This PS5 upgrade will give gamers the 'fastest data loading ever'

(Image credit: Sony)

Sony hasn't been shy at talking up the PS5's proprietary 825GB SSD and the performance enhancement gamers can expect as a result when the console launches on November 12. But surprisingly, it appears the company may have been selling its true potential short, according to one development tool maker.

Charles Flower, a data compression specialist working at RAD Game Tools, has written a lengthy blog post explaining how the company'south Oodle Kraken technology will help give the PS5 "the fastest information loading ever bachelor in a mass market consumer device." In fact, Blossom continues, "we call back it may be even better than you have previously heard."

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Nosotros're not going to sugarcoat it: the web log postal service is long and very technical. The primary betoken, still, is that the fast SSD, CPU-dependent IO stack and Kraken hardware decoder combines in a fashion that makes it greater than the sum of its parts. Kraken, Bloom writes, "acts as a multiplier for the IO speed and deejay capacity" which both ensures faster loading times and smaller install footprints.

"Sony has previously published that the SSD is capable of 5.v GB/s and expected decompressed bandwidth around 8-ix GB/s, based on measurements of average pinch ratios of games effectually ane.5 to one," Flower explains.

"While Kraken is an first-class generic compressor, information technology struggled to find usable patterns on a crucial type of content: GPU textures, which make up a big fraction of game content. Since then nosotros've made huge progress on improving the compression ratio of GPU textures, with Oodle Texture which encodes them such that subsequent Kraken pinch can find patterns it tin exploit. The result is that nosotros await the boilerplate compression ratio of games to be much amend in the future, closer to ii to 1."

But information technology doesn't stop there. "Good information compression also improves game download times, and lets you store more games on disk," Bloom explains, with the compression ratio acting equally "an constructive multiplier for download speed and deejay capacity."

The long and short of it? "A game might utilise fourscore GB uncompressed, only with ii to 1 compression it just take 40 GB on deejay, letting you store twice as many games. A smaller disk with better compression can hold more than games than a larger disk with worse compression."

Things might go meliorate over fourth dimension, as well, because the visitor'south latest Oodle Texture applied science, which promises the best pinch results, is new enough that non every launch title will benefit. But, Bloom says, the team "expect it to to be in the majority of PS5 games in the futurity."

You tin read the full explainer on Charles Bloom'due south blog, but for near consumers, the headline will be enough: the PS5 has some very clever technology that massively improves the mode data is both stored and accessed. The upshot to y'all? Your console'southward storage should go further, and long load times should be a thing of the past. Roll on November 12.

Freelance contributor Alan has been writing most tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the web and in the occasional magazine too. When not weighing upwardly the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, yous'll probably detect him tackling his ever-growing games backlog. Or, more likely, playing Spelunky for the millionth time.