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Epic Games' Tim Sweeney explains why PS5's Optane Dimms could be a game changer

Founder and CEO of Epic Games on how PS5 tech could rival that of PC's

Donovan Erskine

May 19, 2020 9:30 AM

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One of the biggest next-gen announcements came last week during an Epic Games showcase. The company revealed Unreal Engine 5, the next iteration of their iconic gaming engine. Following the reveal of Unreal Engine 5, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney spoke at length about the next-gen technology that enabled his team to take their engine to the next level.

The Unreal Engine 5 demo is running on a PlayStation 5. The comments that Sweeney made about the PS5’s storage architecture being ahead of what’s currently on PC sparked debate about the capability of these next-gen consoles vs good old PC’s. This, of course, prompted Sweeney to respond with a series of tweets. 

Systems integration and whole-system performance. Bringing in data from high-bandwidth storage into video memory in its native format with hardware decompression is very efficient.

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) May 15, 2020

When asked why they ran the demo on a PS5 rather than a PC, Sweeny replied “Systems integration and whole-system performance. Bringing in data from high-bandwidth storage into video memory in its native format with hardware decompression is very efficient.” He goes on to praise the PS5’s I/O architecture, as it allows both hardware and software to work together to “minimize latency and maximize the bandwidth that's actually accessible by games.”

In his series of tweets on the matter, Sweeny goes as far to say that the future of PC data transfer technology will be improved, thanks to the advancements being made by next-gen consoles. He cites the number of steps cluttering the data transfer process as what’s currently holding PC’s back. This includes reading RAM in order to get compressed textures video memory, decompressing said software, and then “calling into a GPU driver to transfer and swizzle them.” Following PS5’s lead could make for much more efficiency in the technology overall.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_