PS3 details

bk

About x86 vs cell.

It isn't really a like for like comparison. x86 is a better general purpose processor (for things like Word), but Cell was specifically designed for Video, graphics, physics and AI processing and at that there is no doubt that it is the most powerfull processor around.

As a PC fan myself, you know that you want the CPU doing as little work as possible, instead you want hardware designed to do very speciallised tasks.
That is why most PC gamers have SPU (Sound Procesing Units), GPU's, and hardware MPEG encoders/decoders, hell we even use hardware modems.

In fact the GPU in your PC is now far more important then the CPU. You can have a relatively slow CPU and a top of the range GPU and you can play all the top games at almost their top settings. However the reverse isn't true.

Over the span of 5 years I had the same PC with the same CPU, however I went through three GPU's which allowed me to continue playing the top games for 5 years.

This is likely to increase in the future with the launch of Physics Processing Units (PPU's) and probably AIPU's. The CPU will increasingly only be a controller of these various PU's.

bk

About PS3 versus 360

I suppose the reason I was blown away by the PS3 is very different to most other people.

You see I'm a Computer Scientitst, I work as a programmer and I have a very strong interest in processor design and I generally know what I'm talking about.

I wasn't particularly interested in the game demos!! (with the exception of The Getaway demo and Eyedentity), what blow me away was the realtime technical demos.

I realise these probably weren't very interesting to ordinary gamers, but to a computer scientist they were jaw dropping. The one with the two tornadeos of leafs, it mightn't have looked pretty, but the physics involved there is incredibly complex. And the one with the exploding gas station. That was done, not by the GPU, but bycell and it was created using realtime physics, that is simply mind blowing.

This type of physics calculations are currently used in modelling weather patterns and etc. on super computers. While PS3 certainly isn't up to super computer level pysics yet, most of us (ComSci people) didn't think you would see PS3 type physics in consumer computing for another couple of years.

If the PS3 is capable of these types of physics and AI then the possibilities are enourmous. While some of the game demos were probably pre-rendered, if the PS3 has these sort of physics capabilities, not only will games like Killzone 2 be possible, they will probably be surpassed. Probably not in the 1st generation of games, it will take time for the programmers to get to grips with the new CPU's, but certainly in the later generations.

BTW For those who think PS3 is hard to program for, Epic have said you can program Cell using C and the GPU using CG and OpenGL. It doesn't get more bread and butter (and simpler) for programmers then these.

The biggest problem that programmers face is that non of the games engines currently available support multi threading. It is not expected that such engines will appear until late 2006/early 2007. This problem is equally true for both consoles. Therefore we won't be seeing the true performance of either of these consoles until the 2nd gen games. However PS3 on paper definitely has the edge.

Ciaran500

bk wrote:

You see I'm a Computer Scientitst, I work as a programmer and I have a very strong interest in processor design and I generally know what I'm talking about.

I don't, go easy

bk wrote:

I realise these probably weren't very interesting to ordinary gamers, but to a computer scientist they were jaw dropping. The one with the two tornadeos of leafs, it mightn't have looked pretty, but the physics involved there is incredibly complex. And the one with the exploding gas station. That was done, not by the GPU, but bycell and it was created using realtime physics, that is simply mind blowing.

From what I read, this is exactly what the cell is good at. Pure number crunching for physics etc.

bk wrote:

If the PS3 is capable of these types of physics and AI then the possibilities are enourmous. While some of the game demos were probably pre-rendered, if the PS3 has these sort of physics capabilities, not only will games like Killzone 2 be possible, they will probably be surpassed. Probably not in the 1st generation of games, it will take time for the programmers to get to grips with the new CPU's, but certainly in the later generations.

I thought physic calculations and AI calculations are very different. Where AI involves alot of branching, which is where the Cell falls down.

There was nothing particulary impressive about the physics shown in the Killzone demo (even if they were realtime) so I don't see how the game will be possible just cause the phyics were possible.

Nietzschean

bk wrote:

About x86 vs cell.

It isn't really a like for like comparison. x86 is a better general purpose processor (for things like Word), but Cell was specifically designed for Video, graphics, physics and AI processing and at that there is no doubt that it is the most powerfull processor around.

Umm the cell has a PowerPC core in it, which is quite capeable of dealing with word as fast as any x86 i've seen.............

Nietzschean

bk wrote:

I suppose the reason I was blown away by the PS3 is very different to most other people.

You see I'm a Computer Scientitst, I work as a programmer and I have a very strong interest in processor design and I generally know what I'm talking about.

