Sony's New Patent for PS5 Could Eliminate Loading Screens Altogether

dgrdsv · Jun 23, 2019

melodiousmowl said:
And to top it off, the current console systems cap a lot of expected IO to the lowest common denominator, which is probably random-reads on a 2.5in HD, and somewhere like 30MB/s right now.

I assure you that it's in fact a lot less than 30 MB/s:

SSDs are in fact about 100x faster here than even the fastest HDDs and this is the main reason why even an SATA SSD provides a huge performance and system responsiveness gain.

But all SSDs whether they are SATA or NVMe are significantly below peak data rate of SATA in this test. Even Intel's Optane SSDs (which are using a completely different memory type than NAND flash) can't go higher than 400 MB/s in random read test right now which means that even they aren't hitting SATA6's 500 MB/s limit here.

spman2099 · Jun 23, 2019

OneThirtyEight said:
I don't mind them. Why are people always in such a hurry?

Because we have a set amount of time before we die. After that there are no experiences, only eternal oblivion*. So we wanna get a couple more games in before we go.

*there is a joke to be made there about how having to play a Bethesda game for eternity would be the bleakest version of life after death...

Nitpicker_Red · Jun 23, 2019

The only way to 100% eliminate any loading time is if the game is already loaded into main memory.

As in the old ROM cartridges that extended the machine's main memory.

Though nowadays whole games won't fit anymore, and "loading" also includes various processing tasks...

XDevil666 · Jun 23, 2019

They might make day 1 non loading screen games but I bet a jar of cookies by year 3 it's a thing of the past!

PS4 is a joke now with updates and it's copying system

kirbyfan407 · Jun 23, 2019

Akinsa said:
Wirth's Law pretty much makes makes eliminating loading times impossible - software becomes slower (eg. bulkier, more performance heavy) as hardware becomes faster, cancelling out any gains. That was something noted back in 1995 and is still the case today - Photoshop and other programs still take seconds to load, just as they did a decade ago despite the orders of magnitude more faster hard drives and processor speeds we have nowadays, and that will probably still be the case a decade from now.

Super-fast SSDs will probably just mean devs can load even more data then they can before, eventually to the point of necessitating the use of loading screens regardless (or loading animations, as is the case for many modern games).

Also known as Andy and Bill's law - "what Andy giveth, Bill taketh away." With Andy being former Intel CEO Andy Grove, and Bill being Bill Gates.

Thank you for this post! This was what logically came to me when I first saw that Sony was displaying PS5 hardware using a PS4 game, but I didn't really know how to articulate it quickly. The fact that there are established terms for it makes complete sense, and it's helpful to have learned them.

Thatguy · Jun 23, 2019

ghostcrew said:
That was promised on PS4 right? I feel like Killzone Shadow Fall had an approximation of that at launch?

I want it in all games, not just a couple launch titles.

Filipus · Jun 23, 2019

Flutter said:
Of course it'd be a PCIe 4.0 SSD, but there'll be some customisations. Think the iPhone SSD custom NAND controllers as reference.

One of Resetera's members actually found the patent that might be what Sony is planning to use;

PS5 - a patent dive into what might be the tech behind Sony's SSD customisations (technical!)

This will be one for people interested in some potentially more technical speculation. I posted in the next-gen speculation thread, but was encouraged to spin it off into its own thread. I did some patent diving to see if I could dig up any likely candidates for what Sony's SSD solution might...

www.resetera.com

That said, you're right it's certainly not miraculous, just that it's certainly doable to have a NVME SSD that performs better than what you can get on PC.

Great read, thanks for sharing that. It makes me wonder how they are going to avoid the issue of HDDs. Would they simply not allow people to not use them for installing games anymore? And could something like this work with an external SSD?
Because games are optimized to the lowest denominator as far as I understand.

Vincent Alexander · Jun 23, 2019

So bored of these speculation threads. Are people that eager they can't just wait and see?

