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- GTP_Orido
Why would FreeBDS based OS on the PS4 needs more than 3GB of RAM ? Seems to be overkill ..
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It is based on FreeBSD. I think if they do decide to do that, gives them option for more headroom for new features for OS. Also with their competitor having similar amount of ram, it won't really affect games out near launch and gives them more time to develop PS4 OS so when they do know how much they really need, they can start freeing it up for developers to use. Also developers are probably getting more ram than they were intially expecting already so good place to start.
Wouldn't be the first time that information such as these aren't exactly reliable. After all, things haven't been finalized for all that long, have they?
As iMikeTheKing said, it's not just the OS itself. It's the social apps being processed in the background, video recording, life sharing stuff and whatever else. It's way overblown for a simple OS (it's alsmost twice as much as my Windows 7, actually), but if you consider all the stuff that's running in the background, it's fairly reasonable.
I completely forgot about the better GPU
Anyway, having two more cores available would've only made the difference bigger 
, hopefully game developer will have freedom to utilize the RAM as they see fit, maybe if the game do not use such social media features or video sharing, they can allocate more RAM to the game instead of OS, free up another 1GB or more in the process. Sony won't lock the OS RAM for sure, unlike Xbox which have the preallocated RAM locked to the OS.
Not specifing the amount of RAM allocated to the OS could be risky, though. Let's say that a developer uses all the RAM available - and you then hit the Share button. What'll happen? Will the game start to stutter? Will it reduce the draw distance? Turn off the AI? Sony might optimize the AI throughout the console's life cycle, but both consoles will have to make sure their additional features are being considered by game developers alike.I see
Let's hope so. Thing is, ever since touch devices have become a thing, I feel that developers tend to implement features just because they're there, not because they'd be beneficial to the game. That's not Sony's fault, of course. We'll see how it pans out eventually.Surely Sony will determine minimum RAM used for OS basic functions, I think devs can disable certain functions like share buttons - it might do certain function on a game that uses it, and do nothing when another game dev decided that they don't need to use such feature. So, when a dev do not need some of the extra OS functions, at least they are given the access to allocate the unused RAM for the game instead waiting to be used or being reserved by OS. This is the cool thing about unified memory
There will always be games that do not use either Move, the camera, the share function or social media connect features, or all of them.
They could make one now for any electronics device, but they need console to work for more than a few seconds and not everyone will be moving to Antarctica anytime soon so it works passively. Projected technology process nodes 10 years time is not enough to go passive so I would think a breakthrough would be needed to achieve it. Only other passive approach would be to make the console huge in size and increase costs by a large amount and reduce reliability at same time which doesn't make sense over using a cheap fan.
Most importantly, why would anyone want passive cooling? Sure, it's quite and stuff, and saves a bit of energy... But I don't see a big reason to do it. Passive heat dissipation is kinda inefficient and designing something new that works well enough would surely cost more in terms of R'n'D than sticking to fans for cooling. So, I really fail to see the point
Yes for things like GameStick. PS4 Slim will be in the pipeline very soon because they are going to use fans. If they were looking to make slim console with passive solution, potentially PS6 will be talked about when technology will be made for it to be viable unless a big breakthrough is made.
So, the point is that, if there's some sort of breakthrough in passive cooling technology, however improbable that is, the PS4 Slim might end up with it. Sure, I'd never argue against a scenario that includes such breakthroughs. As you said, though, it's highly improbable and, for the time being, an entirely impracticle solution for the PS4's cooling. And therefore, a moot point to discuss, as the technology that would be required (better passive cooling and/or drastically lower power consumption and heat generation) isn't even conceived yet.
Well Kepler is coming to mobile. My point is some high power consuming chip being able to cut its power consumption by around 95% to be viable for a passive solution in such a short period of time which big breakthroughs would be needed is the idea you are passing on as possibly being looked at by Sony for the PS4 Slim. You may think that is possible or there is some amazing passive cooling technology out now that will be able to achieve it but I haven't seen it yet. Otherwise you would see more devices that take even a small fraction of the power of PS4 use it now.
Reasarch & Develppment
dice1998
It won't be wise to R&D something that won't be relevant in over potentially two decades later.
CPU wise Wii U is below current generation consoles but anyway, it is around half the power consumption of current PS3 Super slim. The Wii U uses active cooling system, and the process node required will be potentially 10 years from now to be able to reach a similar power consumption. So why do you think R&D will look at something in PS4 slim that might be released even early as next year be thinking about a cooling system that in 10 years time won't be viable, a complete passive system?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-wii-u-is-the-green-console
The Wii U CPU is a 45nm custom-i'll just copypasta from IGN:
dice1998
It is worse in performance, it has got a better GPU and more RAM though.
Thanks for proving my point.
You have to remember I'm talking about PS4 reaching the same power consumption as Wii U is currently.
Yes, either that or a lighter PS4 if they don't to make it any smaller and just use a cheaper cooling system.
Not once did I say complete passive system. Hell, the original statement I made was as such:
passive. heatsink. assembly.
That's a literal google of the words "Passive" "Heatsink" and "Assembly"
But I digress. Why would an R&D Department even bother researching a concept that's being used today? You're absolutely right.
dice1998
Still, why more than 3GB ?
