Sony Unlocks PlayStation 4's Previously Reserved Seventh CPU Core For Devs (hothardware.com) 143
MojoKid writes: Toward the beginning of the year, it was revealed that Microsoft was going to "unlock" the seventh core on the Xbox One's processor, enabling developers to eke just a bit more performance out of the console and offer more flexibility at resource utilization. It appears that Microsoft's move would inevitably be followed by Sony, as reports are now coming in that this will be made available on the PlayStation 4 as well. This subtle change was highlighted in the latest changelog for the FMOD sound engine which is labeled as a "LowLevel API." While the unlocked core could take on FMOD duties if developers want it to, it's now not going to be tied to any single purpose. Developers could make use of this core, for example, to boost AI performance, or any other process that has a heavy computation requirement. It could also be used to simply help ease overall system load.
Re: In usual fashion... (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately, it appears they've also unlocked the seventh troll.
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Microsoft leads in innovation and others just follow suit.
Next you Linux folks will be unlocking secret CPUs on the Raspberry Pi.
In typically Linux fashion, Raspi was unlocked first.
http://www.broadcom.com/blog/c... [broadcom.com]
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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The 8th core will let you go to a different galaxy. The 9th takes you to an ancient spaceship billions of light-years away.
Re:Achievement: 7th CPU core unlocked! (Score:4, Funny)
This is beginning to look a lot like Dante's Inferno.
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I know, the DLC in that game was just ridiculous.
From the guys who brought you the fifth razor. (Score:2)
Screw it, were going to seven cores.
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[They've] "unlock" the seventh core on the Xbox One's processor ... ...
Previously only 6 cores for both systems were available to game developers.
Next the secret 8th CPU core will be DLC, or a game easter egg, the way things are going.
Not happening -- the 8th core is dedicated exclusively for NSA use. I'd love to tell you more about it but I've just been served a National Security Le [arstechnica.com]
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Seriously, why was it ever locked?
Because they figured that at some point unlocking it would make them a profit. That's really the only reasonable explanation I can come up with.
It cost them money to write the code to lock it, and it certainly cost them performance as well. The only reason I can think of to do this is that they eventually expected to sell the rights to unlock it for some amount of money.
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No, it's because the core was previously reserved for asynchronously handling of stuff like Kinect gestures and voice commands and so forth that should be triggerable even when playing a game. But since no one gave a shit about things like Kinect, and so since Microsoft also stopped giving a shit about Kinect it's obviously decided it doesn't need to dedicate that much power to Kinect. Presumably they figured they can just handle the voice commands etc. on the same core the OS itself uses.
I don't know what
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Also, I'm not sure that the extra core will be terribly useful. I'm still seeing a
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I don't own either system, but from what I understand they both run some kind of operating system that's always running in the background and gets summoned if a user pauses the game to bring it up.
It's more than that. There are a bunch of features such as streaming (e.g. Twitch), picture-in-picture mode, and so on, which must always be available. Whether or not these are benefits or not is for others to decide, but those things are reasonably resource-intensive, so dedicating a CPU or two to them makes a certain amount of sense.
What I suspect happened is they optimised the system software to the point where these tasks can all run on one CPU.
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Because then they could have the OS hooks/hypervisor/etc. written to anticipate an entire core for it's own use. This pattern was also there in XBox 360 and PS3.
Seventh core of a seventh console? (Score:5, Funny)
I guess neither of these are that, but what if they were? Would the core have... special powers?
007 (Score:3)
Bond, James Bond. Sony owns MGM. :P
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Sony made 7 consoles?
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It would be a good idea to practice sepeku. I realize an idiot of your caliber would mess it up a few times, but don't worry, someone else will clean up the mess when you're done.
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I guess neither of these are that, but what if they were? Would the core have... special powers?
No, it would just have a stupidass attempt to refer to a book series that nobody with a life gives a fuck about. That way other Slashdot tards with no life can all fap together to it, coalescing into a great big circlejerk, each stroking the penis of the tard next to them, while pretending like the perfect stranger whose penis they are gripping is somehow their soul mate. Sort of like every single time a dumbass meme gets modded up or a movie reference gets made or a god damned XKDC comic gets linked that really has no meaningful connection to the subject "at hand". Somebody will see me mentioning the manual stroking of strange penises and see that I said "at hand" in quotes like that and say "hah I see what you did there" and another dumbass Slashdot meme will get modded up. Thus the cycle of penises repeats itself, with nary a vagina in sight.
Someone needs a hug
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Or even the slightest chance of actually being in the presence of a vagina before he dies.
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I'm sorry that popular culture touched you in your no-no spot, but the seventh-son "meme" is quite a bit older than you apparently think [encyclopedia.com].
