PS3 Developers Get More Memory
Hey, it's Christmas. Have some more memory development people.Published 20/12/2009 at 13:08 by Kovacs
Still smarting about the lack of memory on the PS3 or how it’s distributed? We have some good news for you: Sony have found some more. Though this statement might be technically true, the reality is that resources previously assigned to running the OS (Operating System), the amount of memory needed to run an actual PlayStation 3 in other words, has now been curtailed to a svelte 50MB. This figure is less than half what the PS3 originally required to operate at launch and is much closer to what the 360 needs to function (32MB).
Whooosh! Yeah, all very scientific, but what does this mean for your average PS3 game developer? Well, in essence, more memory to play around with.
If you’re asking how and where such advancements have been made, the answer lies in how Sony designed the system in the beginning. Not sure what the future entailed, the electronics giant allocated a full 120MB to the OS (which includes running the XMB amongst other things). Now that they know just how much memory they actually need, they can hand spare bytes back to the developers like digital trinkets. In fact, this latest gift is the second time a reduction in the OS footprint has been possible.
To us laymen, the document where this reduction is discussed is like staring into the Large Hadron Collider, drunk and upside down. A quagmire of Giggle FLOPS and such terms as “Element Interconnector Buses”, if you happen to be savvy with the technology behind what makes the PS3 work (or you’re suffering from insomnia and are fresh out of hot cocoa) go knock yourself out.
Our favourite slide of the bunch has to be #86 where it quite innocently asks “Any questions so far?”
Yes, lots.
Source: PlayStation University
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.
Sympozium Gro Mak | 20/12/2009 13:15
Member
1635 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2009
Complete in game music could it happen?
morbo1993 | 20/12/2009 13:19
Member
139 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
seems plausible… doesn’t it? Even though it doesn’t really affect me (having my pc and ps3 right next to each other hooked up with their own surround sound system) but a lot of people would want it… though it’s up to each developer
Sympozium Gro Mak | 20/12/2009 13:22
Member
1635 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2009
Its all about saving electricity, full power of de in game music would do great things plus saves the use of using the Go
Shlomi1995 | 20/12/2009 13:25
Member
488 TSA Points | Member since: Jun 2009
Actually I thought the function of in-game music really is up to the developers to incorporate into their products, take Burnout Paradise for example. There, you can enable XMB music to be played in-game, through in-game menus (so it’s not as simple as bringing’ up the in-game XMB and selecting tracks).
This is also true for in-game chat as far as I know (remember the big scandal involving EA working against in-game chat for PS3 because their games can’t do it, or something in that vein), and for game invites, seeing as MW2 does use in-game invites, where you just need to go to your friend’s player profile and select the “Invite” icon.
Apparently, a lot of features gamers have requested already are possible – it’s just up to developers. Only, SONY aren’t making anything mandatory for god knows what reason…
Shlomi1995 | 20/12/2009 13:19
Member
488 TSA Points | Member since: Jun 2009
Please, Lord, please!
CircleOfFire | 20/12/2009 13:49
Member
170 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
I don’t think anything will change on this front as it would be more likely to break all existing games, it’s there in the SDK for people to use as required.
Shlomi1995 | 20/12/2009 13:17
Member
488 TSA Points | Member since: Jun 2009
Very very good. The lack of memory has been a thorn in development processes, leading, I think, to longer load times and reduced frame rates in comparison to 30 versions of multiple games.
Shlomi1995 | 20/12/2009 13:18
Member
488 TSA Points | Member since: Jun 2009
Correction:
“… in comparison to 360 versions of …”
CircleOfFire | 20/12/2009 13:48
Member
170 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
There’s an almost zero chance of it doing anything to load times, with a very small potential for it making a difference to frame rates. It’s more likely to mean better quality textures if anything in games.
cheekyMcB | 20/12/2009 15:28
Member
728 TSA Points | Member since: Feb 2009
I agree with CirlcleOfFire, my reasoning is that I’ve always been under the impression the spin speed and data transfer rates from the Blu-ray drive were the main bottleneck. For whatever reason (probably because they are an established technology, I remember 1xCDROM drives!) DVD drives are faster at transferring their data.
Watchful | 21/12/2009 10:25
Team TSA: Writer
2084 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
Bandwidth (how quickly data can be moved) rather than the amount of storage space is the main restriction for both load times and frame rates. Having a little more video memory available for textures might help a bit though.
The PS3 often suffers on comparisons of multi-platform titles because the 360’s GPU has on-chip memory (EDRAM) that can be, and often is, used as a frame buffer which the GPU essentially has instant access to rather than having to make a relatively time-consuming access to the main system memory.
The 360’s 512MB of RAM is also a single area of RAM allowing the devs greater freedom to use it how they want whereas the PS3’s is split into two 256MB sections, System (XDR) and Video (GDDR). Both approaches have their own advantages but a key one for the 360 is flexibility which makes it easier for the devs in some respects.
techdood | 28/12/2009 23:40
Member
3 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2009
This is untrue. The biggest bottleneck in consoles thus far has always been lack of total RAM. In fact, the next consoles could use slower memory, but have 4-8GBs of RAM, and have FAR faster loading times. Console CPUs have gone far above and beyond what has been needed. Consoles need more Memory and HDD storage. Everything else should be secondary.
