Great video, it was very informative and I liked the theory about the OS being cached on the SSD. Back when ReRAM was still being discussed I had pondered whether they could just run the OS from ReRAM, freeing up the actual RAM for the games. It was pointed out to me that ReRAM would still be too slow, but I never thought about the possibility that a tiny bit of the OS could run in the RAM and the rest just gets dumped into the SSD.
Hmm, the OS would still have to manage network connectivity, monitor your friends, what they're playing, chat, background music... how much actual RAM would still be needed to manage that? I assume the portion being sent to the SSD would be "suspended" until it was needed so that portion couldn't run any actual functions in that state, or could it?
Anyways, I look forward to more knowledgeable people discussing this :)
Yes, exactly this. The point i am making is the OS remains resident with the Kernal thread, system calls, base UI and notifications etc but all the heavy static data can be offloaded to a SSD Cache. This could take a 3GB OS (as in PS4/X1) into a 1-1.5GB OS instead resident in ram, the core I/O design and latency system means this and many other options are reality now. I will be very interested to see the OS details as to how thye have designed it and are going to use, i suspect something fancy here.
Like I typed elsewhere, on an informed hunch that my colleague John also alluded to, it does not actually work like that. Devs have to choose.
Not sure what you are saying here, but do you mean that Developers need to Choose the speed/frequency of the CPU/GPU for their game at runtime or dynamically?
Just for clarity I am almost 100% sure that is not accurate or what you are alluding to.
Interesting take from NX gamer, but where is he getting this info that games will get 15.5gb of vram, and the OS will be cached to the SSD? I didn't get that take away from Cerny's speech. He would have gloated about it if they could do that. It sounds like more of a pipe dream.
Also, his takeaway that the SSD speed will somehow make up for raw GPU power is something else. Under no circumstances will a faster SSD let the system render more things on screen. What it can do though, is allow the system to stream in assets faster.
So, I never said that (game will get 15.5GB), I stated an example (best case/theory) what I am alluding to here is that with the speed and construction of the system this, and other options, are possible to enable the core kernal, tasks, UI to remain resident and static data to cache. So rather than 3GB of OS, it only used 1-1.5GB of OS when the game is running and then swaps back when home is pressed.
Also, please do not put words in my mouth, I never said that a fast SS replace the GPU. I said that the SSD and I/O contrsuction alongside the other benefits means that when a game is dense with objects, streaming information in the stutters, cache misses, hangs etc etc will be reduced. It will likley always be at a slightly lower resolution (as I cleary state in the video) on the PS5 but to think that all slow down, stutters and hangs are all GPU bound is niave at best or intentially distracting the narrative at worst.