[onQ]

Originally Posted by Ailuros

SONY will find a way to achieve some sort of BC. I still can't understand the agony behind it and the bulk of rather awkward questions here.



SoCs (especially those with UMA) should benefit from any sort of heterogeneous processing. The question is if you really need an API like OpenCL for a handheld console and its low level API or if its resource handling is already as heterogeneous as it can be. My money goes on the latter but it also stands open to correction.



MSAA should be nearly for free on the GPU block of NGP; why would you want some half-baked wannabe full scene antialiasing like MLAA is beyond me.

I was just using MLAA being done with the Cell as a example of things that can be done with the GPGPU instead of the CPU

[Ailuros]

Originally Posted by onQ

I was just using MLAA being done with the Cell as a example of things that can be done with the GPGPU instead of the CPU

You can use morphological anti-aliasing either through the CPU or GPU afaik. It has nothing to do with GPGPU per se.

If you're looking for cases where general purpose computing would make sense on a GPU, you'd still need a case with a decent amount of parallel threads in order for it to make more sense on a GPU than a CPU. How about physics for example?

[onQ]

Originally Posted by Ailuros

You can use morphological anti-aliasing either through the CPU or GPU afaik. It has nothing to do with GPGPU per se.

If you're looking for cases where general purpose computing would make sense on a GPU, you'd still need a case with a decent amount of parallel threads in order for it to make more sense on a GPU than a CPU. How about physics for example?

ok I'll say physics , but I was just trying to paint a picture of it being use to make games look better & doing different things


so what's your thought's could we see devs taking advantage of this to give us games that look better / do special effects better than PS3/360 in some areas or being able to make up for not having a Cell like CPU by doing the somethings that Cell is good at with it's GPGPU.


also I would like to see what type of things they can do with the Cameras since that's one of the things that Cell / GPGPUs are good at, augmented reality , face/head/eye tracking & magic mirror type stuff where they can change your face in real time.

[ltcommander.data]

Originally Posted by onQ

Crazy thought:

but isn't the SGX543MP+ a programmable GPU that can do some General Purpose Computing that support OpenCL?

could Sony use the CPU to emulate the PS2's CPU & use the GPU to help emulate the PS2's GPU?

just wondering. & if I'm thinking of this I'm pretty sure someone else has thought of this, it seem like a smart thing to do if it's possible to take some of the emulation work off of the CPU

& if not good enough for PS2 emulation what about Dreamcast emulation with the help of the GPU?

Bringing up OpenCL does beg the question of what type of APIs are Sony likely to support on the NGP? The major advantage of consoles is the ability to program close to metal and Carmack has said that is what will allow the NGP to stay a generation ahead of smartphones when they eventually arrive with comparable hardware. As such will higher level APIs like OpenCL be supported? Otherwise is bare metal GPGPU inconvenient for developers do to things like memory management, co-ordinating with the CPU, and perhaps having to manually control context switches by yourself between the GPU doing graphics tasks and GPGPU tasks? Certainly with Sony reserving an entire Cortex A9 core for the OS, it seems possible the OS could be quite heavy weight after-all. It would make sense for them to offer the option of using higher level APIs like OpenGL ES and OpenCL for easier porting between platforms as well as lower level interfaces.

[Exophase]

GPGPU means taking away ops for shading. I doubt a lot of games will find this to be a very attractive compromise. And even if you traded the entire GPU over you'd still have a small fraction of the throughput PS3 has with Cell.

I'm assuming the Cortex-A9 cores will have NEON, so it'll only be worth looking at GPGPU after you've exhausted SIMD on the CPUs.

[Ailuros]

Originally Posted by Exophase

GPGPU means taking away ops for shading. I doubt a lot of games will find this to be a very attractive compromise. And even if you traded the entire GPU over you'd still have a small fraction of the throughput PS3 has with Cell.

Unfortunately many still don't realize that while the PSP2 will be more than a decent upgrade to the PSP, it still has some significant distance to console hw.

I'm assuming the Cortex-A9 cores will have NEON, so it'll only be worth looking at GPGPU after you've exhausted SIMD on the CPUs.

What would help to know is how efficient ALU utilization is in common scenarios on SGX.

[onQ]

Originally Posted by Exophase

GPGPU means taking away ops for shading. I doubt a lot of games will find this to be a very attractive compromise. And even if you traded the entire GPU over you'd still have a small fraction of the throughput PS3 has with Cell.

I'm assuming the Cortex-A9 cores will have NEON, so it'll only be worth looking at GPGPU after you've exhausted SIMD on the CPUs.