I dunno i'm a mathematician, done a fair bit of assembly and misc programming in my time....... So i think i'll keep on questioning what ye say.....

glimmerman

bk wrote:

BTW For those who think PS3 is hard to program for, Epic have said you can program Cell using C and the GPU using CG and OpenGL. It doesn't get more bread and butter (and simpler) for programmers then these.

Oh, it will be hard to program. Parallel processors are NASTY NASTY NASTY to design software for. The compiler won't be able to hide the fact that the processor is parallel. In fact the software dev environment will probably go to particular pains to expose the parallelism to the sw engineer. I'd say its going to take at least 3 years for game companies to get their experience for it so they can design efficient code. Maybe more.

Nietzschean

glimmerman wrote:

Oh, it will be hard to program. Parallel processors are NASTY NASTY NASTY to design software for.

Different yes, i wouldn't say nasty though. software dev companies can just buy in the expertise......

glimmerman

Darth Bobo wrote:

Different yes, i wouldn't say nasty though. software dev companies can just buy in the expertise......

I'm not sure they can just buy the experience.... I really don't think there's all that much experience available to buy!

I did some work a year or two ago on multithreaded network processors. I can honestly state that designing for them and writing code (admittedly assembly, the C code was too inefficient) was quite hard. Actually very hard. We had one of the smartest software guys I've met doing the system architecture.... and he really struggled with the hardware.

Nietzschean

glimmerman wrote:

I'm not sure they can just buy the experience.... I really don't think there's all that much experience available to buy!

There seems to be alot of interest in colleges in distributed computing this weather so i'd say if there isn't enough graduates with the experence now there should be soon

I did some work a year or two ago on multithreaded network processors. I can honestly state that designing for them and writing code (admittedly assembly, the C code was too inefficient) was quite hard.

Yes distributed assembly sounds hard......but don't look that'll be needed for the ps3

bk

Darth Bobo wrote:

I dunno i'm a mathematician, done a fair bit of assembly and misc programming in my time....... So i think i'll keep on questioning what ye say.....

Great, please do, I love good technical discussions. It is fanboy crap that I hate and that I aimed that comment at.

Darth Bobo wrote:

Umm the cell has a PowerPC core in it, which is quite capeable of dealing with word as fast as any x86 i've seen.............

There seems to be a lot of confusion on the web weither the PPU is a general PowerPC CPU or a completely new, cut down design, that might not be suitable for general purpose use.

I think we'll need to wait until next week for articles from Aces Hardware and Ars Technica to find out for sure.

BTW about the difficulty of programming for this architecture, it has already been widely reported that you won't need to program in assembly (distributed assembly == shudder), but C does the job perfectly well. Sony made that mistake already with PS2, they weren't going to repeat that mistake.

I think what we are going to see happen, is that their will be a handful of companies, who have the best multithreaded programmers, etc. produce API's, development environments and games engines (Epic, ID, etc.) and that we will see most companies license the tech from these companies and develop the games at a higher abstraction layer.

This sort of ecosystem was increasingly seen during the later years of PS2 development and is likely to continue into the PS3.

I do agree we won't see games really make use of the new CPU's until the 2nd or 3rd generation. The 1st generation games will simply only use the GPU's of both consoles as the developers are already very fimiliar with them.

The Cell processor is a radical change in CPU design, it is probably the biggest change in 20 years. In the last 20 years CPU design has been evolutionary rather then revolutionary. But Cell is a radical change in directions. The Cell will massively outperform PC CPU's in vectorisable tasks (video, graphics, audio and physics), it will be very interesting to see if it makes it's way to PC's (maybe as a PCIe add on card). I mean if they wanted to STI could really hurt Intel with this tech.

The interesting thing is that Cell was designed from the beginning to scale up to incredible levels of performance. It frightens me to think of what PS4 will be like, they could simply stick multiple (cheap) Cell cheaps in there!!!!

MrPinK

Darth Bobo wrote:

There seems to be alot of interest in colleges in distributed computing this weather so i'd say if there isn't enough graduates with the experence now there should be soon

Speaking as someone just about to finish his four years of college, I'm pretty much conditioned to think in terms of multithreading and ILP now. I would find it harder to write a large program without using multiple threads. If the old games programmers can't change their ways, then they better watch out

bk wrote:

BTW about the difficulty of programming for this architecture, it has already been widely reported that you won't need to program in assembly (distributed assembly == shudder), but C does the job perfectly well.

