Epic CEO Tim Sweeney Claims That Nothing on the PC Can Compare to PlayStation 5’s Storage Architecture

[Tsing]

Image: Sony



We’ve already heard a lot about how the PlayStation 5’s M.2 SSD will revolutionize gaming, but how true are Sony’s claims, really? According to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, it may be an even bigger deal than we’d been led to believe by proponents such as system architect Mark Cerny. Speaking with The Verge, Sweeney boasted that the PS5’s storage technology is so good that nothing in the current PC market can match it. In fact, it’s so impressive that the PC industry may end up looking at it for inspiration.



“It has an immense amount of GPU power, but also multi-order bandwidth increase in storage management. That’s going to be absolutely critical,” Sweeney said, alluding to the console’s ability to render a world that “might be tens of gigabytes in...

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[Grimlakin]

So what are we thinking? Multiple paths to the SSD so you can have simultaneous access requests happening? Allowing faster asset streaming for loading things like different textures at the same time as you are loading CPU tasks? Each core able to make individual simultaneous requests from the storage space?

Curious... now I want to know more about this storage architecture.

Sounds to me like they took the concept of HBA and external storage solutions with independent controls and clustered storage to a personal level.

This would require a beefier controller for the storage device... but yea I'm curious.

Though who wants to bet in reality it's something super cheesy like software controllers where each memory chip is treated as an independent drive with independent paths to access and merged together like a multi disk raid 0?

 

[Dan_D]

So what are we thinking? Multiple paths to the SSD so you can have simultaneous access requests happening? Allowing faster asset streaming for loading things like different textures at the same time as you are loading CPU tasks? Each core able to make individual simultaneous requests from the storage space?

Curious... now I want to know more about this storage architecture.

Sounds to me like they took the concept of HBA and external storage solutions with independent controls and clustered storage to a personal level.

This would require a beefier controller for the storage device... but yea I'm curious.

Though who wants to bet in reality it's something super cheesy like software controllers where each memory chip is treated as an independent drive with independent paths to access and merged together like a multi disk raid 0?

That's along the lines of what I was thinking. I thought of multipath IO pretty much immediately.

 

[Brian_B]

Hey if it works it works

 

[Grimlakin]

That's along the lines of what I was thinking. I thought of multipath IO pretty much immediately.

Yea.. "It's something the PC space has NEEEVER SEEEN" Sure... if you've never dealt with a large server or VM cluster of any sort.. then yea you're absolutely correct... otherwise.. yea.. actually. We have.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

Epic sure seems heavily invested in the PS5 area..

 

[Grimlakin]

Here is a good video. Look at the 13:30 mark.

 

[Dan_D]

Epic sure seems heavily invested in the PS5 area..

Well, Epic has always been invested heavily in the console space since Gears of War. From then on it hasn't given two ****s about PC gaming.