Originally Posted by Ailuros

Unfortunately many still don't realize that while the PSP2 will be more than a decent upgrade to the PSP, it still has some significant distance to console hw.

isn't this the 1st time devs will be getting to work with something like this down to the metal besides working with the Cell in the PS3?

& it's a handheld so they can stand to cut back on other graphics if there is some special effects that they really want to do using the GPU.

like they can use it to make the best out of augmented reality since they don't need to render a whole scene



something like this


or a motion controlled puzzle game with close to real life physics

[Lazy8s]

Between the relatively high base resolution and the architecture's very affordable anti-aliasing, NGP graphics should be quite competitive with PS3/X360 on an absolute scale for image definition. TBDR is enough to bridge the gap between mobile and home in at least that aspect of graphics.

[onQ]

Originally Posted by Lazy8s

Between the relatively high base resolution and the architecture's very affordable anti-aliasing, NGP graphics should be quite competitive with PS3/X360 on an absolute scale for image definition. TBDR is enough to bridge the gap between mobile and home in at least that aspect of graphics.

thats what I'm thinking but everyone seems to think that a new handheld with newer technology has to have as much power as the PS3 & Xbox 360 to have games that look as good.

even after they seen with their own eyes that the Uncharted demo looked just as good if not better than most of the games that came out the 1st year or so of the Xbox 360 & PS3 launch .


but that was just a demo & sony might underclock the NGP from what it was when that demo was made for better battery life & heat (never know).



can any of the people that said NGP doesn't have Xbox360 / PS3 level graphics really look at this & say they don't think Gears of War 1 could be done on NGP & look better in some areas?

[Aeoniss]

I've seen that a few times now, and every time I'm impressed..

That (to me) does look like a 360 title. I'm sure that in a number of ways it probably doesn't stack up- but just wow is all I can say.. And that's just a showcase! Can you imagine what we'll be seeing in a year or two from now out of it??

-drools at the thought of Gears portable-
(yea yea, keep dreaming..)

[Ailuros]

Originally Posted by RudeCurve

Portable games for tiny screens don't need low level software. There's really no point in trying to squeeze every little bit of performance out of a portable when the screen is 5 inches.

The resolution is at 960*544; that's 43% less pixels than 720p. I don't see what the display area by itself has to do with it. If it would have something like a 320*240 resolution then it would be a completely different chapter.

Originally Posted by onQ

can any of the people that said NGP doesn't have Xbox360 / PS3 level graphics really look at this & say they don't think Gears of War 1 could be done on NGP & look better in some areas?

There's a huge difference between two hw solutions having comparable feature-sets and performance with that same feature-set. Both consoles will at all times have higher hw resources available. I doubt anyone ever said that the NGP GPU doesn't have comparable capabilities to the 2 consoles. Any doubts were more in the direction of the weird claims that NGP can match a PS3 for instance in terms of performance.

[onQ]

Originally Posted by Ailuros

The resolution is at 960*544; that's 43% less pixels than 720p. I don't see what the display area by itself has to do with it. If it would have something like a 320*240 resolution then it would be a completely different chapter.



There's a huge difference between two hw solutions having comparable feature-sets and performance with that same feature-set. Both consoles will at all times have higher hw resources available. I doubt anyone ever said that the NGP GPU doesn't have comparable capabilities to the 2 consoles. Any doubts were more in the direction of the weird claims that NGP can match a PS3 for instance in terms of performance.

no what I remember being said about the NGP before anyone seen it was that it would have early 360 /PS3 level graphics

& people was talking about it having 360 / PS3 level graphics then there was back & forth all across the internet of people saying "yes it does" "no it doesn't"

I don't remember seeing anyone claiming that it had the same power as the Xbox 360/PS3 I mostly remember seeing people talk about the graphics being close to PS3 level & a lot of back & forth about if it could or not.

[Ailuros]

Originally Posted by onQ

no what I remember being said about the NGP before anyone seen it was that it would have early 360 /PS3 level graphics

& people was talking about it having 360 / PS3 level graphics then there was back & forth all across the internet of people saying "yes it does" "no it doesn't"

I don't remember seeing anyone claiming that it had the same power as the Xbox 360/PS3 I mostly remember seeing people talk about the graphics being close to PS3 level & a lot of back & forth about if it could or not.

All SGX cores are at least >DX9.0/SM3.0 which places the SGX543MP4+ right next to the respective Xenos/RSX capabilities. Due to the differences however in overall system performance between 360/PS3 and NGP you shouldn't be surprised if developers handle resources more carefully on the latter and end up with a couple of trade-offs compared to the consoles.

[Arwin]

Now that I'm done pressing the report button (which may be the very first time I did that for rude behaviour since the reputation system was abolished), let's attempt to get the level of discussion back up a little.