Triggerhappytel · Jun 23, 2019

I remember reading that this was why Soul Reaver had no loading screens about 21 years ago.

bricewgilbert · Jun 23, 2019

So what about storage for the game sizes? Like I pretty much rely on external drives and being able to use large capacity (ie HDDs) for consoles. Are we going to fall back to no external drives again? Maybe external just for storage but you will have to move the game to SSD to run it (or it will cache it automatically?)

Psychonaut · Jun 23, 2019

But then where will Miyazaki put his storytelling?

DopeyFish · Jun 23, 2019

dgrdsv said:
I assure you that it's in fact a lot less than 30 MB/s:

SSDs are in fact about 100x faster here than even the fastest HDDs and this is the main reason why even an SATA SSD provides a huge performance and system responsiveness gain.

But all SSDs whether they are SATA or NVMe are significantly below peak data rate of SATA in this test. Even Intel's Optane SSDs (which are using a completely different memory type than NAND flash) can't go higher than 400 MB/s in random read test right now which means that even they aren't hitting SATA6's 500 MB/s limit here.

Games are typically in large chunks, not large swaths of 4 KB chunks.

Themaddestgamer · Jun 23, 2019

Generally surprised at the anger this topic caused.

Lets see it first.

dgrdsv · Jun 23, 2019

DopeyFish said:
Games are typically in large chunks, not large swaths of 4 KB chunks.

Loading yes but not streaming and loading isn't limited by even SATA6 speeds as much as data decompression and preprocessing.

otretas · Jun 23, 2019

Wasn't Metroid Prime already doing this years ago?

Deleted member 5028 · Jun 23, 2019

otretas said:
Wasn't Metroid Prime already doing this years ago?

Yep. Elevators

N.Domixis · Jun 23, 2019

Our Cerny who art in Sony, Hallowed be thy name. Thy domination come. Thy will be done on America as it is in Europe. Give us this day our daily read, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who use gamepass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Xbox.
Amen.
Lol

senj · Jun 23, 2019

Martylepiaf said:
Isn't that how most games work ?

Patents like this are usually "the way it's normally done PLUS some small twist"

But yeah the diagram appears to more or less just be BSP for asset loading

FF Seraphim · Jun 23, 2019

So I actually have to go to the menu for Dark Souls games to read stuff?

melodiousmowl · Jun 23, 2019

dgrdsv said:
I assure you that it's in fact a lot less than 30 MB/s:

SSDs are in fact about 100x faster here than even the fastest HDDs and this is the main reason why even an SATA SSD provides a huge performance and system responsiveness gain.

But all SSDs whether they are SATA or NVMe are significantly below peak data rate of SATA in this test. Even Intel's Optane SSDs (which are using a completely different memory type than NAND flash) can't go higher than 400 MB/s in random read test right now which means that even they aren't hitting SATA6's 500 MB/s limit here.

I mean, it cant be all that much less - they just have to program to knowing they are getting sub 30MB/s.

SATA3 7200RPM consumer drives top out at ~130MB/s (+/- a bunch depending on if you pay for performance and what you are doing). This is mostly me having to move data to and from these drives an awful lot and not just pulling the # out of my posterior.

2.5in 5400 rpm drives in a console will be a lot worse.

Also, should link to whole articles - single synthetic benchmarks really dont paint the whole performance picture

melodiousmowl · Jun 23, 2019

Hey heres a crazy thought: if the patents for this are actually being used - what if part of the deal sony and MS made was to BOTH use this tech, so it doesnt add "yet another code path" to all the 3rd party developers?

Paches · Jun 23, 2019

halcali · Jun 23, 2019

loading screens are great as transition wipes, ala STAR WARS and THE HIDDEN FORTRESS.

Otherwise, I don't like waiting. Imagine FF7 with long loading times because the OST was orchestrated

halcali · Jun 23, 2019

Paches said:

I need to... I'll be right back--

Admiral Woofington · Jun 23, 2019

im all for it if it becomes the norm and people utilize it. But PS4 and Xbox one for that matter tried to implement early on that system where you could download/install part of a game and start playing as the rest was downloading in the background and like NO game used it. It was actually kind of funny. Most games that even semi attempted it just took you to a 'game is installing' screen.

