Playstation 3: Supercomputer on a Chip

[Gentle Fury]

forget the PS3 when can i get a 1 terraflop cpu for my workstation!!!!!!! You know how fast that would render?????? Combine that with a kick ass Geforce FX vid card and you are talking some mad calculations!!!!!!! Realtime rendering here we come!!!!!!!

[The Magic Pen]

LOL the ol Playstation 3 thread again huh... well this horse has been beaten to death on just about ever forum on the net ...all I have to say is wait and see what it can REALLY do...until then it's all a pipe dream .. :wavey:

[Array]

yeah they said the same thing about the ps2. nuts to the "emotion" engine........ill believe it when i see it.

[Meshbuilder]

"yeah they said the same thing about the ps2. nuts to the "emotion" engine........ill believe it when i see it."

They did.. And look at it. I don´t see that big different in graphic compared to Dreamcast games..

[Chris Thomas]

I'm possibly about to do some freelance graphics work on agame. Needless to say I was dispapointed to hear it was for the PS2 :(, I was badly underwhealmed by the PS2, as indeed was a sony guy at a trade show, he basicly said PS2 sucked, but that PS3 would be very cool. I'll wait and see....

For now, I think the Xbox is pretty cool, at least its pushing the tech forwards a little eh?

[red_oddity]

Yup, looks great..well..the specs do...kind of...

until they cram onto a system with so little memory it still is useless (like the PS2, 8Mb video memory...pleaeaeassseee....64Mb main mem?...HAHAHAHA..<whipes tear from cheek>)

The emotion engine was a big let down when it came out, the graphics didn't even surpass my TNT2-ultra back then. (not to mention those stupid machines MELTED when playing too long on 'm, my friend had one from the unfortunate first batch...)

[Larry_g1s]

It's one of those things, "I'll wait to believe it when I see" things too.

That's why I pick a system with the quality games, not always the hardware specs. GameCube for me!

[zen]

Where im working now were developping on ps2. What a crap system. Maybe it was so-so when it came out, but its pretty much equivalent to a 300mhz p2 with a 4mb graphic card. Not exactly my idea of a dream machine.

[ambient-whisper]

Originally posted by Juggernaut
It's one of those things, "I'll wait to believe it when I see" things too.

That's why I pick a system with the quality games, not always the hardware specs. GameCube for me!
you ever played any good ps2 games?

mark of kri? ( freakin awesome )
ico?
herdy gerdy?
mgs2?
devil may cry?
gt3?
gta3?
final fantasy 10?
the tekken series?
jack and daxter? ( not too great but fun :)
.....
..
the fact that i can play all my old ps1 games?

graphically some of these games arent exactly movie quality but they are pretty damn good fun. and until recently the cube didnt really have many good games.

what i am also saying is that when you make comments like "i pick consoles with good games" you arent making any comments on teh consoles limitations..but you are saying that the people who worked on some of the games i mentioned above did a bad job. when in fact they did an outstanding job.

[bentllama]

I have worked on games for both xbox and ps2...

I will gladly take xbox dev over sony dev any day...who knows what the ps3 holds. seeing is believing.

[SheepFactory]

gamecube and xbox all the way :buttrock:

i use my ps2 only for dvd playback now.

[Larry_g1s]

Originally posted by ambient-whisper
you ever played any good ps2 games?

mark of kri? ( freakin awesome )
ico?
herdy gerdy?
mgs2?
devil may cry?
gt3?
gta3?
final fantasy 10?
the tekken series?
jack and daxter? ( not too great but fun :)
.....
..
the fact that i can play all my old ps1 games?

graphically some of these games arent exactly movie quality but they are pretty damn good fun. and until recently the cube didnt really have many good games.

what i am also saying is that when you make comments like "i pick consoles with good games" you arent making any comments on teh consoles limitations..but you are saying that the people who worked on some of the games i mentioned above did a bad job. when in fact they did an outstanding job.

