Sony’s PlayStation 4 hardware that was used has had a massive shift from that used in Sony’s previous console, the PlayStation 3. This is because the PS3 used a “single central processor and then six compressors” (Gregory 2014 p.364). The PS4 however uses an “eight-core Jaguar AMD CPU” (Sony 2015) and has an “AMD Radeon Graphics GPU” (Sony 2015), as shown in figure 2. The GPU and CPU have been built into one item alongside the memory controller and video decoder. The CPU uses two quad-core modules that total “x86-64 cores” (Sony 2015), plus the GPU produces a peak of “1.84 TFLOPS”. (Sony 2015) However the combined CPU and GPU does come with a draw back as it only runs at 1.6GHz as opposed to the PS3’s 3.2GHz.
PlayStation 4 Main components and Bus architecture
Figure 1: PS4 Motherboard (electronicdesign 2015)
Figure 2: CPU/GPU (techinsights 2015)
The PlayStation 4 uses Samsung GDDR5 RAM which has been split into 16, with each being sized at 512 MB bringing the total to 8GB. The GDDR5 “runs a clock frequency of 2.75 GHz with a maximum bandwidth of 176 GB/s.” (Techinsights 2015) The RAM has been placed around the CPU and GPU unit with 8 being on the front and then 8 being on the back. Therefore the size of the motherboard required is smaller and it means that being so close to the CPU the time for them to communicate to each other will be reduced.
Figure 3: PS4 Bus Architecture (Gregory 2014 p. 366)
Figure 3 shows the Bus Architecture of the PS4. Due to the PS4 using the AMD fusion, it means that there is “Garlic” Bus and “Onion” Bus. The Garlic bus is the communication between the AMD Radeon GPU and the RAM. The rate that these communicate together is 176 GiB/s. The Onion Bus is between the GPU and the Cache coherent memory controller (CCMC) which communicates at the rate of 10 GiB/s. The CPU bus between the CCMC and the CPU communicates at 20 GiB/s. The speeds that the components communicate with each other are much higher between the GPU and the RAM due to not going through the cache coherency with the CPU. The system that the PS4 uses provides users with the best balance of flexibility and performance. The “onion bus is there to deal with shared data between the CPU and the GPU whereas the “Garlic” Bus is there to handle data that is exclusive to the GPU. “The PS4 utilizes what is known as a heterogeneous system architecture (HSA)” (Gregory 2014 p. 366) this means that the time that it would take for the GPU and CPU to communicate has been reduced due to them being built in the same device.
Figure 4: PS4 HDD (Electronicdesign 2014)
Figure 4 shows the hard drive disk that is in the PlayStation 4. The standard size of the HDD is 500 GB but due to the size of some AAA games and that the PS4 makes you install the games, a 500 GB HDD won’t last particular long so it is therefore removable. The HDD runs at 5400 rpm. (Sony 2015)
Figure 5: Marvel Wi-Fi chip (TechInsights 2015)
The PlayStation 4, like the PS3, comes standard with the Marvel 88W8797-BMP2 Wi-Fi chip (techinsight 2015). This means that every console has the ability to connect to the Wi-Fi meaning that it will help maximise the user of the consoles experience has it opens them up to online gaming.
References:
Gregory, Jason, JG. 2014. Game Engine Architecture [online], Second Edition, London, CRC Press.
Techinsights, 2015, Sony PlayStation 4 Teardown, http://www.techinsights.com/sony-playstation-4/ [accessed 14-11-2015]
Sony, 2015, Product Specifications, http://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/playstation-systems/playstation-4/specifications [accessed 14-11-2015]
Electronicdesign, Wong, William, WW, 2013, Under the Hood of the Play Station 4, http://electronicdesign.com/embedded/under-hood-playstation-4 [accessed 14-11-2015]