Former Frostbite Software Engineer Explains PS5’s Kraken Compression Unit

Yan Chernikov talks about the benefits of PS5’s hardware decompression.

[crazyCoconuts]

Here's your daily dose of GamingBolt wisdom, as our developer "explains" : "because what we’re talking about here, as far as I can understand, is custom hardware"
Thank you Einstein.

[Thatgrammar]

@crazyCoconts
Gamingbolt is now just taking content from outside sources. This ex EA developer made a 3 part youtube reaction/breakdown video to the ps5 talk that Cerny gave a few months ago. He was just reacting to the video in real time and Gamingbolt seems to have just taken his words from that video and pieced them together to write an article about it. This is the laziest article from Gamingbolt that I have seen. This ex dev. doesn’t have a dev. kit. He was just reacting to the Cerny PS5 video in the moment. You should watch his videos if you are interested to hear what he actually has to say about the PS5 talk Cerny gave. He is actually very knowledgable and this quote is taken out of context. The context being him just reacting to what he is watching in a video. His channel is “The Cherno” if you want to check out the 3 part video reaction/break down.

[sampsonon]

"Gamingbolt is now just taking content from outside sources." everyone takes from outside sources. That's how most journalism works.

[OB1Biker]

I agree with what you said but 'the laziest article from Gamingbolt that I have seen'.. 🤦‍♂️ good for you!
I've seen hundreds without even trying

[crazyCoconuts]

Oh well. I always mark these kinds of articles as lame, the article seems to still get approved and here we are making it a hot topic. Maybe I'm a weirdo for disliking these articles and I should just shut up.

[Babadook7]

“This is the kind of advancement that I guess consoles can have that PCs might not generally be able to achieve, because what we’re talking about here, as far as I can understand, is custom hardware,” Chernikov said. “It is literally doing decompression in hardware, it’s not doing it on the CPU or the GPU. There is literally a unit responsible for decompression of this Kraken format, which is like zlib, but a bit better."

[StormSnooper]

But this was actually informative if you read the rest of the article. Also the guy is not gamingbolyt’s developer.

[crazyCoconuts]

I read the whole article. For starters, did he "explain the PS5's Kraken compression unit"?
All I got from him was that he thinks there's some hardware that does this and PCs don't have that.

[rainslacker]

The dev didn't really explain the "compression unit". The "compression unit" also isn't a "unit", but rather a custom chip, or processes within a chip, that has the software algorithm used to decompress the Kraken compressed file much faster than can be achieved through doing it through a software routine. It could be a processor, or it could just be added to the API SOC. Not sure myself, but the dev didn't even explain it, where as I kind of did....and did so based on what little Sony has said about it so far.

Such things aren't really new, but they aren't typical on PC, except maybe on some hardware level where a singular device may use it internally on the device to do much of the same thing.

[angh]

@rainslacker, developer explained it all, but you need to go to his video on yt.

[Games1st]

Thats the most basic thing the dev said, the rest of the video has more depth.

[dazsarge]

Alright now bring on the games

[ASSASSYN]

The SAD truth about this UE5 demo is that is was ONLY running at 30 fps with no AI or anything.
So basically the engine had all the processing power of the PS5 dev kit available to load the LOD0 and the 2k textures then create less detailed versions on the fly in a real game, the CPU has many other things to do especially if you want to play at 60fps or more.

Also since many current gaming computer have 32GB of ram like mine, all the LOD0 and 4k textures for the level you're going to play could be loaded in memory during initial loading for access to the GPU and CPU, the PS5 SSD is still so much slower than DDR4 memory.

And the LOD in view and out of view is culling. It was shown the XSX does it also and better than a 2080ti.
Source: https://youtu.be/qvZeONRhH9... @6:13

[ElementX]

32GB is pointless.

In some cases you might get 6fps more, but that's hardly worth it. Look at the charts where they compare amount of RAM. https://www.techspot.com/ar...

"None of the games I tested used close to 16GB, let alone 32" https://www.tomshardware.co...

"The question gets a bit tougher as you go even higher. Is 32GB overkill? In general, yes. The only real reason an average user would need 32GB is for future proofing. " https://www.pcgamer.com/how...

"In a dedicated gaming PC, you shouldn’t need more than 16GB – having more than you need won’t increase your fps." https://pcgamehaven.com/how...

"Adding any more memory on top of 16GB would honestly be a waste if you're just gaming. However, if you're working in a creative field like video editing, 3D model rendering, and creating other types of visual media, then 32GB or more memory would be useful." https://www.ign.com/article...

[Games1st]

Because most games aren't made for 32gb, PS5 can make games that use more ram. The Dev also talked about the PS5 co-processor that could act like ram. Pro upgrade could increase general ram to 32gb.

[Voodoopower73]

The sad truth is you never listened to the voice over from the devs in the demo.

The textures are 8k

https://youtu.be/qC5KtatMcU...