The kind of performance you need from any device depends on the ambition of the game that is going to run on it. Sure enough, the NGP isn't likely to struggle with Angry Birds, but yet when I'm looking at the PSP version of Angry Birds, that game struggles with performance. Why? One major reason seems to be that Angry Birds is a Mini, which runs on a higher level platform that also runs on PS3 (and Angry Birds doesn't run smoothly there either), making it less likely that the game was optimised to run on the PSP hardware. On the other hand, that suggests that Angry Birds would need to be heavily optimised to run on the PSP.

Now lets have a look at the NGP, where we're seeing various games that previously targetted only the HD consoles are now also being announced for NGP, and where developers have suggested that it is definitely possible to add NGP as a target for multi-platform development traditionally aimed only at the PS3, 360 and PC. The PhyreEngine 3 GDC presentation pointed out that the NGP can run the same kind of shaders, but they'll have to be simplified a bit. NGP can run the same models, but you may have to LOD more aggressively and/or strip some vertices and reduce textures. And the NGP still has less performance in the CPU area. The upside of the lower resolution of the NGP is that you need less memory, less vertices and textures to achieve a similar effect, and the image quality will still be high because the pixels are relatively smaller, even when factoring in the closer distance to your face. I already calculated back when the original PSP was launched that the pixel size of the original PSP was equivalent to many PC monitors when factoring in the distance, area of view covered, etc., and that still mostly holds up today, though much depends on how close you hold the screen to your face.

When designing the hardware, Sony has had to balance out price and performance, and do so taking into account day to day use. Contrary to some people's belief, the iPhone is primarily used for 2D graphics. Higher resolution therefore comes at a relatively small performance cost. When designing the NGP, Sony specifically wanted developers to be able to leverage their HD assets on a mobile platform. For demanding 3D graphics, every bit of resolution countes, witness even many HD games not running at 'native' resolutions. Also, the NGP has to be affordable to be able to reach a larger audience quick enough, which is another reason why a higher resolution screen could be prohibitive.

All of this suggests however that there is every reason to suggest that if the NGP is to run games similar to its non-portable HD brethren, you need to push the hardware. This is no different then how the PSP had to be pushed to be able to run PS2 hardware.

[RudeCurve]

That's all fine and dandy but why would you want to output equal graphics to that of the HD consoles when you still have a 5" screen that is not held 2" from your face? You develop the game to fit the resolution that the hardware is designed for. This is why you have UE for NGP so that you don't have to program to the metal and still have games that look like home consoles while viewing on a smaller 5" non-720p screen.

The Angy Birds example is flawed. If you can't run that simple game on a PS3 smoothly then there is someting much bigger going on than not coding to the metal.

Originally Posted by Arwin

This is no different then how the PSP had to be pushed to be able to run PS2 hardware.

Huh?

The problem with porting PS2 games to PSP was that of the non existence of multiplatform game engines like UE. Almost everything had to be developed from scratch and even then it wasn't enough to equal the PS2 game ie Granturismo...but that's ok because nobody really expected to.

Now if you want to bring in emulators then yeah they're going to require much more processor power to emulate lessor hardware.

[Arwin]

Originally Posted by RudeCurve

That's all fine and dandy but why would you want to output equal graphics to that of the HD consoles when you still have a 5" screen that is not held 2" from your face? You develop the game to fit the resolution that the hardware is designed for. This is why you have UE for NGP so that you don't have to program to the metal and still have games that look like home consoles while viewing on a smaller 5" non-720p screen.

Do you want to make a bet with me on whether 2" or 20" is closer to the average distance that people hold their PSPs. Were it 2", then you'd actually see the pixels quite clearly, if that is, you're not too old to even be able to focus on that distance.

The Angy Birds example is flawed. If you can't run that simple game on a PS3 smoothly then there is someting much bigger going on than not coding to the metal.

Yes, obviously. Not the point though.

Huh?

I meant software of course.

The problem with porting PS2 games to PSP was that of the non existence of multiplatform game engines like UE. Almost everything had to be developed from scratch and even then it wasn't enough to equal the PS2 game ie Granturismo...but that's ok because nobody really expected to.

You are completely wrong. Many games didn't require much rework at all. Porting a game from PS2 to PSP was actually quite easy. Most work was the same as it will be now - downscaling assets.

Now if you want to bring in emulators then yeah they're going to require much more processor power to emulate lessor hardware.

