Norris2k said:
freedquaker said:
The sentence here actually defeats itself and reflects and major misunderstanding of the OS requirements. Speaking of FreeBSD on PS4 in particular, the OS definitely does NOT need 3 GB RAM to operate. For all we know, it is perfectly fine with about half a gig. Sony originally wanted to go with only 4 GB, reserving 0.5 GB for the OS, and leaving 3.5 GB for the games, remember?
Given that the OS is still the same, then what happened? They were able to increase the RAM to 8 GB, and knowing that most developers & games do not need that amount of memory, they decided to RESERVE some amount of RAM to make the console
a) Future proof with upcoming features
b) They can always release some of the reserved RAM in the future with a software update, but once you release it, it's gone, you can't take it back, in order to add more multi-tasking features etc...
So if anything, the 3 GB reserved for the OS proves that games DO NOT NEED 8 GB. This is clear from the PC games today, there isn't a single game that uses more than 4-5 GB! The vast majority of games do not even use more than 2 GB (system), being limited to 32 bit, and only recently are we seeing a trend away from this, with the advent of the next-gen consoles.
In the past, however, this was never the case. The PC had always used more RAM than was available on the consoles. Most PC games in 2006 were already using way more than 256-512 MB RAM, which comes with 360 and PS3. So you clearly see a relative abundance of memory here, which means the next gen will not have this kind of jump. The large reserve for the OS does not mean the OSs are that hungry, on the contrary, it means Sony can afford to reserve that much RAM from the games as they simply don't need as much today.
Mark my words here, and remember how ridiculous your original claims will look by then. Things do not get just scaled up, there is always a technical REASON behind them. With your projections, there is NONE.
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Technically speaking, you are mostly right, but you are contradicting yourself.
You finish with "Things do not get just scaled up, there is always a technical REASON behind them. With your projections, there is NONE.".
But you are saying yourself that currently the vast amount of memory on the PS4 has no use. You remove 3 Gb from game and it's not really big deal, most game using 2-4 Gb. You add it on the OS, but you don't really have any use for it. There is no "technical REASON" for currently scaling up the OS memory... just a vague future proof intuition that it could have some use in the future. Most OS are not heavy memory consumer at core. In fact, strictly speaking, even the graphical environment that makes most of the memory footprint is not mandatory for BSD, it's a dispensable feature. So just add an other dispensable feature like a browser in background and you have your OS reserve a lot more memory. Feature could really rise in memory use especially because in a few year the decade old limitation from the 32 bits (and limited console) period will be forgotten.
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Valid objections, and time for me to be a bit clearer (and clarify)...
The main reasons why there are two OSes operating at the same time on XB1, for example, are
a) To be able to run regular apps and games at the same time with full multi-tasking, and without each system interfering with the other
b) To be able to write closer to the metal with games, with a stripped down games focused OS.
c) Having the fully fledged OS for apps, but without compromising the games performance.
So basically the XB1 is running two OSes (or somewhat very low level Virtual Machines) at the same time. This is an incredible enterprise! But the big downside is the memory requirements, and disc access.
PS4, on the other hand, initially wanted to go with much smaller and less ambitious goal in multi-tasking. The games would run in their own protected and low level environment, while the apps would be handled by the OS separately. On the other hand, the additional RAM brought a lot more possibilities to Sony. I, honestly, don't know much about their implementations at this stage, and I am sure, PS4 would be perfectly fine 5.5-6 GB of memory as of this moment, and the remaining memory seems totally unused (at the moment).However, Sony will undoubtedly utilize this in the future, some of the possibilities are...
a) Additional simultaneous apps, features...
b) VR,
c) PS Now
d) Emulation
e) PS Vita related
f) Release some of this memory back to developers
g) GPGPU related
etc...
