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How Oodle Kraken and Oodle Texture supercharge the IO system of the Sony PS5

Caio

Member
PS5 IO System to Be ‘Supercharged’ by Oodle Texture, Bandwidth Goes Up to 17.38GB/s

""
it looks like the partnership with Oodle will allow the PS5 to go much further when it comes to bandwidth peaks with compressed data. We already knew that the PlayStation 5 would support the Kraken hardware decoder, but the folks at Oodle have now unveiled that Sony also licensed Oodle Texture technology, which is optimized for compressing GPU textures.

Oodle Texture is a software library that game developers use at content creation time to compile their source art into GPU-ready BC1-7 formats. All games use GPU texture encoders, but previous encoders did not optimize the compiled textures for compression like Oodle Texture does. Not all games at launch of PS5 will be using Oodle Texture as it's a very new technology, but we expect it to be in the majority of PS5 games in the future. Because of this we expect the average compression ratio and therefore the effective IO speed to be even better than previously estimated.
Kraken is a powerful generic compressor that can find good compression on data with repeated patterns or structure. Some types of data are scrambled in such a way that the compressability is hard for Kraken to find unless that data is prepared in the right way to put it in a usable form. An important case of this for games is in GPU textures.
https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/kraken-4-mod800HD.jpg
""According to Oodle, the previous 8-9GB/s IO bandwidth figure was provided by Sony by multiplying the 5.5GB/s peak bandwidth of the PS5 SSD for the standard compression ratio of 1.45/1 or 1.64/1. However, when factoring in both Oodle Kraken and Oodle Texture, the developers of the technology have seen an impressive compression ratio of 3.16/1 for a texture set in a recent game; this would translate into an IO bandwidth peak of 17.38GB/s, as mentioned in the headline. ""


It's an interesting reading, so let's try all to keep it civil :D
 
I'm guessing they have some freon encased around the SSD, to negate the laws of physics. They must have the best cooling solution on earth to sustain those speeds, as they will require more wattage, which produces more heat, which slows down even the fastest SSD's with large heatsinks, which might not even fit in the ps5 to begin with. I'm really curious if Sony will address this in a teardown soon?
 
It'll be interesting to see how this all comes together over the generation and if they end up doing a hardware refresh to address any issue with ssd heat if that becomes a problem.
 

John Wick

Member
Doesn't matter, none of that is sustained speed and they're advertising peak speeds just like snake oil vendors of SSD's do.

You know the Firecuda 520? Arguably one of the best drives on the market at $250. Well its advertised speeds are up to 5,000/4,400 MB/s.

Guess what its sustained speeds are? PCI-E gen 3 @ 1.7 GB/s, PCI-E gen 4 @ 2.1 GB/s. Sony is bullshitting everyone with peaks and not mentioning a word of their sustained speeds.
This article is from RadTools employee and not Sony you tool.
Do you know why the Sony SSD is so fast? Why Sony prioritised IO to remove the bottlenecks of the whole system?
It's because the SSD can load 2GB of data in 0.27 seconds.
 
I'm guessing they have some freon encased around the SSD, to negate the laws of physics. They must have the best cooling solution on earth to sustain those speeds, as they will require more wattage, which produces more heat, which slows down even the fastest SSD's with large heatsinks, which might not even fit in the ps5 to begin with. I'm really curious if Sony will address this in a teardown soon?

They actually use slower chips but have 12 of them behind 12 lanes so it is not as hot as you think

People should watch the old presentation instead of assuming it is comparable to PC parts..
 
They actually use slower chips but have 12 of them behind 12 lanes so it is not as hot as you think

People should watch the old presentation instead of assuming it is comparable to PC parts..
People should look at the market and learn to read, instead of assuming all SSD's compatible with ps5 will have 12 chips/lanes. That's why I mentioned heatsinks, and the possibility of not fitting when it comes to upgrading storage.
 
oodle poodle. show me how this enhances graphics in a video game. so far, ive not seen a single game using this shit.

ssd and io sounds like the next blast processing.
A form of it is already being used in current gen games, ps4/ps5 crossgen games, and future ps5 games when they stop making them crossgen.
 

scydrex

Member
oodle poodle. show me how this enhances graphics in a video game. so far, ive not seen a single game using this shit.

ssd and io sounds like the next blast processing.

Well it could help with pop in, LOD and data streaming but graphics? Don't think so maybe using higher res textures like UE5.
 
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Obvious bullshit.
Sony has a shitload of patents on how they do their SSD arch.
But you need to research why peak != sustained in PC SSDs first.
Heat will affect EVERY SSD, no matter console, pc, laptop, etc. To think otherwise is very foolish and naive. Then again we have no confirmation of sustained speeds on ps5, no teardown, or anything for that matter besides patents. And we know patents don't mean shit unless they are implemented and utilized in real life products.
 
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GrayFoxPL

Member
I guess they didn't want to upset religious groups.

RKJJWpd.gif
 

psorcerer

Banned
Heat will affect EVERY SSD, no matter console, pc, laptop, etc. To think otherwise is very foolish and naive. Then again we have no confirmation of sustained speeds on ps5, no teardown, or anything for that matter besides patents. And we know patents don't mean shit unless they are implemented and utilized in real life products.

Heat is mostly generated on writes.
Console SSDs will be 99.99% read.
 
oodle poodle. show me how this enhances graphics in a video game. so far, ive not seen a single game using this shit.

ssd and io sounds like the next blast processing.

Actually the biggest benefit of compression is smaller file sizes. That 825GB SSD will be thankful for that.
 