When a developer is limited to 256MB of RAM for game code and 256MB for graphics, it won’t matter what speed the processor is. End of Story.
cam the man | 21/12/2009 14:09
Member
2064 TSA Points | Member since: May 2009
The slow down in Shift was the worst I’ve seen in a PS3 game.
bunimomike | 20/12/2009 13:25
Member
4766 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
More than anything, it’s good to see Sony addressing existing issues/technology to streamline things as well as possible. They could easily say “sod it” and not bother with something like this.
Shlomi1995 | 20/12/2009 13:27
Member
488 TSA Points | Member since: Jun 2009
No, they couldn’t. They need to look for further hardware solutions, that’s part of them being a big, branded company many people rely on.
bunimomike | 20/12/2009 14:25
Member
4766 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
I don’t quite understand. If they have limited resources (no matter how vast that appears to be to individuals and smaller companies) they still have to allocate them accordingly. This particular situation might not’ve been high priority (hence my “sod it” comment). You never know, their time might’ve been better spent elsewhere.
I’m not up for a verbal custard-pie fight but fire away as I’m trying to work out where I went wrong.
illogicology | 20/12/2009 13:59
Member
856 TSA Points | Member since: Sep 2009
An extra 70 megs isn’t a lot but it certainly can’t hurt. I mean, even if it just means the developers spend a little less time fighting with the memory to accommodate the same quality textures it will free up a little time and money for other things.
Watchful | 21/12/2009 10:33
Team TSA: Writer
2084 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
Not a lot?! Memory available to the devs has gone up from 392MB to 462MB. That’s an almost 18% (actually 17.86%) increase. That’s a big increase for a developer.
gazzagb | 20/12/2009 14:18
Master of speling mitakse
2760 TSA Points | Member since: Feb 2009
Wont this mean that the xmb will take longer to load? I find that the friends list and my messages take a while to open.
Slides 11,12,13 are quite interesting, but why is it focused on Russia? O_o
mcduff1979 | 20/12/2009 14:42
Member
245 TSA Points | Member since: Jun 2009
this could be very very good for developers
will look forward and see what happens
teflon | 20/12/2009 14:48
Member
1992 TSA Points | Member since: May 2009
The important thing to remember is tha this is from one of two types of RAM.. it’s either system ram or the video ram, or a combination of the two. It’s not going to free up that much room in the video side of things, but it’ll quite likely make a decent difference on he system side of the RAM, giving devs more room to play with for audio, AI, etc. etc.
But they’ve been messing about with tucking stuff away in the other RAM for ages now, and for those games that use the Cells to do post processing really heavily, this should be quite a boon for them.
teflon | 20/12/2009 15:05
Member
1992 TSA Points | Member since: May 2009
Going to the PSUniveristy link, it gives you details of what’s happened.
When Sony chopped it to 96MB before, it was 64MB system, 32MB video. Now it’s 43MB system and 7MB video. So yes, this should give more space for textures and stuff, but since the Cell does a lot of the post processing in the best looking games, the extra 20MB should hopefully go some way to help out there.
It’ll be interesting to see what dev’s can make of this, but it’s also a decent indication that Sony have got the next XMB updates and it’s final incarnations in sight. When Sony unveils it’s PSN subscription with the next major XMB update is when this will really come into play.
skibadee | 20/12/2009 16:53
Member
3899 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2009
its good news then lets see how it helps in the future.
iNsAnE_gAmInG | 20/12/2009 18:13
* Banned *
-1930 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
Correct me if I am wrong (please do!), but doesn’t this mean that cross-game chat should now be easier to implement with a less strict memory limit on offer?
Deathbrin | 20/12/2009 18:40
Member
944 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2009
Exactly what i’ve thought.
Aitrus | 20/12/2009 18:16
Member
1488 TSA Points | Member since: Sep 2008
Just imagine how Uncharted 3 will look when ND have even more memory to work with!
DRCD1 | 20/12/2009 20:36
Member
905 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
It will look like a 3d movie… It will probably be released in 2 years, so we (sadly) still have to wait a lot…
Deathbrin | 20/12/2009 18:38
Member
944 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2009
Not sure it’s a good thing tbh. I remember when i had too much BioShock saves (the game goes to the xmb for save/load needs), i couldn’t save or load because instead of showing up the list, the xmb just froze over. After manually deleting some saves from the savegame management thingy, the xmb however was able to show the list again.
So, less memory brings more limits, i guess (would voice chat operate correctly?).
iAvernus | 20/12/2009 19:49
Member
353 TSA Points | Member since: Nov 2009
Alright, another step fwd for SONY. Glad to see they are constantly working on making their console better.
Watchful | 21/12/2009 10:36
Team TSA: Writer
2084 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
I’d love to be able to get into one of these conferences. The surprise for me was to read that PS3 dev kits at 1,700 Euro are now only 500 Euro more than the PSP ones. That’s well inside new-PC kind of money. Makes you think…
sibbor | 22/12/2009 14:01
Member
95 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
“In fact, this latest gift is the second time a reduction in the OS footprint has been possible.”
Are you sure about that? I read at PS3News that with firmware 1.80 it was already down to 74 MB, and that the footprint haven’t changed since firmware 2.80… if you say two times, and PS3News is correct, that we’ve had a ~24 MB lower footprint (50 MB total) since a couple of months ago… which means this ain’t a christmas gift afterall..?
Sony have done a great job with the PS3! The firmware updates totally rock.