The PlayStation 4 will be using 3.5GB of memory for it’s operating system. A new report details how Sony is allocating its memory budget on the new console, and has been garnered from internal documents at Sony by Digital Foundry.
The internal documents suggest that nearly half of the 8GB of GDDR5 Memory will be used to support the PlayStation 4 operating system, but that 1GB will be “flexible memory” that can be reclaimed and used for developer purposes. Eurogamer cites that this flexible memory can only be reclaimed if the OS “can spare it”.
This puts the PlayStation 4 on par with the Xbox One when it comes to memory allocation. Microsoft’s console caught a lot of heat for dedicating so much memory to the OS when it was first announced. With so much memory on both platforms, its clear that both Sony and Microsoft have ambitious plans for their operating system functionality and applications that will run on the consoles.
Both Sony and Microsoft have shown some pretty impressive features on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. From streaming to the multi-tasking, games will obviously only be a part of the equation on both devices. The jury is still out on which console is going to be able to stand the test of time. But it seems like both Sony and Micrsoft are planning for the future, leaving room for fine-tuning on the platforms, potentially able to lessen the OS footprint, and possibly using more of that RAM for games as they need more power.