There's a decent presentation from Sony given at a games developers conference here which goes into programming models for the cell.

EDIT: which I found on this cell site, http://cell.raw.net/

Nietzschean

bk wrote:

Great, please do, I love good technical discussions. It is fanboy crap that I hate and that I aimed that comment at.

I agree, i find reading those posts painfull to say the least


[EDIT]nice presentation[/EDIT]

bk

MrPinK wrote:

There's a decent presentation from Sony given at a games developers conference here which goes into programming models for the cell.

EDIT: which I found on this cell site, http://cell.raw.net/

That is very interesting, it answers a lot of questions. Thanks

maxymax86

Yes thats it lol.... Dont forget (if u've seen the demo of cell decoding something like 40-something simultaneous mpeg2 streams) that the cell proc used there was top of the range.... basically the highest they've achieved in terms of performance... NO WAY they are going to stick that sort of a beast in supposedly affordable-to-be console.... It is gonna be castrated 2 bits lol...

To be honest i am not a big fan of Sony (neither am i a fanboy of Microsoft's xbox lol).... its just do you remember the claims sony made when they only released the console (PS2)... They said that PS2 will be able to render TOY STORY graphics real time.... Yes maybe it is THEORETICALLY possible.. Know of many games like that?.. thought so...
And the EMOTION engine.... jaysus they praised it like it was the next best thing since sliced bread lol.... i even remember some article (supposedly a very early marketin spin-off campaign for PS2) that claimed that new technology in PS2 processor (referring to 64 bit architecture) will be that powerful and flexible that it will b able to emulate human brain,,, now that is a biggest load of crap sum1 cud say about a processor.

in general i didnt trust microsoft much either.... The point is that there is no point speculatin about specs until they are officially released Good luck.

jesus_thats_gre

Retr0gamer wrote:

Play Forza Motorsport on the xbox. GT4 is terrible in every department compared to it.

Explain please..

CiDeRmAn

I think,at the end of the day, it doesn't matter a jot what your specs are, how your machine looks or how "cool" the manufacturer is, the primary purpose for most of us is to play games and its on this basis that judgement on how good they are should be made.
Nothing seen so far is really representative of what the games are to be like, too often in the past we have been fed crap pre-renders of what the eventual game will be like, lets se when the first titles start to get previewed in the media, actual games that can be played, then we will see that the machine we are cooing over actually has the necessary creative spark in the game makers that program for it. That will make all the difference.
Take a look at pc games development, machines whose power eclipses consoles, are the games on that format really that much better on the consoles, have most of the hits on it not been converted, albeit with some small cosmetic changes, to their more limited under the tv brethren, has there really been that much difference, and is this all we have to look forward too on the next gen systems? HalfLife2 with out any of the texture sacrifices needed to get it onto the Xbox? Hardly a revolution is it.
We were fed so much crap on the runup to the PS2 launch, killing the plucky Dreamcast in the process, Sony will no doubt talk rubbish all over again to try and do away with the Xbox360 threat, although the 2 machines will probably play the same EA pap just like normal, the games rosters for both PS3 and Xbox360 will, doubtless look almost excatly the same, albeit with a couple of format only flagship titles dotted here and there, not too sure about the Nintendo but will have to wait and see.

steviec

Whats wrong with a bit of optimism? I saw a lot of cool looking games for both consoles, and if Nintendo ever announce whatever the hell the Revolution actually does, I'm sure it'll be cool too. You can argue about how real they are all day long, but the few that have been confirmed as definitely real are just as good looking as the unconfirmed ones so there's not much reason to doubt them all that much.

I agree technical specs don't make up for bad games. But they do make great games better. Half Life 2 couldn't have happened a couple of years ago. Personally I dont like Half Life and HL2 cos I just don't like FPS games in general, but I still couldn't help spending a lot of time playing with the gravity gun, and thinking about how physics like that is really gonna improve other games.

Looking at that Capcom Zombie game, or the Getaway demo city, you can see how much activity these consoles can handle and how much more immersive their games could become because of it. The eyetoy stuff also looked really cool too, both companies have made mention of their cameras and voice recognition technology also being added to games.

This generation had little to add but better graphics(and still offered countless amazing games on all three consoles), but the next gen seems to offer the same sort of technology leap the 16-32 bit jump did and that can only be a good thing.

Nietzschean

CiDeRmAn wrote:

Wrote something or other..

