It absolutely was, but thats in spite of choosing to launch it on an immature architecture with no developer tooling, not because of it. Imagine what it could have been if it wasn’t so hard to use!
We don’t even need to imagine, necessarily! The quality of games released towards the tail-end of its life cycle speaks volumes: Uncharted 2&3, The Last of Us, God of War 3, Metal Gear Solid 4 etc.
I don’t think there was anything actually wrong with the architecture per se, but rather just the lack of proper documentation and tools set potential developers back significantly.
It was definitely hubris on Sony’s part, thinking that they could do whatever they wanted given the prior success of both the PlayStation and PS2 consoles prior.
Those PS3 launch stumbles definitely were a wake-up call, however I do believe that because it was largely the US/Western arm of SCEI that lead the ‘rescue’ - they ended up wrestling control away from the JP arm, ultimately causing the PS4/5 to end up so risk adverse and largely unremarkable as a result.
Ps4 and ps5 are not pc architectures though. It has a x86/x64 cpu, yes, but that doesnt make it pc architecture. Afaik the ps4/5 does not have a bios, pch, ddr ram controller etc etc
It’s my understanding that the ps4 (and presumably the ps5) use bsd as a base operating system. BIOS or no, it’s a Unix system running on an x86_64 architecture.
Sure, but the wii’s coprocessor’s os was also unix/bsd based and that was nowhere near pc hardware.
Actually, a few embedded devices (cheap routers, cheap toys,… ) use bsd (while they should run linux hehe) and are nowhere near pc architecture :p.
What makes a pc a pc is the actual hardware layout, hardware connections internally and how it boots. Im looking deep into ps4 and i can see why people call it a pc, but its a huge misnomer.
If a ps4 is a pc, a raspberry pi( or any random sbc ) is also a pc because it has a usb or sata controller, cpu and pci bus while it has no pch/fch, no pc bios (which i can accept to not be relevant) or any of the pc hardware you cant think off ( spoiler, its a lot more ).
Hell, pc’s dont even have a southbridge anymore. We have the pch which is directly connected to the cpu over a bus that is nowhere near the old northbridge/southbridge design…
If this is the case, then we can throw out many things that actually are computers as well, including anything that isn’t strictly a desktop matching very specific parameters - systems like Fugaku (arm with a hybrid os) or Frontier don’t count because of their slingshot network etc etc.
It just feels like a slippery slope to start discounting things like this.
Fugaku is not a pc. Its a computer, but not a pc. Its a supercomputer :)
Its a slippery slope, yes, but its one that separates a personal computer from any other device that just happens to compute something.
I get the point though, what makes the arm ampere system a pc and the phone in your hand not? It both has a arm cpu and hardware connections after all :)
Same arguments count towards the playstation or other consoles
I can say for sure that frontier is a bunch of computers with all the typical components - just highly customized hardware. The whole point of a Beowulf cluster design was that you got away from circuit interconnects and relied on commodity hardware that any vendor could provide. Making the “personal” distinction based on what I pointed out shouldn’t be disqualifying factors and shouldn’t factor into this discussion. Even a bunch of early ps3s could do this, fitting the exact purpose of a Beowulf cluster design.
We might as well discount anything that has (U)EFI as well since bios can’t fully bootstrap a system and must rely on it to finish initialization. I just think this is shifting the goalposts to fit a personal narrative. I won’t be pedantic and pull articles defining what a personal computer is, but based on a lot of the literature out there says, a ps4 does seem fit the bill.
My original point was that the ps4 has a regular operating system that relies on “regular” components in order to operate, though I’d also point out that my ps3 example created a compute cluster as well.
Every modern bootable device has a BIOS, as they are required for hardware initialisation before handover to an OS - which for the PS4 is called Orbis OS, and is based off FreeBSD 9. Which is a UNIX OS for desktop PCs.
While the PS4 does have a unified memory interface, which is very rare for common desktop PCs - they do exist, such as every single Apple Silicon Mac.
The PS4 and PS5 are just a very heavily locked down PCs, featuring AMD APUs not too dissimilar to what can be found in Ryzen notebooks, Steam Deck or ROG Ally, running proprietary operating systems with heavy encryption to try and prevent 1:1 emulation (think Hackintosh).
Youre thinking of bootrom. Embedded devices use bootroms because they dont need the flexability of a bios.
It means that on power on, the cpu is powered on and its bootrom starts running code thats burned inside the cpu.
This is different from a bios, that is code separate from the cpu and tells the cpu what to execute and where in memory it is.
The os has nothing to do with bios too.
Bios has to do with how the system powers up and starts the cpu, not the os and related stuff.
Note the part regarding enabling a computer to start the OS. But regardless, this point is largely moot as we are just arguing semantics.
No the PS4 doesn’t run a PC-style AMI/Phoenix BIOS, but instead a secure chain of Boot ROM to bootloaders - however, so do Macs, which are PCs.
Dumps of these console boot ROMs and loaders - at least in emulation circles - tend to be colloquially referred to as a BIOS, as it constitutes a System that handles Basic Input and Output.
It even putting this one point aside, it runs an AMD-designed x86-64 APU, that was available to purchase for PCs (AM1 socket) albeit with a reduced power GPU.
It runs GDDR5 unified memory like a modern iMac, or Steam Deck.
It natively runs a UNIX-derived OS, again like an iMac, or Linux on the Steam Deck.
Let’s just face facts, the PS4 & 5 are just iMacs in drag 😉
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Again? Didn’t they learn with the PS3?
The PS3 was the last ‘great’ console from Sony before their wholesale switch to PC architecture with a custom software layer.
