the new SSD revolutionizing open-world game design may be overblown, it’s another sign of how the PS5’s design could improve the playing experience in lots of subtle ways.
The PS5’s speedy new SSD is getting a lot of attention, but it’s just one piece of the next-gen puzzle. leap to the next console generation may not be quite as dramatic as it’s been in past generations, making smaller, incremental improvements in performance, speed, and efficiency all the more important.
One less discussed aspect of what makes the SSD such an improvement over past hard drives is the efficiency of how it stores data. Speaking to Eurogamer, PlayStation lead system architect Mark Cerny broke down some of the ways that the PS5’s SSD will boost performance that players might not be as familiar with. One key factor is the difference in how SSDs and traditional hard drives organize and retrieve data. In an older hard drive, data has to be read by a mechanical head that physically moves around the disc. Because that process takes time (even if it’s only a fraction of a second), it slows down loading. To speed things up, hard drives put duplicates of data throughout the disc so that the head doesn’t have to move as far to find what it’s looking for. That results in faster loading, but also greatly increased file sizes. With an SSD, recalling data is nearly instant and doesn’t rely on mechanical means, so there’s no need to duplicate files. That means that install sizes can be significantly smaller than they would be on a hard drive like the PS4’s.
The fast data recall of the PS5’s SSD should have an even bigger effect on load times than just the milliseconds saved over using a hard drive, as well. Since pulling data from an SSD happens so quickly, there’s no need to store frequently used files in RAM, which was needed in older consoles to keep from having to making too many duplicates on data on the hard drive. Not having to clog the system’s RAM with unnecessary files frees up more memory bandwidth for the PS5, leading to even faster data retrieval and potentially higher framerates.
Better data organization on the PS5’s SSD likely doesn’t mean that PS5 games will be smaller than PS4 games, because the assets involved will get larger themselves, but it does mean that they’ll be much smaller than they could have been without it. Along with a sizable boost in hard drive space over the PS4, that will hopefully mean players won’t be stuck waiting for an expandable SSD solution from Sony.
Source: Eurogamer
