbone as PS4's OS would only need 1gb but it seems they are "just as bad".

But this will change in the future for sure and the amount of ram available for games currently should be enough for games, easily.