I choose to die on this hill. 😅
It absolutely was, but thats in spite of choosing to launch it on an immature architecture with no developer tooling, not because of it. Imagine what it could have been if it wasn’t so hard to use!
We don’t even need to imagine, necessarily! The quality of games released towards the tail-end of its life cycle speaks volumes: Uncharted 2&3, The Last of Us, God of War 3, Metal Gear Solid 4 etc.
I don’t think there was anything actually wrong with the architecture per se, but rather just the lack of proper documentation and tools set potential developers back significantly.
It was definitely hubris on Sony’s part, thinking that they could do whatever they wanted given the prior success of both the PlayStation and PS2 consoles prior.
Those PS3 launch stumbles definitely were a wake-up call, however I do believe that because it was largely the US/Western arm of SCEI that lead the ‘rescue’ - they ended up wrestling control away from the JP arm, ultimately causing the PS4/5 to end up so risk adverse and largely unremarkable as a result.
Ps4 and ps5 are not pc architectures though. It has a x86/x64 cpu, yes, but that doesnt make it pc architecture. Afaik the ps4/5 does not have a bios, pch, ddr ram controller etc etc
It’s my understanding that the ps4 (and presumably the ps5) use bsd as a base operating system. BIOS or no, it’s a Unix system running on an x86_64 architecture.
Sure, but the wii’s coprocessor’s os was also unix/bsd based and that was nowhere near pc hardware. Actually, a few embedded devices (cheap routers, cheap toys,… ) use bsd (while they should run linux hehe) and are nowhere near pc architecture :p.
What makes a pc a pc is the actual hardware layout, hardware connections internally and how it boots. Im looking deep into ps4 and i can see why people call it a pc, but its a huge misnomer. If a ps4 is a pc, a raspberry pi( or any random sbc ) is also a pc because it has a usb or sata controller, cpu and pci bus while it has no pch/fch, no pc bios (which i can accept to not be relevant) or any of the pc hardware you cant think off ( spoiler, its a lot more ).
Hell, pc’s dont even have a southbridge anymore. We have the pch which is directly connected to the cpu over a bus that is nowhere near the old northbridge/southbridge design…
If this is the case, then we can throw out many things that actually are computers as well, including anything that isn’t strictly a desktop matching very specific parameters - systems like Fugaku (arm with a hybrid os) or Frontier don’t count because of their slingshot network etc etc.
It just feels like a slippery slope to start discounting things like this.
Fugaku is not a pc. Its a computer, but not a pc. Its a supercomputer :)
Its a slippery slope, yes, but its one that separates a personal computer from any other device that just happens to compute something.
I get the point though, what makes the arm ampere system a pc and the phone in your hand not? It both has a arm cpu and hardware connections after all :)
Same arguments count towards the playstation or other consoles
I can say for sure that frontier is a bunch of computers with all the typical components - just highly customized hardware. The whole point of a Beowulf cluster design was that you got away from circuit interconnects and relied on commodity hardware that any vendor could provide. Making the “personal” distinction based on what I pointed out shouldn’t be disqualifying factors and shouldn’t factor into this discussion. Even a bunch of early ps3s could do this, fitting the exact purpose of a Beowulf cluster design.
We might as well discount anything that has (U)EFI as well since bios can’t fully bootstrap a system and must rely on it to finish initialization. I just think this is shifting the goalposts to fit a personal narrative. I won’t be pedantic and pull articles defining what a personal computer is, but based on a lot of the literature out there says, a ps4 does seem fit the bill.
My original point was that the ps4 has a regular operating system that relies on “regular” components in order to operate, though I’d also point out that my ps3 example created a compute cluster as well.
Every modern bootable device has a BIOS, as they are required for hardware initialisation before handover to an OS - which for the PS4 is called Orbis OS, and is based off FreeBSD 9. Which is a UNIX OS for desktop PCs.
While the PS4 does have a unified memory interface, which is very rare for common desktop PCs - they do exist, such as every single Apple Silicon Mac.
The PS4 and PS5 are just a very heavily locked down PCs, featuring AMD APUs not too dissimilar to what can be found in Ryzen notebooks, Steam Deck or ROG Ally, running proprietary operating systems with heavy encryption to try and prevent 1:1 emulation (think Hackintosh).
Youre thinking of bootrom. Embedded devices use bootroms because they dont need the flexability of a bios. It means that on power on, the cpu is powered on and its bootrom starts running code thats burned inside the cpu.
This is different from a bios, that is code separate from the cpu and tells the cpu what to execute and where in memory it is.
The os has nothing to do with bios too. Bios has to do with how the system powers up and starts the cpu, not the os and related stuff.
Literal dictionary definition of a BIOS:
Note the part regarding enabling a computer to start the OS. But regardless, this point is largely moot as we are just arguing semantics.
No the PS4 doesn’t run a PC-style AMI/Phoenix BIOS, but instead a secure chain of Boot ROM to bootloaders - however, so do Macs, which are PCs.
Dumps of these console boot ROMs and loaders - at least in emulation circles - tend to be colloquially referred to as a BIOS, as it constitutes a System that handles Basic Input and Output.
It even putting this one point aside, it runs an AMD-designed x86-64 APU, that was available to purchase for PCs (AM1 socket) albeit with a reduced power GPU.
It runs GDDR5 unified memory like a modern iMac, or Steam Deck.
It natively runs a UNIX-derived OS, again like an iMac, or Linux on the Steam Deck.
Let’s just face facts, the PS4 & 5 are just iMacs in drag 😉
The PS3 was revolutionary just difficult to shift to programming.
That said a industry in saturated to declining stages of life should probably not make their product less accessible to those giving it value.
Everyone still tried to make it work on PS3, I cant imagine that drive will be there for the ps6 era.