Carmack's Hands On Impressions of Xbox 360 & PS3

[patsu]

Actually, I think John Carmack may be refering to the "general" (or combined) memory challenges on PS3. I believe these include:

* 256K Local Store

* Partitioned memory requires carefully planned layout first (In some modes, I believe the SPU Local Stores must also be mapped to this global map, but my memory is vague now).

* Less available memory to work with due to OS reservation. So far, video memory seems ok (but the perception is still there). System memory seems to be the bottleneck for his work.

It is easier to summarize these challenges in one "memory limitation" statement rather than diving into the details (because they are somewhat related).

Some of these issues have a flip side (e.g., They are one of the reasons why SPU is blazingly fast, or the partitioned memory allows them to tap on secondary bandwidth should they run into the limitation elsewhere in the game).

I am just glad more engine is making use of Cell now. Sony, get the Epic one working quickly too.

 

[wowfactor]

The 84MB OS memory reservation is not entirely used by the OS but a portion of it. The rest is not used. It is reserved for future uses and optimizations.
Sony decided to have an overhead in the os memory department should they decide to have more features to run in concurrent with games. Right now there are not many programs running in the background.
If there are not many features to be introduced in the future then the OS reservation will be reduced and future games will utilize it.
The 360 OS memory reservation is so short-sighted. They cannot introduce more features once the 32MB filled up later in the life of the console. If they increase the size of the os memory then the older games won't work.
One apparent problem the 360 having right now that you can see is when you want to access the blades while in game, the game is staggered a lot before you can see the blades.

 

[ninzel]

If any type of developer should be ready to deal with partitioned video and system RAM it should be a PC dev correct?

 

[sionyboy]

So theoretically, in a years time the ps3 OS could be down to say 10mb XDR/ 16mb DDR, or is there a cutoff point where the OS would not be allowed to get any smaller.

Seems strange to have memory 'goalposts' that move on a closed system, is this the norm?

 

[Hardknock]

One apparent problem the 360 having right now that you can see is when you want to access the blades while in game, the game is staggered a lot before you can see the blades.

Not on my games. There was a problem with launch games but now the blade comes out smoothly on all games after the initial launch period.

And who says all of the 360's 32MBs are used yet? They just added MSN messenger recently and there are many more features planned for the future. All in those 32MBs.

 

[swaaye]

Basically he says what I've thought all along. It's rather obvious that PS3 is a very complex system on many levels, and is more complex to deal with than 360. It's always fascinating to hear what he has to say. He never smooths things over to avoid insulting companies. He just speaks his mind and tells you what he's had to deal with.

He's using OpenGL on all of the platforms, right?

 

[Titanio]

There's a video of the keynote up here:

http://www.quakeunity.com/file=2513

I'm about halfway through. He talks a fair bit about the asset/texture production tools, which will be demoed tomorrow, and also how he sees art resources hopefully being produced going forward. On a technical point he mentions that the race track shown in that demo uses a 64kx64k surface texture, and they have others that are 128kx128k, or 16 times the size of those used in Enemy Territory. I'm guessing their compression will have to have improved since ET too, then - they talked about ET's surface textures being about 400MB on disc, so these 128kx128k textures would take up 6.4GB each using the same level of compression! Use two of those, and you're at nearly 13GB, not to mention whatever other 64kx64k textures you're using elsewhere etc.

 

[JardeL]

He's using OpenGL on all of the platforms, right?

OpenGL on Xbox 360 ?.. [SIZE=-1]I don't think so ...
[/SIZE]

 

[morlock]

OpenGL on Xbox 360 ?.. [SIZE=-1]I don't think so ...
[/SIZE]

He even says that DirectX 9 is a better platfrm than OpenGL.

 

[iceberg187]

So theoretically, in a years time the ps3 OS could be down to say 10mb XDR/ 16mb DDR, or is there a cutoff point where the OS would not be allowed to get any smaller.

Seems strange to have memory 'goalposts' that move on a closed system, is this the norm?

The 32MB was marked by Microsoft at the beginning. Then again, they are an OS company. I'm guessing that they have started this on the PSP and moved it over to the PS3.

 

[Rangers]

Basically he says what I've thought all along. It's rather obvious that PS3 is a very complex system on many levels, and is more complex to deal with than 360. It's always fascinating to hear what he has to say. He never smooths things over to avoid insulting companies. He just speaks his mind and tells you what he's had to deal with.

