Ever expanding memory
Just thought it was interesting to take a look at console RAM sizes over the years. Here's some data for the Playstation:
| Model | Year | RAM (MB) | VRAM (MB) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Playstation 1 | 1994 | 2 | 1 |
| Playstation 2 | 2000 | 32 | 4 |
| Playstation 3 | 2006 | 256 | 256 |
| Playstation 4 | 2013 | 8000 | 256 |
| Playstation 5 | 2020? | ?? | ?? |
And for the Xbox:
| Model | Year | RAM (MB) | VRAM (MB) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xbox | 2001 | 64 | ? |
| Xbox 360 | 2005 | 512 | ? |
| Xbox One | 2013 | 8000 | ? |
| Xbox One X | 2017 | 12000 | ? |
A few other examples for comparison:
-
Midway's Hydro
Thunder arcade game
was released in 1999, it had a Celeron processor and 64 MB RAM. -
Raspberry Pi 3 was released in 2016. It has 1 GB RAM.
There are still many practical systems in operation today that have limited memory though. Some examples:
-
Arduino Uno contains a ATmega328 chip which has 2k SRAM.
-
Network routers - apparently Superscale
Networks use Linux-based routers that
only have 4 MB - 16 MB of RAM, I guess in order to save money.