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Do you play games or just run benchmarks?
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I just want to be able to make informed decisions. Hiding secret cores does not make that possible.
And there was silence... (Score:2)
...for about half an hour.
But intel... (Score:2)
But intel keeps telling us we only need 4 cores for games?!
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But intel keeps telling us we only need 4 cores for games?!
They're right. A quad-core intel chip beats the pants off an eight-core AMD chip... for twice the money. The maximum frame rates are only maybe 5% higher, but the minimums are almost 50% higher. If it's worth the money to you to keep your minimum frame rates up, which really can make the difference between killing and being killed in an online match mind you, then you buy the Intel chip.
To me, saving a hundred bucks (and almost another hundred on the motherboard, which was also cheaper) was more important.
Troll? (Score:2)
I can't tell if I offended the AMD shill mods or the Intel shill mods with that one...
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Why hack a PS4 to run homebrew when you can just build a comparable AMD PC?
Mmmm... (Score:2)
forbidden core.....
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System gets a higher priority than applications.
Reserve cores for consistent real-time performance.
Welcome to OS 101.
Did you make it to OS201? ;)
AI bullshit (Score:2)
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I can't give specific examples, but on episodes of the Giant Bombcast podcast from the past year or two (I'm almost caught up), they talk about the AI in various games, and it is MUCH better in some games versus others.
Strange (Score:2)
So it's like running for years with an anvil under each arm. If you drop them at last, you can run faster.
But why binding one hand on the back on purpose in the first place is beyond me.
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It makes more sense in your analogy if you are a mobile blacksmith. This is equivalent to realizing you don't need two anvils and dropping one to only run with the other. Exactly as they are doing here, instead of reserving 2 of the 8 cores they are opening one up and only reserving 1.
Re:Summary is so broken (Score:5, Informative)
No, no and no.
The PS4 and Xbox One both have "8 core" AMD CPU's.
Previously only 6 cores for both systems were available to game developers.
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The PS4 and Xbox One both have "8 core" AMD CPU's.
Previously only 6 cores for both systems were available to game developers.
I have one question about this...
WHIY?!
WHY in the HELL would these companies, that are fighting each other over which system is better, hobble their systems by disabling processor cores? Aren't the games multithreaded? Wouldn't two more cores, or approximately 25% of the processor power of the system, be useful to gamers that want better gameplay?
Re: Summary is so broken (Score:5, Informative)
They're not disabled. They were reserved exclusively for the OS. Now that's changing
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What, so suddenly the OS doesn't need them?
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Re: Summary is so broken (Score:5, Funny)
It's not the OS. The 7th core of the Xbox One was reserved for phone surveillance in partnership with the NSA. It's no longer needed [slashdot.org].
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Actually one core was originally reserved from the always-on Kinect telescreen device, that would constantly monitor the room and listen to conversations. I'd be amazed if the NSA wasn't looking for ways to tap into that, assuming it hadn't just forced MS to install a backdoor already.
The other reserved core was for DRM. It runs some OS stuff as well, but it will never be fully available to developers because it MS are going for security through obscurity by running the DRM code on a protected, reserved cor
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A CPU core is a cheap way to do it, and most games are GPU bound anyway... But the other issue is that it's not a real core either. It's an AMD "half core", a bit like Intel's Hyperthreading but with fewer shared resources. So not having it isn't like losing 1/8th of the available processing power, it's more like 1/16th or less because the DRM tends not to saturate the core at all.
They made quite a few compromises on performance this generation. Both consoles constantly record gameplay by encoding the video
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And when a game is running, isn't the OS basically sitting around doing not much at all? Why keep them reserved? On my PC I can use all of my cores when I play a game even though the OS is much more bloated than on a console.
Re: Summary is so broken (Score:3)
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I'm assuming PS4 has something similar.
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It's built into the OS for the PS4 and XBox consoles They are designed around having network connectivity built-in. Taking snapshots of game play and add it to your photo album, share it with others, stream it live, visit "the store" where you can buy and download games.
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Reserving cores means the worst case system load and the best case system load are equal. A huge amount of work has gone into making this the case. If your game runs without lag, it ALWAYS runs without lag. That's why resource reservation is used in general on real-time systems. Your question is better phrased as "why do real-time systems have different design philosophies than non-real-time systems" although when phrased that way it kind of answers itself.
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Because people don't like glitches in their games when ever a background system process needs CPU resources.
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And when a game is running, isn't the OS basically sitting around doing not much at all?
On consoles the operating system provides a lot of the features a game uses. For example the multiplayer components, audio chat, gameplay video recording, etc... So resources are reserved for the operating system to be able to handle these tasks.