I actually have some of those games. I have a PS2 as well as a GameCube. I didn't say the PS2 sucked. In fact, I've had a lot of fun playing MGS2, Tekken Tag Tournament, and Devil May Cry on my PS2. I was saying that when I choose a system, it's software over hardware for me. To shout what your hardware could do more than what games are available for it doesn't prove much to me. I just don't get all worked up over specs as much.

The comment about the "GC for me" was just that, over all I think the GC's the best choice for gaming. That doesn't mean the other systems are horrible. In fact, I don't think as a gamer you could go wrong with any of the 3 systems (GC, Xbox, PS2).


Originally posted by ambient-whisper
and until recently the cube didnt really have many good games.

No offense, but look at the games you meantioned, they are all (with the exception of Tekken Tag Tournament) came out AFTER the 1st year of the PS2's launch. The GC's only been out for shortly over a year to date.

[MCronin]

Originally posted by red_oddity
Yup, looks great..well..the specs do...kind of...

until they cram onto a system with so little memory it still is useless (like the PS2, 8Mb video memory...pleaeaeassseee....64Mb main mem?...HAHAHAHA..<whipes tear from cheek>)

Actually, I think Sony is going to pull something pretty amazing off with the PS3. They presented this Cell technology at a semiconductor conference last year. I tried to read the papers on it (understanding very little) but here's what I got from it. It's essentially similar in design to a PS2, except on a much larger scale and all on one chip. It's like having a PC with 16 CPUs, all with a gigantic high speed cache sitting right on the chip. So for the PS3, it will probably have a PS2 controlling I/O, a large high speed chunk of system RAM of 128 or 256 Megabytes, and this monster PS3 Chip, 16 processors performing over 1 teraflop with a 32 or 64 Meg cache (your VRAM) sitting right on the processor at a 100 GB per second interface between the processors and VRAM. I don't even think VRAM would be the right term as it souns like everything would probably go through this cache, textures, frame buffer, geometry, sound.. If they even get half of what they have been claiming it's going to be an impressive console. At minimum it'll be 5-8 times more powerful than the Xbox on paper. We'll see how it works out in real world performance. It'll probably still be a pain in the ass to program for ;)

[roger]

For some reason I cannot get the page to load, but I was at a EA recruitment meeting a few months back and they were telling us the PS3 will have "Shrek like quality" in real time and it should be out in 2005.:drool:

[bentllama]

lest we not forget XBOX 2...

:twisted:

[Celshader]

I know it all comes down to which platform has the best games, and not which platform has the best hardware. Still, I'm curious to see what the next generation of video game consoles can do. I look forwards to a PS3 article with trailers and screenshots! ;)

[Array]

Originally posted by MCronin
Actually, I think Sony is going to pull something pretty amazing off with the PS3. They presented this Cell technology at a semiconductor conference last year. I tried to read the papers on it (understanding very little) but here's what I got from it. It's essentially similar in design to a PS2, except on a much larger scale and all on one chip. It's like having a PC with 16 CPUs, all with a gigantic high speed cache sitting right on the chip. So for the PS3, it will probably have a PS2 controlling I/O, a large high speed chunk of system RAM of 128 or 256 Megabytes, and this monster PS3 Chip, 16 processors performing over 1 teraflop with a 32 or 64 Meg cache (your VRAM) sitting right on the processor at a 100 GB per second interface between the processors and VRAM. I don't even think VRAM would be the right term as it souns like everything would probably go through this cache, textures, frame buffer, geometry, sound.. If they even get half of what they have been claiming it's going to be an impressive console. At minimum it'll be 5-8 times more powerful than the Xbox on paper. We'll see how it works out in real world performance. It'll probably still be a pain in the ass to program for ;)

sounds a lot like what Intel is doing with their "hyperthreaded" pentium 4's. The chip works as though there are two processors.

Contrary to popular belief, this does NOT make the processor run at 2x it's normal speed. What it does do is reduce something called "idle cycles". The way a processor works is that instead of running all programs at once, it gives each program a "time share", and alternates VERY quickly between all programs running on your machine, making it appear that all of the programs are running simultaniously. This, unfortunately, creates a lot of cycles in which nothing happens (argh, if i had a scanner i would show you a diagram).

