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Forums - Sony Discussion - Gods... ops Naughty Dog Explains PS4's CPU, Memory and More in Detail and How They Can Make it “Run Really Fast”

Dr.Henry_Killinger said:
walsufnir said:
Dr.Henry_Killinger said:
Dark_Feanor said:
Good, those are things that every Computer Science/Engineer learn in the first semester of the course. And you only really understand by the graduation, and may be never work with it.

Any way, GDDR 5 has nothing special, it just faster than normal DDR 3, but it´s interesting a game studio working that close to the metal for optmisation, that is the benefit of working in only one platform.

For me the guys at Epic and Cryteck are the real gods.


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.

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.


So you failed *twice* in reading... I even used "*" to make it even more clear. OF THE COURSE. Usually computer architecture lasts longer than 1 semester. No one is talking about the 1st semester you have when starting studying...

Second, it is not important which architecture you learn because the principles are the same throughout most of the processors. We did SPARC, MIPS and x86 and mostly it was the ISA that was really important or what really was different. To understand how stuff works you could even use an imaginery ISA.



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walsufnir said:
Dr.Henry_Killinger said:
walsufnir said:
Dr.Henry_Killinger said:
Dark_Feanor said:
Good, those are things that every Computer Science/Engineer learn in the first semester of the course. And you only really understand by the graduation, and may be never work with it.

Any way, GDDR 5 has nothing special, it just faster than normal DDR 3, but it´s interesting a game studio working that close to the metal for optmisation, that is the benefit of working in only one platform.

For me the guys at Epic and Cryteck are the real gods.


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.

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.


So you failed *twice* in reading... I even used "*" to make it even more clear. OF THE COURSE. Usually computer architecture lasts longer than 1 semester. No one is talking about the 1st semester you have when starting studying...

Second, it is not important which architecture you learn because the principles are the same throughout most of the processors. We did SPARC, MIPS and x86 and mostly it was the ISA that was really important or what really was different. To understand how stuff works you could even use an imaginery ISA.

Second Semester, First Year, unless your doing an accelerated or out of order course Computer Architecture/Systems wouldn't be until the second semster of the course because its not as fundamental as the stuff you learn prior. 

As I said being able to understand what they are talking about is trivial, the hardware is proprietary, just because It has pc-like architecture doesn't mean you can just imagine working in it. its proprietary, thus the issue is implementing it on the devkits not on rigs built to match the specs. 

Understanding will make it easy to impliment on the PS4 hardware, but until you have access to some form of that, than you will only know how to implement it in terms you understand.

CIP, Understanding DirectX does not allow you to implemint OpenGL despite them being very similar. Once you know how to use OpenGL, then you can apply the concepts that you learned in DirectX as well. My point is that unless your class has ps4 dev kits, implientation is something learned only at the commercial level.



In this day and age, with the Internet, ignorance is a choice! And they're still choosing Ignorance! - Dr. Filthy Frank

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.

Yeap... a 12GB DevKit will allow they use more... that happens with all consoles cycles... that's why the "every console is DevKit" that MS promises won't use all the hardware potential and big devs will need proper DevKit.



walsufnir said:
ethomaz said:
This new slides shows PS4 reserves to games 6 CPUs cores and 5GB of RAM.


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 agree but I don't think the CPU allocation will change over time...



ethomaz said:
walsufnir said:
ethomaz said:
This new slides shows PS4 reserves to games 6 CPUs cores and 5GB of RAM.


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 agree but I don't think the CPU allocation will change over time...


Yeah, two cores will always be "blocked" obviously for operating system purposes reducing performance of both systems, sadly. This is what is puzzling me with PS4... The os is quite "primitive" in comparison to Xbone which has a lot of stuff going on while gaming. PS4 even has dedicated hardware for recording gameplay. So if CPU reservation is going to change it is most probably PS4 doing so... But we also don't know what Sony is planning to do with the os in the future so I think it is ok currently to "play safe".



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walsufnir said:

Yeah, two cores will always be "blocked" obviously for operating system purposes reducing performance of both systems, sadly. This is what is puzzling me with PS4... The os is quite "primitive" in comparison to Xbone which has a lot of stuff going on while gaming. PS4 even has dedicated hardware for recording gameplay. So if CPU reservation is going to change it is most probably PS4 doing so... But we also don't know what Sony is planning to do with the os in the future so I think it is ok currently to "play safe".

Xbone have a CPU running a little faster And to be fair I don't know how many cores is allocated in Xbone yet.



All this tech talk and all they deliver is a clunky TPS and auto-platforming.



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walsufnir said:
ethomaz said:
walsufnir said:
ethomaz said:
This new slides shows PS4 reserves to games 6 CPUs cores and 5GB of RAM.


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 agree but I don't think the CPU allocation will change over time...


Yeah, two cores will always be "blocked" obviously for operating system purposes reducing performance of both systems, sadly. This is what is puzzling me with PS4... The os is quite "primitive" in comparison to Xbone which has a lot of stuff going on while gaming. PS4 even has dedicated hardware for recording gameplay. So if CPU reservation is going to change it is most probably PS4 doing so... But we also don't know what Sony is planning to do with the os in the future so I think it is ok currently to "play safe".

Well, with all that multutasking stuff (browser, Twitch, Music Unlimited and whatnot) running in the background, 2 cores are pretty reasonable. You don't want the menu to be as slow as the PS3 XMB was in-game.



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If they make the jobs budge up a little, cant they fit in an extra one? I could draw one on in paint myself.
ofcourse, they probably are not as smart as I am.



OdinHades said:
walsufnir said:
ethomaz said:
walsufnir said:
ethomaz said:
This new slides shows PS4 reserves to games 6 CPUs cores and 5GB of RAM.


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 agree but I don't think the CPU allocation will change over time...


Yeah, two cores will always be "blocked" obviously for operating system purposes reducing performance of both systems, sadly. This is what is puzzling me with PS4... The os is quite "primitive" in comparison to Xbone which has a lot of stuff going on while gaming. PS4 even has dedicated hardware for recording gameplay. So if CPU reservation is going to change it is most probably PS4 doing so... But we also don't know what Sony is planning to do with the os in the future so I think it is ok currently to "play safe".

Well, with all that multutasking stuff (browser, Twitch, Music Unlimited and whatnot) running in the background, 2 cores are pretty reasonable. You don't want the menu to be as slow as the PS3 XMB was in-game.


Not all of these processes need to be executed while gaming... Why music unlimited? Why browser? These processes could easily be put in standby-mode b the os (and most probably they will do). It is most likely a fine-grainded rights-system behind such apps.