On my PC I can use all of my cores when I play a game even though the OS is much more bloated than on a console.
I'm not sure what you mean by "bloated" in this context but when you're running an application on your desktop generally any operating system tasks are run as low priority backround threads and only when resources aren't needed by priority tasks. The OS also doesn't
Re: Summary is so broken (Score:1)
The PS3 had a hell of a lot of trouble over its lifespan because they allocated too little RAM and CPU power to the OS. They literally couldn't add major features they wanted to add because of it. This time around, they allocated a whole bunch of resources for potentially-unforeseen requirements for future OS upgrades - a few years in, now, they're happy to release some of them to devs because they figure they won't need them after all.
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It happened for the PS3 and the PSP (which had higher clock rates unlocked) so it's not unprecedented.
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What, so suddenly the OS doesn't need them?
Previous console generations did similar things - they are allocating a certain amount of hardware for the OS and future features.
Later, when plans change, or features are implemented more optimally than expected, the allocated resources are reviewed and released to games where possible.
Example from the PS3 is RAM (the locked cores there weren't possible to release, partly due to defects), and now Sony has concluded that they can make-do without the previously-allocated core.
So in a manner of speaking, yeah
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The gradual performance and coding understanding of the system took time for the brand and its wider coding platform developers. Now that console developers better understand the hardware limits and core use, a bit more performance can be offered.
To reserve processing power for add-on (Score:4, Informative)
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Yes, this is my question. It's stupid. Give the customer ALL the hardware. The customer OWNS the hardware.
Re:Summary is so broken (Score:4, Informative)
"Wouldn't two more cores, or approximately 25% of the processor power of the system, be useful to gamers that want better gameplay?"
Yeah but it'd also mean no free resources to support things like a common interface for inviting friends to your game, or still chatting to friends playing different games and so forth.
It'd mean no resources to just hop out of the game to check a video on YouTube if you're stuck, or resources to record your gameplay and stream it without each and every game having to support these things themselves.
Fact is modern consoles have a baseline of functionality that is common between games - friends lists, chat, recording/streaming gameplay and so on and that needs dedicated resources.
All that's happened here is that they've realised they don't need quite as many resources as they originally thought they might to support this baseline functionality.
It benefits game developers and users too - developers don't have to implement this stuff themselves, and users don't have to put up with completely different implementations between every game they're in, so it's a good thing.
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It's being able to do these things without impacting the game. the OS could share cores with the games, but when the OS has to do something non-trivial, that could affect the game, which is something the console manufacturers will fight tooth and nail against, as it's the worst thing for consumer experience - an interruption (however brief) to their game. Having the OS stuck on its own core(s) means it can go absolutely nuts on said core(s) without messing with the game.
You also have to remember that thes
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Thanks, APK. It's clearly you. Just to let you know, I've been a professional developer for 20 years, in 3 countries. At the moment I'm working for a rather large game company (which shall remain nameless due to our media policy), so please continue making stuff up to make yourself feel better...
Re:Summary is so broken (Score:4, Interesting)
Christ, whilst it looks like you're trolling because you're one of Slashdot's premier PC master race guys and displaying a certain arrogance towards the guys who designed these consoles assuming they must just be less competent for only producing a primitive OS (when the reality is they're undoubtedly smart guys, making smart choices), I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and answer.
It's got nothing to do with one being more primitive than the other. On the contrary, because consoles can do away with all the legacy and general processing cruft that PCs have to be able to cater, coupled with the fact you're looking at dedicated hardware fulfilling a specific goal if anything the opposite is true - console OS are less primitive, because they don't have to cater to decades of previous software like Windows has to. It doesn't matter though because primitive is an entirely subjective term anyway. A lightweight cutting edge OS written yesterday might be primitive because it's lightweight and it lacks features, or it might be cutting edge because it was written yesterday.
The reason is simply that the two systems are different, neither is superior to the other, both have different purposes and goals and that inevitably results in different design decisions being made.
Consoles perform a lot of background services, and whilst talk of console cost-performance ratios inevitably involves some smartass pricing up some PC components that they claim are superior for the same price the reality is that they never are as they typically exclude everything in the box from the game controllers, through to the very bespoke hardware that achieves certain types of processing more efficiently than an equivalently priced PC ever good. The Xbox One for example constantly handles background processing of gesture recognition, voice recognition, multi-user voice chat, friends list, constant recording of games with the ability to save off the last 5 minutes of that record to disk, streaming of said video across the internet, as well as background apps including things like live TV display and so on. The reality is that you cannot build for £250 a PC that can do all that whilst still pulling off 1080p, 60fps or equivalent with other areas of high graphical fidelity.