As for the demo. It's just a demo showing off the amount of textures being pushed. They chose to show this on PS5 and had to update the i/o speed of drive.

[one2thr]

On top of that, the demo didn't use any hardware acceleration.

[Hakuoro]

It's like I and other people have been saying some of the things PS5's SSD will allow are things like higher res textures as we see here, or longer draw distances. As well as other things like we have recently heard like being able to skip LOD steps.

There is a lot of discussion about terraflops but what we hear from developers over and over again is the way in which PS5's SSD will be able to improve graphics through means other than just terraflops.

The fundamental fact is that storage is the start of the chain to putting the image on the screen. Nothing can be done before the storage sends the data to the RAM, CPU and GPU.

[rainslacker]

The SSD doesn't have to be as fast as memory, because it only needs to load into memory what will be needed for the next frame, not the one that is being rendered at the moment. Sony's SSD is fast enough to load into memory what will be used in the next frame, and that speed allows the freeing up of memory, mimizing the need to have more memory since a lot of it can be freed up, and reduced the amount of LOD required to preserve memory, thus rendering LOD0 practically obsolete.

How does Xbox do culling better? Culling is either it's being drawn or it's not. There are many levels of culling, and there are many ways to achieve such an end.

There is absolutely no such thing as a 2K texture, and I wish people would stop calling them that. Textures vary in size based on how detailed they need to be, and not every object in the game requires massive textures to look good. Even games that run 1080 can use high resolution textures if they want that kind of detail. Creating less detailed textures on the fly is a thing, but not the only way such things are done, and using such a specific paradigm and applying it across the board is pointless.

And so what if the UE5 demo was only running at 30fps? that's the target they set it at, because the SAD truth is is that is what most devs are going to aim for. 60fps is not going to be a standard next gen, as devs will choose better looking over frame rate every day, because it's more tangible for the selling of the game.

[plmkoh]

LMAO I realized your weird flex there

[jukins]

@Assassyn Lol you sound like Linus pre apology

[chronoforce]

I don't think 32GB is enough as the PS5 can fill it's 16GB buffer in under a second. It means far more data is able to pass through the system. If you can load and dump memory that quickly you no longer need to store things in ram for long periods of time, you could fill 16GBs up dump it and then load an entirely different set of data meaning you could comfortably chew threw alot more than 32GB of data.

As Tim sweeney has said all the major players in the PC space will need to work together to remove the bottlenecks inherent in the way PC games run.

[Hakuoro]

Exactly.

+1

[Games1st]

Remember that pc run that at 40fps and PS5 can push more into SSD. Because it isn't just graphics and cpu. Pc games made for HDD and 16 ram.

[Zeke68]

Wow this been debunked a zillion times at least! Read it carefully: IT WAS A *VIDEO* OF THE DEMO RUNNING AT 40 FPS, *NOT* THE ACTUAL DEMO ITSELF. Simply put, it was FAKE!
Now please stop going on spreading that lie. 🙄

[Smclaren1985]

Yes yes we’ve all heard this and that over and over I think i can confidently say us PlayStation fans want some concrete actual gameplay from Sony officially ..... please sony get your finger out lol

[343_Guilty_Spark]

Interesting we have yet to hear about the Xbox SSD...literally nothing.

[Games1st]

Xbox hasn't done a technical deep dive, hopefully that happens soon.

[Hakuoro]

What are you talking about?

We know exactly what the Xbox SSD's specs are, they absolutely have gone over it both on their own and with eurogamer ect.

But it's interesting to see your change of tactics, first it was to discredit everything about SSD as soon as you found out PS5's SSD was more than twice as fast and the SX SSD. Now I guess when developer after developer keeps adding to the list of benefits the PS5's SSD will have you now want to act like there is going to be some "new information" that's going to change the well discussed advantages PS5's super fast SSD over the Xbox SSD.

The truth here is pretty basic PS5 is using PCIe 4 Xbox is using PCIe 3. There is not going to be secret sauce to change that. It's cooked into the hardware.

[glopez]

Everyone here seems to agree with each other that this website sucks. Why doesnt the N4G community band together to ban this site like y'all did to hip hop gamer? Or do I know the answer to that question already?

[ironmonkey]

Yes ps5 will be better we get it.

[Games1st]

Kraken is 10% more effective at compressing, combine that with best in class SSD, devs can reduce games even further.

[shiva1]

10% more efficient than what? And where is the source.

[ecchiless]

That zlib and the source is mark cerny, did you watch the video??

Also
http://www.radgametools.com...

[AKS]

What's the deal with all the negativity, particularly towards The Cherno? Everyone I've seen outside of this place has liked and/ or recommended his informative breakdown of Cerny's presentation. Linus just recommended his videos in his apology video he just released. That guy is unbiased and quite knowledgeable. This place seems quite toxic, even worse than it was when I stopped coming her regularly.