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Watch the talk here: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7946-console_hacking_2016 https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7946-console_hacking_2016

djsumdog 10y ago
This talk is hilarious and amazing. The PS4 hard drive plugs in over USB? The Southbridge is an ARM SoC? All the PCI devices are mapped into a single glue device? WTF?! So what's more insane, the PS4 or the hacked together manufacture kernels and binary blobs on Android phones?
- The_Sponge 10y ago
  USB HDD: a cost saving measure: they already have a usb bus, why add sata on as well? we're talking a platform that's going to last for a decade possibly... arm soc southbridge also not a surprise, xbox one has something similar. enables the console's rest mode to be "smart"
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    But in the talk he says the BlueRay player is hooked to the SATA bus. There is a SATA bus on there. I know the xBox one hard drives are removable. Are PS4s the same way? (I haven't owned either; more a PC gamer). Maybe with their device hacks, USB was easier to plug-n-play than SATA?
    - subliminalpanda 10y ago
      PS4 hdd is indeed removable/upgradable. I swapped my 500gb for a 2tb. Sony even gives out instructions on how to do it: https://support.us.playstation.com/articles/en_US/KC_Article/Upgrade-PS4-HDD https://support.us.playstation.com/articles/en_US/KC_Article...
    - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
      My WAG (all points are conjecture): 1) There's only one SATA port on the southbridge. 2) USB-SATA chips are cheaper than SATA port multiplier chips. 3) They needed a USB hub anyway for other stuff.
      - rasz_pl 10y ago
        Those Marvel SoCs are build on NAS oriented IP, they have tons of SATA ports onboard.
- bitmapbrother 10y ago
  Your Android reference doesn't even figure into this.
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    Have you worked on Linux kernels for embedded boards? I have seen shit just as crazy as he's talking about on the PS4 internals. He mentioned USB magically working; same thing happened when I worked for this company that was porting OpenWRT to this ralink/ppc board. The vendors kernel tree didn't even compile, and we spent days looking through their weird USB hacks trying to figure out how to enable power on the damn USB port (we won .. until we tried to rebase against the next kernel version). Many ARM kernels from Android manufactures are so terribly put together than when they do eventually release the source, they're so full of holes they would never be accepted upstream.
- gambiting 10y ago
  Funnily enough, I'm a PS4 developer, have two devkits on my desk, and I had no idea about any of those things(they are certainly not mentioned in official documentation). It's just not relevant at all to software development how the hard drive is connected or what sort of south bridge it uses.
  - lsaferite 10y ago
    Shouldn't the performance profile of something like the HDD be of some interest to a developer?
    - gambiting 10y ago
      It is. And Sony provides us with minimum and maximum available hdd bandwidth. We have to make sure that the game works and is playable at both(the devkits have a special mode to simulate the minimum available bandwidth).

djsumdog 10y ago

This talk is hilarious and amazing. The PS4 hard drive plugs in over USB? The Southbridge is an ARM SoC? All the PCI devices are mapped into a single glue device? WTF?! So what's more insane, the PS4 or the hacked together manufacture kernels and binary blobs on Android phones?

The_Sponge 10y ago
USB HDD: a cost saving measure: they already have a usb bus, why add sata on as well? we're talking a platform that's going to last for a decade possibly... arm soc southbridge also not a surprise, xbox one has something similar. enables the console's rest mode to be "smart"
- djsumdog 10y ago
  But in the talk he says the BlueRay player is hooked to the SATA bus. There is a SATA bus on there. I know the xBox one hard drives are removable. Are PS4s the same way? (I haven't owned either; more a PC gamer). Maybe with their device hacks, USB was easier to plug-n-play than SATA?
  - subliminalpanda 10y ago
    PS4 hdd is indeed removable/upgradable. I swapped my 500gb for a 2tb. Sony even gives out instructions on how to do it: https://support.us.playstation.com/articles/en_US/KC_Article/Upgrade-PS4-HDD https://support.us.playstation.com/articles/en_US/KC_Article...
  - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
    My WAG (all points are conjecture): 1) There's only one SATA port on the southbridge. 2) USB-SATA chips are cheaper than SATA port multiplier chips. 3) They needed a USB hub anyway for other stuff.
    - rasz_pl 10y ago
      Those Marvel SoCs are build on NAS oriented IP, they have tons of SATA ports onboard.
bitmapbrother 10y ago
Your Android reference doesn't even figure into this.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  Have you worked on Linux kernels for embedded boards? I have seen shit just as crazy as he's talking about on the PS4 internals. He mentioned USB magically working; same thing happened when I worked for this company that was porting OpenWRT to this ralink/ppc board. The vendors kernel tree didn't even compile, and we spent days looking through their weird USB hacks trying to figure out how to enable power on the damn USB port (we won .. until we tried to rebase against the next kernel version). Many ARM kernels from Android manufactures are so terribly put together than when they do eventually release the source, they're so full of holes they would never be accepted upstream.
gambiting 10y ago
Funnily enough, I'm a PS4 developer, have two devkits on my desk, and I had no idea about any of those things(they are certainly not mentioned in official documentation). It's just not relevant at all to software development how the hard drive is connected or what sort of south bridge it uses.
- lsaferite 10y ago
  Shouldn't the performance profile of something like the HDD be of some interest to a developer?
  - gambiting 10y ago
    It is. And Sony provides us with minimum and maximum available hdd bandwidth. We have to make sure that the game works and is playable at both(the devkits have a special mode to simulate the minimum available bandwidth).