Velocity 2X Dev Explains Advantages of PS4’s GDDR5 Unified Memory, Alleviates ‘Bottlenecks’

Technical director Hussain Sheikh speaks about developing on the PS4.

Posted By | On 21st, Feb. 2014

Velocity 2X

For FuturLab technical director Hussain Sheikh, working on the upcoming PS4/Vita exclusive Velocity 2X isn’t a difficult task. That’s because the game, which is a follow-up to the successful top down shooter series, was specifically designed for the Vita. That being said, GamingBolt thought of getting his take on the advantages that the PS4’s unified memory provides during development.

“For Velocity 2X, we have used Vita as our lead platform. Which means that porting the game to PS4 was a trivial task in terms of game performance. We have increased visual fidelity all across the board (textures, lighting, post-processing) but we didn’t have to do anything special on PS4 to take advantage of the unified memory architecture.

“In general terms memory is the slowest component of modern hardware. Most people talk about CPU/GPU speed, but what they forget is that transfer rate of data is generally the biggest culprit for causing frame drops. If the computation units are starved of data or have to wait for output to be written back into memory, that becomes a major bottleneck,” he said to GamingBolt.

But that’s not the case with the PS4. “Having a unified high speed memory architecture alleviates this bottleneck where the data doesn’t need to be constantly transferred between CPU and GPU, but can be accessed by both. It also means that developers no longer need to worry about running out of the memory pool between CPU and GPU or waste effort on memory load balance. It just makes things so much simpler.”

FuturLab is only one of many developers who have praised the PS4’s new unified architecture. What could it mean for future games, given that the hardware is that much easier to take advantage? We’ll find out in the coming months but in the mean time, stay tuned for more updates on Velocity 2X.


Tagged With: , , , ,

Amazing Articles You Might Want To Check Out!

Share Your Thoughts Below  (Always follow our comments policy!)



Keep On Reading!

Star Wars Outlaws: Wild Card DLC Review – Bad Beat

Star Wars Outlaws: Wild Card DLC Review – Bad Beat

The first story DLC for Massive's action-adventure arrives alongside multiple improvements, but there's still ...

Palworld X Terraria Collaboration Announced for 2025

Palworld X Terraria Collaboration Announced for 2025

Pocketpair also has "exciting news" regarding the next update for its survival crafting creature-collector, co...

Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns Sold Poorly, Kombat Pack 3 and Second Expansion Cancelled – Rumor

Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns Sold Poorly, Kombat Pack 3 and Second Expansion Cancelled – Rumor

The cancellations reportedly occurred recently, though the 2023 fighting game could still receive one or two m...

Shuhei Yoshida Departing Sony Interactive Entertainment in January 2025

Shuhei Yoshida Departing Sony Interactive Entertainment in January 2025

Currently head of Sony's independent developer initiative, Yoshida will remain in the industry, though there a...

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide on PS5 – 15 Things to Know Before Buying

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide on PS5 – 15 Things to Know Before Buying

Fatshark's co-op shooter finally arrives on PS5, complete with cross-play and many other features. Here's what...

Star Wars: Hunters Launches for PC in Early Access on January 27

Star Wars: Hunters Launches for PC in Early Access on January 27

Zynga's free-to-play hero shooter originally launched for mobile devices and Nintendo Switch earlier this year...