They might adopt these on PCs then?

Last edited by TomaTito - on 08 October 2020

This format already is adopted on PC, even if speeds equal to Sony's spec are fairly high end and not exactly common or cheap.
Sony already announced that off the shelf PC SSD that meet PS5 speed specification will work, so no need to "adopt" anything new.
PS5 actually has some advanced I/O that isn't quite standard on PC, but also can use PC standard SSD if it's crudely fast enough.
If Sony's advanced I/O standard gets popularized on PC that should help prices drop faster since it doesn't need as high of crude speed.

Last edited by mutantsushi - on 08 October 2020

mutantsushi said: This format already is adopted on PC, even if speeds equal to Sony's spec are fairly high end and not exactly common or cheap. Sony already announced that off the shelf PC SSD that meet PS5 speed specification will work, so no need to "adopt" anything new. PS5 actually has some advanced I/O that isn't quite standard on PC, but also can use PC standard SSD if it's crudely fast enough. If Sony's advanced I/O standard gets popularized on PC that should help prices drop faster since it doesn't need as high of crude speed.

Samsung has new SSD's on the market that are faster than the Playstation 5.

smroadkill15 said: Is there no way they can make an external SSD that's usable? I'm not really a tech person so forgive me with my lack of knowledge.

Yes there are plenty of ways.

TheBraveGallade said: no matter HOW you do it its not going to be cheap. the easiest way I can think of this working is using thunderbolt 3, which some laptops can use for external graphics cards. unfortunetly, thunderbolt 3 is locked behind INTEL for the most part, and retooling the CPU to use thunderbolt 3 is going to add expenses. and even then, thunderbolt 3 enclosures are expensive in and of itself.

USB 3.2 aka USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, thunderbolt 2, external PCI-E are options, ethernet, USB 4.0 has been ratified as well which would provide the necessary bandwidth for the Xbox Series X.

The Playstation 5 would need Thunderbolt 3, External PCI-E, Ethernet or USB 4.0.

PC gamers have no problem using screwdrivers to upgrade their storage and to do all other upgrades.

...and if you want consoles to be more like PC then you gotta experience it the same way PC gamers upgrade their rigs too :P

Pemalite said: smroadkill15 said: Is there no way they can make an external SSD that's usable? I'm not really a tech person so forgive me with my lack of knowledge.  Yes there are plenty of ways.

PS5 Doesn't have any ports faster than 10gbps so you'd have to still open the side panel and get some kind of M.2 extender which at that point just slide the thing off and put one in xD 

mutantsushi said: DonFerrari said: Well not like MS could really forbid others from doing, but having more certified ones is a good thing. Of course they could, many companies do this with replaceable parts. Software crypto key, special hardware chip, etc.

They can try, but still we always get not only counterfeit and knock offs but several non-licensed accessories. But as I said having several official vendors is good (but well we don't don't if there will be much of a price difference at first or during most of the console life... unfortunately 200USD for a 1Tb is very expensive and basically make Series S with one cost the same as Series X getting 500Gb advantage but much lower performance).

Beard.

ArchangelMadzz said: Pemalite said: Yes there are plenty of ways. PS5 Doesn't have any ports faster than 10gbps so you'd have to still open the side panel and get some kind of M.2 extender which at that point just slide the thing off and put one in xD

I mean, the Playstation 5's hardware is done and dusted at this point.

My point was there are plenty of ways Sony could have approached this issue.

10Gbps is 1.25GB/s. Definitely not enough bandwidth for a 5.5GB/s SSD... You would need 40Gbps or more... And only External PCI-E and technologies that piggy-back off PCI-E like Thunderbolt can manage that.

Hiku said: The PS5 SSD was described to process data at 5.5 GB/s decompressed, and 9 GB/s compressed. I find no mention of difference in read/write speeds. If that means that they are the same, then the Samsung 980 Pro may not work in a PS5 because it is listed at 7 GB/s read, and 5GB/s write. And I can't find any info on how it handles compressed data. So I'm guessing that's handled by the PS5's SSD controller perhaps? If that's the case then the issue would be the Samsung drive's write speed being slightly below. Especially since Sony said we'd need NVMe drives a bit faster than the one in PS5 to make up for the difference in true priority levels, etc.

The compression technology of the SSD in the Playstation 5 isn't on the SSD itself, it's off the SSD and a part of the SoC/chipset.
So any SSD that can match or exceed the Playstation 5 will automagically gain that compression technology added onto it in the Playstation 5.