Arthands · Jun 23, 2019

Xenex said:
What exactly did Cerny achieve in the PS5?

Cerny invent PCIe 4.0 and SSD, of course.

Deleted member 1589 · Jun 24, 2019

Filipus said:
Great read, thanks for sharing that. It makes me wonder how they are going to avoid the issue of HDDs. Would they simply not allow people to not use them for installing games anymore? And could something like this work with an external SSD?
Because games are optimized to the lowest denominator as far as I understand.

Maybe partitioning a part of the SSD for caching and vram I guess?

I also wouldn't mind if both consoles are SSD only.

Bung Hole · Jun 24, 2019

N.Domixis said:
Our Cerny who art in Sony, Hallowed be thy name. Thy domination come. Thy will be done on America as it is in Europe. Give us this day our daily read, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who use gamepass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Xbox.
Amen.
Lol

L M F A O i'm dying here

RestEerie · Jun 24, 2019

Paches said:

Is this some sort of innuendo? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

N.Domixis said:
Our Cerny who art in Sony, Hallowed be thy name. Thy domination come. Thy will be done on America as it is in Europe. Give us this day our daily read, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who use gamepass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Xbox.
Amen.
Lol

Hallelujah! Thy word had spoken! Lead us into the glory of thy Kingdom Come! Where art thou, prlaystation 5? We will seek to wait for thy impending arrival!

Hieroph · Jul 11, 2019

Akinsa said:
Wirth's Law pretty much makes makes eliminating loading times impossible - software becomes slower (eg. bulkier, more performance heavy) as hardware becomes faster, cancelling out any gains. That was something noted back in 1995 and is still the case today - Photoshop and other programs still take seconds to load, just as they did a decade ago despite the orders of magnitude more faster hard drives and processor speeds we have nowadays, and that will probably still be the case a decade from now.

Super-fast SSDs will probably just mean devs can load even more data then they can before, eventually to the point of necessitating the use of loading screens regardless (or loading animations, as is the case for many modern games).

Also known as Andy and Bill's law - "what Andy giveth, Bill taketh away." With Andy being former Intel CEO Andy Grove, and Bill being Bill Gates.

Of course eliminating load times won't be impossible, but it's likely most devs will focus on other features at the cost of having some load times.

But it also looks like the general trend for load times is to reduce them. Compared to the load times of cassette drives, or PS1 and PS2 games, it seems pretty obvious to me that we have less loading breaks now and loading times are generally shorter. And with PS5 we are looking at a new technology implementation with the specific goal of making access speeds faster. At some point, increasing load times doesn't give any significant benefit, while reducing and masking load times is seen as a major benefit, so it's more likely that devs will actually strive to reduce and eliminate load times when they're able.

That might mean a narrow corridor between two wide open spaces and stuff like that, but I'm pretty sure most gamers will prefer traversing that narrow corridor in-game rather than looking at a loading screen for the same time. And with new technology, implementations like that can be developed even further, so it's likely that on PS5 devs will have more opportunities to reduce load times if they choose to do so.

Bryo4321 · Jul 11, 2019

Kuro said:
PCs don't have PCIe 4.0 NVMe yet + games being built around this kind of tech. Not all games will probably completely eliminate loading next gen but you'll be surprised by how much of a difference there is going to be and how many games will be instant.

Just an update, PCs have pcie 4 nvmes now, hehehe.

Sony's New Patent for PS5 Could Eliminate Loading Screens Altogether

dgrdsv

spman2099

Nitpicker_Red

XDevil666

kirbyfan407

Thatguy

Filipus

Prophet of Regret

PS5 - a patent dive into what might be the tech behind Sony's SSD customisations (technical!)

Vincent Alexander

Triggerhappytel

bricewgilbert

Psychonaut

DopeyFish

Themaddestgamer

dgrdsv

otretas

Deleted member 5028

User requested account closure

N.Domixis

senj

FF Seraphim

melodiousmowl

melodiousmowl

Paches

halcali

halcali

Admiral Woofington

Arthands

Deleted member 1589

User requested account closure

Bung Hole

RestEerie

Hieroph

Bryo4321