Guys please allow me some MisterXMedia-level of speculation. But I'm sure you'll find this interesting.
First, read what a game dev told me about how ReRAM might be used in games.
Assuming magic compression exists, CPU could uncompress insane details to ReRam so it is available quickly, e.g. when player turns view.
Then my initial Megatexture argument would make more sense again, if we make some assumptions:
* decompression very expensive, so need to cache full environment around player, not just what's currently on screen. 10 x more data.
* Sub millimeter texture resolutions everywhere. 100x100 more data?
If you uncompress insane details to ReRAM so it is available quickly then you can stream textures and assets at run-time without ever using your CPU bandwidth and cores for such task. At load-time it doesn't matter but at run-time CPU resources is precious and better used to run your games. Decompression is very demanding and may use entire CPU. It is the present bottleneck in load times, not the SSD bandwidth. Now consider this statement by a dev:
When it comes to the PS5, faster hardware is always appreciated and will make life easier in the short term, but it's the new SSD that really stands out; essentially streaming will become something that we don't really have to worry so much about and it will free up some extra CPU bandwidth in the process," said Remedy's lead programmer Sean Donnelly while speaking to the Official PlayStation Magazine.
This statement could mean two things. PS5 has a secondary chip dedicated for decompression or the streamed assets are not compressed at all. And then consider this next statement from another dev:
If games would stay the same in terms of scope and visual quality it’d make loading times be almost unnoticeable and restarting a level could be almost instant [in PS5 games].
However, since more data can be now used there can also be cases where production
might be cheaper and faster when not optimising content, which will lead into having to load much more data, leading back into a situation where you have about the same loading times as today.
Same loading times as today? 30 seconds - a minute? I don't see that scenario at all with 20GB RAM and 4GB/s SSD with 8-core CPU all being used to decompress AT LOAD-TIME. Even XSX is touting mere seconds of loading times because of their fast SSD and powerful CPU.
The only scenario I see this happening is if the game was made to read from the ReRAM immediately because they are showing insane details in their game. In this scenario, devs may find themselves having to load assets and textures to both main RAM and ReRAM from the "cold storage" (which could be a regular fast SSD) if they do not optimize their content and manage the memory well. If you have to load 16GB of RAM plus another 64GB of memory (assuming that's the amount of memory allocated and needed for the game to run) and you have 4GB/s of SSD, then that would really
"lead back into a situation where you have about the same loading times as today".
But that will not happen
"if games would stay the same in terms of scope and visual quality it’d make loading times be almost unnoticeable and restarting a level could be almost instant [in PS5 games].
But if devs will take advantage of that ultra-fast "extra storage", then they have to manage their memory again or they will find themselves "
having to load much more data, leading back into a situation where you have about the same loading times as today."