PS3 Cell article - looks good

gre_soul

cell tech used in the ps3 seems to be quite the beast!!

http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.html

rainbow kirby

Linkified

RE*AC*TOR

So in a nutshell Sony have decided to pursue the multiple processor / no cache route - otherwise known as the really really easy to programme for route :rolleyes:

FuzzyWuzzyWazza

I have read some developers comment on the PS3 some said that while the processor will be designed for a next gen. console they are not too confident in the hardware, as it will be made by a major appliance manufacturer.

Peteee

Aye tis a good article.

If its as good as he says it is (and, lets face it it wont be) then for those who havnt read the article 1 cell chip is claimed to be as fast as 5 overclocked opetrons (read as 5 'overclocked to 3.0 ghz' AMD64's basically)

The PS3 is rumoured to have 4 cell chips!!!!!!!

Of course, if they dont get the api's right and assorted stuff (compilers etc) then it'll be hell to program for. Last I heard they were going with something to do with linux and openGL, but i'm not too sure.

I have read some developers comment on the PS3 some said that while the processor will be designed for a next gen. console they are not too confident that the hardware will be made by a major appliance manufacturer.

The chips are being designed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM with IBM and Sony fabbing them.

FuzzyWuzzyWazza

Peteee wrote:

The chips are being designed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM with IBM and Sony fabbing them.

Yep, I am not dissing the chip, just that some developers are not confident the rest of the hardware, due largley to who will be making it

Retr0gamer

FuzzyWuzzyWazza wrote:

I have read some developers comment on the PS3 some said that while the processor will be designed for a next gen. console they are not too confident that the hardware will be made by a major appliance manufacturer.

That quote can only be taken as a load of Bull****. It's from the head of Tecmo which currently is publishing games exclusively for Microsoft so he is duty bound to say this since more xboxen sold = more tecmo games sold.

Some developers are saying that the PS3 will be harder to program for. It doesn't mean anything since both PS1 and PS2 were difficult to get used to for developers.

And before I go may I say 'Emotion Engine'.

hyungsup

Well in my opinion sony wants to set themselves as console king for a long time!
If they can sell a lot of ps2s then that means what they have more power over software companies...
As you may or may not know... all the profit generated in this business is the software... the game it self
You can't earn money buy selling the equipment at high prices
so their tacktic is make a long lasting console!!
So they can concentrate on softwares!!
It's good for them cause they can earn more money and good for us cause I don have to throw away my 300 pound sterling ps2.....
Can't wait for it.....
Do you know when it's comin out???

gre_soul

i think i remember developers complaining about the ps2 when it was a
young fresh console...well its not going to get any easier but saying
that from a hardware perspective it is really a tasty piece of kit!
will it be used to its full potential? well i think maybe after a few
years of developers getting the hang of it...games are going to look
quite nice i think

oh and i cant wait for the hype machine to drive home the message that
cell is god or something mad, remember the emotion engine (youve got
to love sony marketing!) there is something a bit sinister about all
these cells being able to communicate with each other just think the
cell in the toaster conspiring with the ps3 and other cell powered
gadgetry! a bit like the Borgs collective consciousness! its evil i
tells ya!

projectmayhem

cell is unbelievable. i've been following that and other sites for a while now reading up. hopefully now nvidia can come up with the goods with gpu, it's look quite tastey so far though.

not only will it probably leave nintendo wanting, and xbox in a roll-reversal situation, but the technology will probably dominate the PC market too. IBM being involved means Apple will be all over this like flies are to ****e

Peteee

TBH it probably wont leave Microsoft or Nintendo wanting. Theier chips are being developed by IBM as well. I hardly think IBM are gonna say 'Here Sony, heres a brand new cell processor, its 10x faster then all other chips, ummm MS and Nintendo, we have a few G5 chips lying about the place, i'm sure you can make do with those'

Even though it certainly seems that way now, they must have something up their sleeve.

Its all well and good for xbox to have, say, twice the power of the ps2, because it was released about a year or so after, but for 3 consoles that are likely to be out at the same time, having Sony's console be 10x more powerful then the competition, well......