And that's the thing - even when developers will use something like Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine itself will be programmed to the metal to a fair extent in order to keep the NGP as close to its HD brethren as possible. Same for PhyreEngine 3 stuff. Then there is the Augmented Reality applications, which actually need a full Core to do the work we've been seeing demos of so far. Rest assured that is already programmed to the metal to a large extent. If that wasn't the case, there probably wouldn't be any processing power left to make an actual game with the tech.

Also, I think you may not be fully aware of what makes a game look good on HD consoles. You still need shaders, motion blur (you're no longer getting it for free like on the PSP ), good lighting systems, framebuffer effects, particle systems and so on to make a game look good.

You're wrong about UE not being available on PS2 too, by the way. There were many multi-platform engines last gen, including Unreal Engine 2.

[onQ]

has it been said at what MHz the SGX543MP4+ will be running at? 200MHz , 400MHz or somewhere in between?


at 400MHz isn't that 266 Million polygons per second just under the PS3 275 Million polygons per second

& fill rates of 8Gpixels per second vs PS3's GPU 4.4Gpixels per second?

[Ailuros]

Originally Posted by onQ

has it been said at what MHz the SGX543MP4+ will be running at? 200MHz , 400MHz or somewhere in between?

Rumors point at 200MHz, but can't be sure either.

[lwill]

Originally Posted by Ailuros

Rumors point at 200MHz, but can't be sure either.

Well, going by Epic's statement that the NGP is four times as powerful as any other handheld gaming device in existence (excluding the ipad2), the system is roughly twice as powerful as the ipad2. Since it has twice the cores, the clockspeeds of the CPU and GPU are probably similar to the iPad2.

[Ailuros]

Originally Posted by lwill

Well, going by Epic's statement that the NGP is four times as powerful as any other handheld gaming device in existence (excluding the ipad2), the system is roughly twice as powerful as the ipad2. Since it has twice the cores, the clockspeeds of the CPU and GPU are probably similar to the iPad2.

Clock for clock obviously 4 cores are twice as fast as 2. The SGX543MP2 in the iPad2 should be clocked at =/>250MHz. The iPad by the way isn't exactly a handheld gaming device in the strict sense either.

[onQ]

Originally Posted by Ailuros

Rumors point at 200MHz, but can't be sure either.

is that from a inside source or just people going by the SGX543MP specs ?

[RDGoodla]

Originally Posted by Ailuros

Clock for clock obviously 4 cores are twice as fast as 2. The SGX543MP2 in the iPad2 should be clocked at =/>250MHz. The iPad by the way isn't exactly a handheld gaming device in the strict sense either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyNSJHafxrA

1:20 ~ 1:35

It seems that Epic only said 4 times performance of "previously avaliable platform"?

However, on Jan.27 (only 1.5 month before ipad 2 release) the ipad2 development kits may be "avaliable" for Epic?


If NGP uses SGX543 MP4 @ 400 MHz (which was reported more than a year ago), it may have 4 times raw performance of ipad2's GPU...?

[onQ]

Originally Posted by RDGoodla

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyNSJHafxrA

1:20 ~ 1:35

It seems that Epic only said 4 times performance of "previously avaliable platform"?

However, on Jan.27 (only 1.5 month before ipad 2 release) the ipad2 development kits may be "avaliable" for Epic?


If NGP uses SGX543 MP4 @ 400 MHz (which was reported more than a year ago), it may have 4 times raw performance of ipad2's GPU...?

if it is @ 400MHz that changes everything & it will be able to put out games @ 960x544 that look better than some PS3 & Xbox 360 games

& it proves that Sony has lost it's mind because that's insane 266 Million polygons per second , 8Gpixels per second on a handheld with a 5" OLED screen

the CPU might not match the PS3's CPU but that GPU @ 400MHz will match the PS3's GPU if it's that powerful & only has to push out 960x544 games add that to the fact that it might have more ram


that's a little bit too much for me to wrap my mind around right now so I'm just going think that it's 200MHz until we get some specs because that's crazy & to think in a few years this will be matched by everyday smartphones

[scently]

Or it could be soft-capped at launch and uncapped later as battery tech improves, similar to the psp situation at launch.

Realistically though, I expect the clock speed to be at 200MHz for the GPU and 1GHz+ for the CPU.

[onQ]

Originally Posted by scently

Or it could be soft-capped at launch and uncapped later as battery tech improves, similar to the psp situation at launch.

Realistically though, I expect the clock speed to be at 200MHz for the GPU and 1GHz+ for the CPU.

I seen someone post that they heard that the CPU would be under 1GHz ,


which I guess is ok since it's a Quad-core CPU in a handheld

so maybe 800MHz or 900MHz

I hope that more info leak out soon, I want to have a better idea of what we are dealing with.

this is the 1st time a handheld ever caught my attention.