Conversely... The compression technology is not a guaranteed compression ratio, some datasets compress better than others, there are going to be times where the SSD isn't going to provide more than 5.5GB/s of bandwidth. It's just impossible.

As for reads vs writes, writes will always be lower than reads, the Playstation 5 will *not* be an exception to this rule due to write amplification, write combining and more that is an inherent limitation of NAND itself.

Basically what happens is the flash needs to be erased before it is re-written, it's two operations instead of one, like a read.

Plus an SSD can only write in 4KB or 8KB chunks inside of a 256KB block...
So if you have 128KB that needs to be written and there is already 128KB of data in the block, the SSD needs to copy all the information in that 256KB block, combine that with the 128KB of new data, erase the 256KB block, then copy all that data back to that 256KB block. It's a much longer and more intricate process...
It gets more complicated if you have lots of 4KB/8KB chunks of data that need to constantly be added to a 256KB block, it can bog down performance considerably.

The SSD cannot simply add that 128KB of data to the already 128KB of data.

It's also why the technology "TRIM" was invented, basically what happens there is the SSD controller scans the SSD for blocks which have been marked as "deleted" but haven't actually been deleted yet, then the SSD will do an erase operation, usually the TRIM command is initiated when the SSD is idle and not being used as a way to ensure performance consistency.
It doesn't always work however... But when it does, it means that potentially you need one less erase operation when doing writes.

So yes the Samsung 980 Pro is faster than the Playstation 5 SSD, the PC has compression technology as well, it's just not baked into hardware.

Hopefully this has cleared some things up.

Pemalite said: mutantsushi said: This format already is adopted on PC, even if speeds equal to Sony's spec are fairly high end and not exactly common or cheap. Sony already announced that off the shelf PC SSD that meet PS5 speed specification will work, so no need to "adopt" anything new. PS5 actually has some advanced I/O that isn't quite standard on PC, but also can use PC standard SSD if it's crudely fast enough. If Sony's advanced I/O standard gets popularized on PC that should help prices drop faster since it doesn't need as high of crude speed. Samsung has new SSD's on the market that are faster than the Playstation 5

Absolutely, and we know Sony's required specification for expansion storage* will literally require faster "generic" speed than it's internal hardware, "brute force" making up for the more advanced I/O architecture Sony is using internally (with more degrees of prioritization etc). If 3rd parties (or Sony) release M.2 card with that advanced I/O architecture (or compatible equivalent) then presumably you would only need to exactly match the internal SSD speed.

I just figured if somebody was unaware that high speed M.2 NVME is already on the market and adopted as standard PC format, going into the nitty gritty probably isn't that relevant just to correct their broader awareness, and if they do want to buy expansion storage all they need to worry about is matching the spec Sony will announce, which seem to already be satisfied by off the shelf PC market. (although Sony hasn't yet released the exact speed requirement AFAIK, I expect them to do so by launch date)

* To be clear to anybody else reading this, this high speed specification is only needed to immediately play PS5 games from that volume. Any other storage, even slow hard disk drives, can still be attached to PS5 but nextgen games stored on them would need to be copied to the faster internal SSD (or qualifying expansion SSD) before it can be played since PS5 devs will assume their game can use that ultra fast storage. I believe any lastgen PS4 games would be playable off almost any attached storage, since PS4 only had a slow 2.5" hard drive. Last edited by mutantsushi - on 08 October 2020

Pemalite said: ArchangelMadzz said: PS5 Doesn't have any ports faster than 10gbps so you'd have to still open the side panel and get some kind of M.2 extender which at that point just slide the thing off and put one in xD  I mean, the Playstation 5's hardware is done and dusted at this point. My point was there are plenty of ways Sony could have approached this issue. 10Gbps is 1.25GB/s. Definitely not enough bandwidth for a 5.5GB/s SSD... You would need 40Gbps or more... And only External PCI-E and technologies that piggy-back off PCI-E like Thunderbolt can manage that.

Thunderbolt would've been sick. For many other reasons than PCIe expansion, as 40Gbps might not cut it as you said.

I guess I and others don't see sliding off a panel and putting in 1 screw as a big deal, similar to the PS4 method of sliding off the top left plastic cover and undoing one screw. I like MS's method, only issue is that it's a more expensive option than buying third party hardware.