Which isn't to say that you can't pay more and build a PC that does all that and then some - that's not my point, I'm not saying one is better than the other, merely making the point that there is nothing inherently deficient about console hardware for the price. It's good at what it does, it gives you the best gaming processing for that amount of money, but certainly if you have money to spare then yes, absolutely, a PC can do you all that and then more without a doubt.
So with that out the way, to answer why they reserved cores, the answer is that it's about user experience, yes, I know that's a wishy-washy term, but bare with me. On a PC you're in charge of the system, you're in control and that means you've both in control in terms of having flexibility of what you want to do, but also have to take responsibility when you fuck things up - if you decide to farm bitcoins whilst trying to play a game and either or end up crawling to a halt and being useless then that becomes your problem, you have to make a concious choice to do one or the other, or to restrict one or the other to do both. Consoles don't give you that choice nor are they meant to, they're meant to be easy to use and for you to not have to have any hassle with that, and as such the Xbox team has to make different design choices to the Windows team - whilst the Windows team gives you full control of your system, the Xbox team needs to make sure the system can always perform it's minimum baseline without fail and that anything the developers do or don't do doesn't break that.
And this is where it comes to a head, essentially if you fuck something up that impacts performance of a game or a background task on a PC then that's your problem, but if on a console a game stutter
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"So asking about an OS architecture and its capabilities is trolling now? Well wtf is the point of asking questions here, lets all just wave our little flags like a bunch of fanbois, shall we?"
No, jumping to conclusions that a platform you prefer less must be more primitive is trolling, but you knew that.
"And how does it not have to do with the OS being primitive when it comes to multitasking when PCs have been able to do this for years and do so with ease?"
Okay I'm beginning to wonder if you're right and y
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Once again Slashdot's resident PC Repair Man oversteps his level of knowledge, makes a fool of himself, and throws a hissy shit fit.
Please just stop, it's embarassing. PC repair man is right at the bottom of the ladder, know your place and accept it when your betters explain why you're wrong.
Maybe one day you'll go from PC repair man (which is basically something even absolute amateurs typically do for themselves nowadays) to professional support guy, to system administrator, to network engineer, to archite
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They're APU's not CPU's.
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They were reserved for system use.
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So, the system doesn't need them any more? Why doesn't anybody care about the poor system?
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By software magic, it turned out that they only needed 1 core to do the magic. System still get core 8.
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So apparently there was some sort of software/firmware that restricted the hardware preventing it from utilizing everything available? Why develop for this shit in the first place?
I don't know, maybe the billions of dollars in revenue that comes along with developing AAA titles for consoles?
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Exactly. The "PC Master Race" seems to forget that piracy has really killed games on PC, at least the AAA titles. Indies are huge on PC (as they are on mobile), so that's all left.
Most AAA gave development money is heade
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That'd be fine if there were viable PC counterparts to certain console exclusives. Does PC have a flagship fighting game with terrain and platforms (like Smash Bros. or PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, not like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, which are flat plane fighters)? Does PC have a flagship kid-friendly third-person shooter (like Splatoon)?
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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GP is so far off its unreal, you hit on most the marks. An additional one is that many games simply can't be played with controllers. I mean, Dota 2 and LoL combine for ~20m unique players a month by themselves? Top-down RTS/MOBA style games are hot garbage with a controller, as are most strategy games, most simulation/city builder games, and most MMO games.
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Indies are huge on PC (as they are on mobile), so that's all left. [...] Heck, while there are a few stubbornly PC only developers, many former PC only developers branched out to consoles
So in your opinion, at what point does a PC game developer stop being "indie" and start being "stubborn"?
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Exactly. The "PC Master Race" seems to forget that piracy has really killed games on PC, at least the AAA titles.
I wouldn't say that. Platforms like Steam have curbed quite a lot of the casual piracy in PC Gaming. Most of the stuff left over is from people who were never going to pay for the game anyway. PC sales revenue has been steadily rising year over year for the past decade. Almost all AAA titles are also released on PC. There are exceptions but of all the major franchises, most come out on PC and they come out day-and-date with consoles. Also keep in mind that there are no used games for PC like there are in
Re: Devs continue to develop for these gimped thin (Score:2)
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1. It was not secret. The number of cores in the PS4 and how they are used has been known for ages
2. It was activated already, but reserved for the OS
3. The last thing a console manufacturer wants is a 12.5% difference in CPU performance among its consoles, as that means game performance would vary, providing an unreliable experience
4. Your words are evidently not mark-worthy. They seem based on your gut instincts about a concept you don't understand, infused with some bizarre cynicism