So what I guess im trying to say is to not buy into a bunch of lousy buzz words. Wait and see what happens.

As far as consoles are concerned, I currently own a ps2 and gameboy advance. Neither of which are modern marvels when compared to modern pc's.

bentllama- as for the xbox2, I wasnt happy with the direction the original xbox took, and im not very happy with where the xbox2 is going. I say this because instead of developing their own chips, Microsoft crammed in a bunch of technology designed to run at VERY high resolutions, into a box that, for most people, outputs to a 640x480 analog TV. Instead of pushing for TONS of polygons, console should be pushing for better shading. I would gladly take a machine that puts shading ahead of polygons counts. Just look at the differance shading does for doom3 (which I know the xbox is capable of running), and imagine the differance it would make if Microsoft commisioned a chip that would put 25% more effort into shading, and 25% less into polygon operations.

[Joril]

This page might help on the hyperthreading issue:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20021114/p4_306ht-06.html#hyperthreading_a_virtual_dual_cpu_system

[Array]

bah, I've read that Tom's hardware review earlier, and it sucks considering NONE of the applications he ran support multithreading or multiple strings. This chip wont run Quake3 any quicker for the same reason a dual processor box wont either.

I wouldve rather liked to see mentalray or a renderman compliant renderer executed with the strings parameter set to 2, and then compared with it running at the default 1.

[MCronin]

Originally posted by Array
sounds a lot like what Intel is doing with their "hyperthreaded" pentium 4's. The chip works as though there are two processors.

Contrary to popular belief, this does NOT make the processor run at 2x it's normal speed. What it does do is reduce something called "idle cycles". The way a processor works is that instead of running all programs at once, it gives each program a "time share", and alternates VERY quickly between all programs running on your machine, making it appear that all of the programs are running simultaniously. This, unfortunately, creates a lot of cycles in which nothing happens (argh, if i had a scanner i would show you a diagram).

So what I guess im trying to say is to not buy into a bunch of lousy buzz words. Wait and see what happens.

As far as consoles are concerned, I currently own a ps2 and gameboy advance. Neither of which are modern marvels when compared to modern pc's.

I understand it to be quite different than Hyperthreading. The chip is supposed to be capable of executing multiple instructions simultaneously without time sharing. One of the quotes from one of these scientists at Sony was that it's just like having 16 high performance processors at your disposal, but needless to say it's very difficult to program. It's super pipelined and massively parrallel all on one chip. If there is a problem with idle cycles it'll be because there are so many pipelines with so much throughput that it's hard to keep all the processors full of data, not because the chip is busy switching between threads.

No one can say this chip runs 2x or 4x or 16x it's normal speed, because there is no "normal" speed to comapare it to. Sony's logic was first to create the PS2, then they made it massively parallel by putting 16 GS chips in a box (that's 16 physical processors), they then took those 16 processors an placed them all on a single chip, with a huge chunk of embedded memory, which is leading us to what the PS3 will be.

The PS2 may not be impressive by todays standards when you look at the games, but I've been programming on PS2 Linux for almost a year now, and I think the technology behind it is pretty brilliant. The console is basicly a giant processor with a singular purpose; not a collection of discreet parts like a modern PC or the Xbox. I'm not saying the PS3 will deffinitely be better or faster than anything else out there when it ships, but to get this type of technology for 2-500 dollars when it does eventually ship, I think, you could call a modern marvel. Same goes for the PS2 and GBA.

[Array]

hmmm....what throws me off though is that the hyperthread supporting mobos show 2 processors at boot. WinXP professional also shows 2 cpu's. Because of this, the folks at softimage had to modify their mentalray server so that it recognizes 1 processor instead of 2.