Matt Simis

Peteee wrote:

TBH it probably wont leave Microsoft or Nintendo wanting. Theier chips are being developed by IBM as well. I hardly think IBM are gonna say 'Here Sony, heres a brand new cell processor, its 10x faster then all other chips, ummm MS and Nintendo, we have a few G5 chips lying about the place, i'm sure you can make do with those'
..

Well, thats just gone and ruined Mayhems "us vs them" tangent hasnt it!


Matt

Peteee

Then again, flip side of the coin is that Sony (mostly) has invested billions of dollars into this, a lot of which has gone to IBM. MS and nintendo, AFAIK, have one nothng

I think microsoft are gonna come out the loosers on this round.

Why, they dont have anything to loose

Nintendo, as a company, could possibly go down the tube if Revolution is'nt good.

Sony is betting a hell of a lot on the PS3 (blu-ray discs, memory sticks, cell processors, PSP interoperability) If PS3 takes off, then there is a good chance Blu-Ray's will become standard (remember how the ps2 was a big driving force behind dvd's quick adoption) making sony a rake of cash.

If PS3 supports memory stick, then people will be more inclined to but sony cameras or whatever since they already have a memory stick from the ps3.

If cell is a success it will make it into TV's (Toshiba and Sony are doing this anyway but...) PC's, toasters etc again making Sony a ton of cash

If xbox2 fails, well its only a drop in the ocean for microsoft, a couple of billion here and there isnt going to trouble bill that much

Retr0gamer

I think the xbox 2 will be a serious rival in this generation of consoles. Its coming out much earlier than the other consoles and microsoft have succeeded in the goal of the first xbox, to make xbox a household name.

Nintendo will be out late as usual and be kept afloat by its excellent software and IP's (can't believe I typed IP) and by the fanboys that will buy anything thats from Nintendo.

As for the Cell chip. It smells a lot like the bull**** that was the emotion engine. I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a very fast evolution of a risc chip. The PS3 will sell on its name and it definitely hasthe support to provide the software.

I think this round will be similar to the last generation except that Microsoft will have a bigger share of the console market. Then again I could be wrong.

Peteee

Yeah, the bull **** that was the emotion engine. Frankly all of this is blown out of proportion by journalists. I think this is where the whole 'toy story rendering in real time' came from.

Remember when GT2 came out, and sony said that the intro for it was GT3 running in real time?

How many people believed it was true???

In my opinion, GT3 looks BETTER then that intro!

And anyway, it'll be the games, as usual that decides what console to buy.

Retr0gamer

sony also made the comment that the graphics from the PS1 would far surpass the visual effects in Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park

Peteee

Probably, although i'm sure their marketing department said

'mmm playstation can push 60,000 polygons a second. There was only 50,000 polygons in the t-rex in jurassic park, therefore we can say that the playstation is better then jurrasic park'

popinfresh

Hmm, I wonder what the graphics are gonna look like on these monster machines. Was it true that halflife2 won't even max out the X-box? . I can't wait to see screenshots of ps3 potential

Peteee

what??

A Xbox is merely a pentium3 733mhz with 64mb of ram and a 32mb geforce3 graphics card.

A pc basically.

The above pc will probably not run HL2 as it was meant to be played.

gre_soul

Peteee wrote:

what??

A Xbox is merely a pentium3 733mhz with 64mb of ram and a 32mb geforce3 graphics card.

A pc basically.

The above pc will probably not run HL2 as it was meant to be played.

no the above pc would not, but it would not be capible of halo 2 either!

Peteee

True, but remember an xbox only has to render about 635 lines of resolution (PAL) wheras the pc game has to render it a 800 lines minimum (and 1024 lines if your being realistic)

The Fitz

cool

popinfresh

Still though, I wonder what a PS3 would be capable of, we're prolly not gonna know for 4 years

Retr0gamer

More like next year. Xbox 2 is supposedly out at the end of 2005

Peteee

Dunno where your gettin 4 years from

Rumours are that all consoles will be unveiled at this years E3, which usually implies a japanese launch at the end of this year, or beginning of 2006, with a european launch of summer/xmas 2006

padraigf

Anyone who buys into the story that it's going to be as fast as 5, 10, 15, 20 or whatever number of current desktop PC chips should stop and think for a second!

