What (hardware) do you think Sony uses for PS Now?

Sony bought Gaikai in 2012 to make PS Now a reality, the basic gist of it is that it allows streaming of games that are from the library of the PS3 and some of the PS2 to devices that have the appropiate app to connect to the service, TV's, smartphones and the like...

Now we all know that there is no real PS3 'Emulator' out there, My guess is that they must use some special kind of cluster of PS3's connected to servers that continually stream the video output to whatever IP they connect to.


Do you think any of them have escaped the facilities they are in? If it is a new device and not a room full of DECR's then they probably have a unique FCC ID#, they very well could be system debuggers.
If any of them ever get out I call dibs on the first one to hit this site.

 

According to Wikipedia:
To implement the service Sony created a single motherboard consisting of 8 PS3 console units into a server rack to allow the games to function, due to architectural complexity.

Citing this article as source:
By Richard Leadbetter Published 17/01/2014

Sony has developed brand new PS3 hardware to power its PlayStation Now streaming service, revealed earlier this month at CES in Las Vegas. Sources who have been briefed on the project suggest that the new PlayStation 3 consists of eight custom console units built into a single rack server. It's the new PlayStation hardware that everyone will have access to, but few will actually see.

Initially, Digital Foundry has learned that Sony experimented by placing standard retail units into datacentres, but plans to use this for the actual PlayStation Now service were shelved for a number of reasons. For starters there's the sheer space requirement, along with power efficiency issues, as even the most recent PS3 hardware can still draw up to 80W from the mains. Sony's engineers were able to mitigate both issues by shrinking the equivalent of eight PS3s onto a single motherboard, housed in a slimline server cabinet.

The second reason for the all-new PlayStation 3 server design is that it allows Sony to make hardware changes to the PS3 configuration that claw back a few vital milliseconds here and there to lower end-to-end latency.

To understand this, we start by looking back at the PC-driven OnLive and Gaikai services, which are very similar. The idea with those services is that games run at 60Hz (or even higher) on PC hardware, lowering end-to-end latency by something in the region of 50ms compared to the console 30fps standard. Second-gen cloud hardware like GeForce Grid actually improves on that significantly by tying the video encoder directly into the graphics hardware.

These latency-saving measures are then offset against the cloud streaming workflow - video encode, transmission over the internet, and client-side decode. In a very best-case scenario with OnLive and Gaikai, we can see input lag that is very, very close to a 30Hz console experience. Indeed, in our original Gaikai testing, we were able to play Bulletstorm with an end-to-end latency that occasionally hit 133ms - the same as the Xbox 360 version. It was an exceptional result (one captured for posterity if you're interested), but as a proof-of-concept it was extremely effective - and achieved on a standard ADSL connection.

Unfortunately, this specific avenue of latency-saving is almost certainly not open to PlayStation Now. In order to retain compatibility with the existing library of games, the code-facing hardware within PlayStation 3 cannot be changed significantly: Cell and RSX - the CPU and GPU of the veteran console - can't be radically changed without introducing incompatibilities with the existing library of software. This presents a problem: the majority of PS3 titles run at 30 frames per second with input latency in the region of 100-150ms. Add on the cloud overhead and you're looking at a rather unsavoury, laggy experience.

Gaikai was primarily a software team, but once it was bought up by Sony it was suddenly faced with a problem that could only be tackled by bespoke hardware. In creating new PS3 servers for the PlayStation Now, the team worked closely with their new colleagues in engineering, creating a new PS3 adapted to the cloud streaming challenge. The "secret sauce" of the new design remains just that - in its briefings to publishers participating in the current closed beta testing, Sony has only revealed rough details of the servers - but we can make some educated guesses on how the existing PS3 design could be tightened up for improved cloud gameplay.

First of all, while we expect the basic designs of Cell and RSX to remain untouched, non-critical areas of the hardware can be upgraded. The network interface could be improved with a lower-latency interface, while the controller inputs could be swapped out with faster, hard-wired alternatives to the current wireless Bluetooth option used by the DualShock 3. Potentially, the polling rate of the controller inputs themselves could be increased significantly via a custom version of the PlayStation 3 operating system.

A more significant latency saving could be achieved by bypassing the PS3's HDMI output altogether. Scan-out - the process of displaying the current framebuffer on-screen - takes 16.67ms. A PlayStation 3 cloud server could see the frame dispatched to a hardware h.264 video encoder as opposed to the existing console's HDMI output.

By our estimates, the design tweaks we've suggested could (generously) only claw back around 30ms. That would fall some way short of the potential performance of cutting-edge systems like GeForce Grid, but there may well be further nips and tucks added to the design that could cumulatively produce a more significant saving on overall lag. The Gaikai team have the advantage of complete access to the PS3 design and the engineers that created it, so it may well be that there other latency-saving elements we simply can't anticipate. Only direct comparisons of end-to-end latency testing on PS3 and PlayStation Now can reveal how successful the team has been.


The article continues, but I think the above is the relevant part.
Sorry for the long post and copy paste (just making sure the data remains here in case the original source disappears ).

 

I don't know how that flew right by my eyes as I was reading the wiki article.

This makes me want one, tbh I'd be ecstatic to just look at pictures of the device.

Imagine if one of those eight Clustered PS3's gets the YLOD, what a waste of a motherboard.
Also I'm guessing that they probably have the system connected to a Hard Drive with immense amounts of storage and a software backup loader, something like multiMAN but official and for multi-PS3 servers.

If one were to 'abuse' a game in a certain manner as to get banned while connected to PS Now would that also mean the whole multi-PS3 gets console banned?
I don't even want to guess what Target Type they are, or if they even have a Target Type (CEX,SEX,DEX,TOOL) They probably don't even have a Console Identifier, or if they do have one it probably is not subject to perma-bans.

Thanks. I don't mind the extra info.

 

I'm assuming they would be recognized each as a retail unit, assuming there's no special game software that would run on the PS3 Now units to recognize it, and probably have special software to immediately change/spoof the console identifier.

 

I don't see why they'd want to issue hardware bans in case of PS Now. If you violate the TOS enough to warrant a ban, they'll probably just cancel your subscription and possibly refuse doing any business with you in the future.

 

The YLOD is caused by heat changes and the PS now equipment is in a datacentre where the temperature is regulated.

It may be using something like BD-EMU, or the games might be stored in a different format. It's unlikely that you'll ever know.

They won't ban their own hardware, they may use virtual id's. Just because it has some of the same chips, it doesn't mean everything is the same. It just needs to have enough in common for the games to work, the OS and things that the game doesn't address directly could be entirely different.