[bentllama]

Originally posted by Array
bentllama- as for the xbox2, I wasnt happy with the direction the original xbox took, and im not very happy with where the xbox2 is going. I say this because instead of developing their own chips, Microsoft crammed in a bunch of technology designed to run at VERY high resolutions, into a box that, for most people, outputs to a 640x480 analog TV. Instead of pushing for TONS of polygons, console should be pushing for better shading. I would gladly take a machine that puts shading ahead of polygons counts. Just look at the differance shading does for doom3 (which I know the xbox is capable of running), and imagine the differance it would make if Microsoft commisioned a chip that would put 25% more effort into shading, and 25% less into polygon operations.

array - you would be surprised to see some of the inhouse shaders currently being dev'd for xbox. and i disagree with your resolution comment. i feel it is very important for a console to support higher res. seeing amazing game content on hdtv and plasma screens is stunning. while the market is going down in regards to costs of HD units, now is the time for a console to dominate that market.

as far as the polygon vs. shader comparison of yours...

I do not see MS neglecting shader dev with xbox2...however polygon limit is something to be talked about. the eye is more likely to catch the jagged faces of a low poly model in motion more than a shader in motion, so what would you rather spend your budget on?

[note: more polys are not always the answer, but the eye responds to curves pleasantly, whereas straights interupt an eyes "flow". i cannot wait to see sub D play a part in future gaming tech. but the biggest thing i am looking forward to, is aniamtion interpolation methods...i will jump with joy when keyframe tangency can be stored realtiem in games engines...oh boy!]

[Gentle Fury]

Originally posted by bentllama
array - you would be surprised to see some of the inhouse shaders currently being dev'd for xbox. and i disagree with your resolution comment. i feel it is very important for a console to support higher res. seeing amazing game content on hdtv and plasma screens is stunning. while the market is going down in regards to costs of HD units, now is the time for a console to dominate that market.

as far as the polygon vs. shader comparison of yours...

I do not see MS neglecting shader dev with xbox2...however polygon limit is something to be talked about. the eye is more likely to catch the jagged faces of a low poly model in motion more than a shader in motion, so what would you rather spend your budget on?

[note: more polys are not always the answer, but the eye responds to curves pleasantly, whereas straights interupt an eyes "flow". i cannot wait to see sub D play a part in future gaming tech. but the biggest thing i am looking forward to, is aniamtion interpolation methods...i will jump with joy when keyframe tangency can be stored realtiem in games engines...oh boy!]


i'd have to agree with the llama on this one! This is in a par with MS decided to put an ethernet adapter on the XboX while sony played it "safe" with a phone jack............

hindering technology to suit the masses is such a detructive effort! I cant stand that we STILL have to develop websites for people out there on 56k modems running 400mhz pc's.....if everyone STOPPED down-developing it would force people to either upgrade or get out!

Look at big stores stopping the sales of VHS players!!! It has to happen sooner or later!!! Do we have to keep accomidating people that are still living 10 years behind forever???? I for one think that MS's desicion to support HD is a bold move! And a smart one for that...... i mean honestly.....look at Xbox at its best and look at PS2 at its best in a side by side comparrison....there IS no comparison! PS2 is looking ancient! The only problem is, there arent a lot of good games for Xbox yet.......BUT PS2 has had a good span of time on Xbox......so hopefully they are on the way!!!!

I see nothing but potential in Xbox as the graphics can be of the most spectacular ever seen..........but unfortunatly it seems to be wasted on sports and action games......the reason i like PS2 is because it has SO many adventure/rpg's on it! And i think that is truly the reason it is the more popular of the two.....so i dont think the problem is wasted money/effort on poly count vs texture......i think they are both brilliant.....i think its more like.....well we have an AWESOME system.....now let's develop for the damn thing and stop wasting this massive potential!!!

[Larry_g1s]

I like both arguements, but I guess that's why I choose the GAMECUBE. To me, it's the combination of the xbox & ps2. IMO, it's got better graphics then the PS2, but not quite as large of a software library, and more quality software then the Xbox, but not quite as beefed up hardware.

Like I said before, as a gamer you can't go wrong with any of the 3 systems, they all have something great to offer. I just believe the GameCube provides the best of both for gaming.

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