If it was so superior to anything that Intel and AMD have up their sleeve's wouldn't they just drop their current line of technology and start work on something similar ? It's obviously going to be nowhere near as powerful as they say.

Two words - Emotion Engine.
Another two - Marketing Hype.

Sure, it's a revolutionary design and no doubt it will be very fast at some things, but the fact that it is so revolutionary is what will hold it back. It's going to be completely different to program for, and isn't in the slightest compatible with any curent architectures. How will it take over the market for the PC and Mac ? Every single OS, program, game and driver would have to be rewritten. I don't see that happening any time soon. As archaic as x86 is, we're stuck with it for the forseeable future, at least in the PC world.

Don't believe all you read. That article just *gushes* for the cell chip, glossing over its weak points.

popinfresh

Dunno where your gettin 4 years from

Ah yeah but you never see the full potential of a console for a few years. The initial PS3 games will be PS2 games only slightly better. The PS3 will be capable of graphics an awful lot better than HL2, it'll prolly be 2 years before we see games better than HL2, and 4 years (at least) before we see the real potential of the ps3/x-box2

gre_soul

popinfresh wrote:

Ah yeah but you never see the full potential of a console for a few years. The initial PS3 games will be PS2 games only slightly better. The PS3 will be capable of graphics an awful lot better than HL2, it'll prolly be 2 years before we see games better than HL2, and 4 years (at least) before we see the real potential of the ps3/x-box2

2008 here we come

projectmayhem

padraigf wrote:

Anyone who buys into the story that it's going to be as fast as 5, 10, 15, 20 or whatever number of current desktop PC chips should stop and think for a second!

If it was so superior to anything that Intel and AMD have up their sleeve's wouldn't they just drop their current line of technology and start work on something similar ? It's obviously going to be nowhere near as powerful as they say.

Two words - Emotion Engine.
Another two - Marketing Hype.

Sure, it's a revolutionary design and no doubt it will be very fast at some things, but the fact that it is so revolutionary is what will hold it back. It's going to be completely different to program for, and isn't in the slightest compatible with any curent architectures. How will it take over the market for the PC and Mac ? Every single OS, program, game and driver would have to be rewritten. I don't see that happening any time soon. As archaic as x86 is, we're stuck with it for the forseeable future, at least in the PC world.

Don't believe all you read. That article just *gushes* for the cell chip, glossing over its weak points.

some points:

1. that article is written by some guy, not a sony marketing guru
2. the project has been carried out behind closed doors, i'm sure amd and intel would do the same if they knew what was being done
3. considering ibm is in the project, i'd bet good money on apple crawling all over cell chips as soon as they're available
4. every OS wouldn't have to be re-written. the ps3 will be unix based, like the ps2, and if it makes life tough for microsoft then i'd buy into it a lot more then i am now..
5. it's not going to show it's true colours for a few years. only in the last year have we had the ps2 being used properly by developers

LookingFor

Just two points I want to make:

1) It's highly unlikely there'll be 4 of these in PS3. Even just 1 would be enough to make it the most powerful CPU in any of the next gen systems anyway, and I think that's the most likely route they will take (possibly 2, but I wouldn't bet on it).

2) IBM is claiming that Cell will "go easy" on developers..

3) Sony, at least as far as released specs and demos went, were quite honest about PS2's capabilities. Generally speaking it was the journalists who blew things out of proportion. The PS2's GS can draw 60m polys per second, raw (and that's how sony characterised that figure - a peak max), but Sony also at the same time released a figure with effects turned on of 15-20m polys/sec, which has been achieved in PS2 games - but journalists chose to ignore that, for the most part. The initial demos shown back in '99 have also, imo, been eclipsed graphically in certain real PS2 games.