Did you read anything previously? the benfits of the power behind these new consoles which should eclipse pc's, have been detailed several times. Sure its game dependant, but i do believe thats been stated 20 times already too.

The point is that these consoles offer devlopers to make much more immersive games with higher quality textures and the big difference will be the level of physics that the machine will be able to do realtime. Which as has been pointed out will make a massive difference to several current titles even if they are only upgraded for it. GT4 with proper physics would be deadly, as would more or less every other game that immitates real life.

CiDeRmAn

My apologies first if I repeated earlier things said elsewhere in this thread, I don't have time to rifle through pages and pages of replies about technical specs when all I am interested in are the games.

The benefits in the Next Gen will be almost entirely cosmetic and as for the physics end of things I can't see the average gamer giving a flying fig for whether or not the cars gearbox and clutch behave in a realistic manner. Now I am sure that the extra sparkle on the roadways and having the calculations of the tyres grip on the roadway being done in ever more detail will light some peoples fire but sorry, GT4 as it stands is one of the most boring racing games I have ever played Metroplolis Street Racer and the Gotham games being much more fun to play. The first one on the PS1 was, for me, more fun. Its the same with F1 games, why even bother? The last F1 game to actually engage me was F1 '97 on the PS1. Sim City on the Snes? Have any of the follow ups been as playable?

As for games imitating real life, that has its obvious limits, most being reached as we speak, the next gen will make graphics on each system a moot point, if they are not already, it wil boil down more to the artistry and imagination of the designers rather than a hang-up on "realism". To use GT4 as an example, how realistic can a racing game be with rubbish driver AI and no car damage? Oh, but look at the graphics! NO! Why would I want a moving car showroom on my TV? Its Pokemon with cars.

And as for the notion that the new gen of machine will emulate the jump in style and content that the 16 to 32 bit change did is simply not true and would challenge you to back up that nonsense, please, the 16 to 32 bit revolution was essentially a 2d to 3d change, best described by Super Mario World to Mario 64, if you are suggesting that somehow the next set of new machines will bring a shift of that magnitude I suggest you switch from Whatevers in your cup to Horlicks and go and have a bit of a rest in a darkened room. The Hype has finally gotten to you.

The games that are playable on each machine, that, at the end of the day, is all that matters at all, nothing else.

Nietzschean

CiDeRmAn wrote:

The benefits in the Next Gen will be almost entirely cosmetic

Well in your view how is this different than any other gen?

and as for the physics end of things I can't see the average gamer giving a flying fig for whether or not the cars gearbox and clutch behave in a realistic manner.

Erm, what i'm referring to is more relaistic car damage and such that can be model'd in real time, something thats been sorely lacking in driving sim games.
Which i believe would be noticed by any gamer...

As for games imitating real life, that has its obvious limits, most being reached as we speak,

Ummm which limits are being reached? sorry but i missed the memo where they released a game that was able to fully emulate the real world...

the next gen will make graphics on each system a moot point, if they are not already, it wil boil down more to the artistry and imagination of the designers rather than a hang-up on "realism".

Actually the graphics increases arn't a moot point at all, the increase in quality has dramatically increased the appeal of consoles as we are no longer looking at blocky characters but something that resembles what it should.

To use GT4 as an example, how realistic can a racing game be with rubbish driver AI and no car damage?

See previous point about car damage, and the new consoles improved processing power should lead to better AI also

Oh, but look at the graphics! NO! Why would I want a moving car showroom on my TV? Its Pokemon with cars.

What the hell?

And as for the notion that the new gen of machine will emulate the jump in style and content that the 16 to 32 bit change did is simply not true and would challenge you to back up that nonsense, please, the 16 to 32 bit revolution was essentially a 2d to 3d change, best described by Super Mario World to Mario 64, if you are suggesting that somehow the next set of new machines will bring a shift of that magnitude I suggest you switch from Whatevers in your cup to Horlicks and go and have a bit of a rest in a darkened room. The Hype has finally gotten to you.

Em , compare a snes game to n64 game, and then compare the ps2 to ps3, the potention for difference is just as great. Though to some like yourself it may not be as obvious as you don't notice the vastly improved textures, physics and AI, but i can't do alot about that except maybe you should get your eye's checked out

The games that are playable on each machine, that, at the end of the day, is all that matters at all, nothing else.

Physics will to a large extent determine playability across the consoles/pc's , if one of em can't do the physics then the game play has to be scaled back as physics form part of the enviroment. Bringing down texture sizes is for most games going to be cosmetic between consoles/pc's...