The SSD tech in the ps5 is truly next gen. the I/o is so fast will offload strain on both the cpu and gpu.
Will remove all bottlenecks allowing the cpu and gpu to reach maximum potential.
Once loading from The ssd is complete, the gpu can then offload instructions to the ssd effectively increasing the TFs on the ps5.
 
So if I did the math right (not like it's that hard xD), average lossless compression should now be 10.12 GB/s, higher than what Cerny stated beforehand (8-9 GB/s).

3.16:1 would give 17.38 GB/s for lossy compression typical range, anything above that would be in the extremes for cases in the margin.

Kinda curious tho; I had seen people on B3D talking about some of these tests months back quoting some of these figures and another figure too, but maybe that was with older Kraken tests + Lambda 40 LDO?

Either way, really good numbers here and should keep PS5 competitive in the I/O area for a pretty good while.

You're really hung up on that VRS (Variable Rate Shading).

VRS provides about 10% to 15% performance gain by lowering the quality of textures at further distance. That's right, lower quality. It's not all positive, when it comes to that feature.

It's a standard feature of RDNA2, so the PS5 most likely has it, but Sony for what ever reason didn't think it was worth mentioning, but other features were more worth mentioning like the geometry engine, which at a technical level is far more performant in making a difference.

AMD mentions it in the same sentence with Ray tracing, and yet, not too long ago, people were claiming that the PS5 did not have ray tracing hardware (since they claimed it was RDNA 1 or RDNA 1.5).

Navi2X_Master_678x452.png

There's nothing wrong with lowering the resolution of objects in the distance if you know those are not going to be the player's focal point, since it saves on processing cycles that can be better spent on objects close to the player that they are actually paying attention to.

Also while RDNA2 has the hardware for VRS-like techniques in the silicon, it's probably scaled at certain amounts depending on the chip using it. As well, "VRS" in a semantics definition, wouldn't be in use by PS5 because that is a name not in ownership from them.

If PS5 has something similar to VRS, it's probably some expansion on foveated rendering and might be handled slightly different in the graphics pipeline. I personally think it was a mistake for Sony not to elaborate on this at Road to PS5 (which is where the technical dissertation was held), but that's in the past now.

oodle poodle. show me how this enhances graphics in a video game. so far, ive not seen a single game using this shit.

ssd and io sounds like the next blast processing.

TBF Blast Processing was a real thing; the MegaDrive had DMA of the VDP to the memory and could do some insane stuff (as demoscene stuff's shown). However, it was incredibly difficult and risky to do in commercial software because the timings could not be figured out until well after the system's commercial lifespan.

PS5 SSD I/O should be more readily usable in commercial software; it's not really a "wild" thing like Blast Processing was (they're not even dealing with the same thing), and people should absolutely keep in mind that the higher compressed ranges pushing near the 22 GB/s margins are extreme outliers you'll likely only see in bursts for a minute range of game files...but still, it's solid stuff.
 
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JeloSWE

Member
This is software based compression, nothing new
It's new. Currently Kraken can't really stream BC1-7 textures efficiently as it cant find compressable patterns. With the new software texture compressor the textures are compressed in such a way that Kraken can now find the new kind of compressable pattens (invisible to the eye) in the textures for much better streaming rates.
 
Layman terms for an idiot like me?

What does this mean for games like GOW Ragnarok assuming it's PS5 only (please no cross gen please) aside from really fast load times?
 
Better textures, possibly more detailed models, less pop-in.
How do you think this will affect gameplay or gameplay dynamics?
I'm most interested in how this will elevate gameplay for next gen
I'm sure Santa Monica wants to make their game feel more movie like if that makes sense
Like an interactive movie with advanced animation, destruction, AI, etc.
I'm interested in seeing technical leaps in gameplay instead of just pretty graphics alone
Ratchet and Clank at least make an attempt at this but I feel it can be expanded upon more
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
How do you think this will affect gameplay or gameplay dynamics?
I'm most interested in how this will elevate gameplay for next gen
I'm sure Santa Monica wants to make their game feel more movie like if that makes sense
Like an interactive movie with advanced animation, destruction, AI, etc.
I'm interested in seeing technical leaps in gameplay instead of just pretty graphics alone
Ratchet and Clank at least make an attempt at this but I feel it can be expanded upon more

This is a technical low level enabler more than something you tie directly to gameplay so it is easier to see its direct effects than its indirect ones, but to put this into better perspective there are several key changes to allow for more than just better graphics and the aforementioned increased detail, lower loading times (although if you go and play a game like Deadly Premonition you will see a mechanic built around following people in their daily routine that also includes the ability to look inside their houses and see how they live indoors so to speak... the problem is that the loading times are so long that it does not incentivise this mechanic for the devs or the players), reduced pop-in, etc...

Loading times as mentioned or pure data transfer speed actually have an easier to visualise gameplay effect: traversal speed in an open world game is limited by how fast you can load neighbouring world sections to the section your character is in (lowering the detail in each section you can keep more sections in memory at once and/or load new sections faster, but the point here is not to have empty low fidelity worlds).
Fast SSD’s also help the system expand its effective available RAM / make better use of the existing RAM as less space is wasted buffering data you will need 8-15 seconds from now.

From another point of view this generation invested a great deal of R&D to migrate from mobile oriented CPU cores to full Desktop class performance cores and they are the biggest enabler to gameplay improvements building on top of the data fed to them by said SSD’s and all the I/O Processor complex these consoles have built (PS5 has dedicated a great deal of resources to this component) serves the purpose not to waste CPU performance transferring and unpacking data from the disk (which is generally a big deal).
 
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As others have said really negligible hit, I would think you can consider it free unless you compress even further with BC7Prep and need to undo this step alone on the GPU.

Is that said officially somewhere? Haven't seen it and I find it extremely hard to believe a software compression mechanism is resource free
 
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