He's using OpenGL on all of the platforms, right?

One thing I thought was interesting was he specifically mentioned the megabytes of RAM used by the Sony OS, which is apparently under NDA.

So it's kind of a testament to his power that he doesn't worry about that. I mean what's Sony gonna do, he's John Carmack. I mean I'm sure he couldn't reveal highly sensitive stuff under NDA, but to a certain extent he has latitude to speak freely.

 

[Arwin]

Basically he says what I've thought all along. It's rather obvious that PS3 is a very complex system on many levels, and is more complex to deal with than 360. It's always fascinating to hear what he has to say. He never smooths things over to avoid insulting companies. He just speaks his mind and tells you what he's had to deal with.

He's using OpenGL on all of the platforms, right?

That's what he says, although he things DirectX9 is better now, they're doing so in order to keep compatibility with Mac

 

[sunscar]

That may be true as to what was reserved months ago, but it has changed a few times, and may not be true, now - God only knows what it is right now... I haven't been keeping up.

 

[Neb]

Basically he says what I've thought all along. It's rather obvious that PS3 is a very complex system on many levels, and is more complex to deal with than 360. It's always fascinating to hear what he has to say. He never smooths things over to avoid insulting companies. He just speaks his mind and tells you what he's had to deal with.
He's using OpenGL on all of the platforms, right?

And that is refreshing, he goes to the point without taking the reader/listener through a fairyland walk!

 

[Titanio]

Gametrailers have some vids up, most of it his Carmack repeating what he said at the keynote, but it looks like their next video(s) may show off the editing tools which would be cool:

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/4440.html

He also seems to suggest in this video that the 80GB of uncompressed data figure refers perhaps to just one 128k x 128k surface texture. I might have picked that up wrong, but that seemed to be the suggestion. Anyways, worth keeping an eye on, particularly if a video of the editor goes up.

 

[Graham]

I dont get what he is saying there. He says that 256MB are enough, but you cant use all the memory available on the PS3's video memory?

So some MB are sitting there idle?

Why?

I think what he means is that the game requires far more system memory than graphics memory, whereas RSX can in theory use all the memory available, the cpu's read speed to graphics memory is such that you really only have the XDR available to use in a meaningful way - which ends up being ~192mb.

 

[Blade47167]

One thing I thought was interesting was he specifically mentioned the megabytes of RAM used by the Sony OS, which is apparently under NDA.

So it's kind of a testament to his power that he doesn't worry about that. I mean what's Sony gonna do, he's John Carmack. I mean I'm sure he couldn't reveal highly sensitive stuff under NDA, but to a certain extent he has latitude to speak freely.

Pretty sure OS ram usage isn't in the NDA or many people have broken before this time. There have been numerous articles discussing this down the exact usage to say pull up friends list via xmb. Its all been outlined before and it much greater detail.

It wouldn't look good on anyone to release that kinda of info. It doesn't matter who you are.

 

[Xenon]

I cringe everytime I hear Carmack speak about the PS3. If he didn't have anything bad to say about it then he wouldn't have anything to say at all. We all know John hates developing for multi-core processors and adapting to architectures that are radically different from the one's he's been used to for the majority of his life. The hiring of the Naughty Dog programmer and EDGE contributer is further proof that Carmack wants nothing to do with the PS3 directly. I just find it odd that a graphic engine genius spends more time complaining about the PS3 than paving new ground and coming up with superior best practices for Cell/RSX development.

 

[Sound_Card]

I cringe everytime I hear Carmack speak about the PS3. If he didn't have anything bad to say about it then he wouldn't have anything to say at all. We all know John hates developing for multi-core processors and adapting to architectures that are radically different from the one's he's been used to for the majority of his life. The hiring of the Naughty Dog programmer and EDGE contributer is further proof that Carmack wants nothing to do with the PS3 directly. I just find it odd that a graphic engine genius spends more time complaining about the PS3 than paving new ground and coming up with superior best practices for Cell/RSX development.

If he stoped to praise the PS3 in how much it is better than the 360, would you be complaining that he is wasting his time?

I don't think so...

 

[AlphaWolf]

I cringe everytime I hear Carmack speak about the PS3. If he didn't have anything bad to say about it then he wouldn't have anything to say at all. We all know John hates developing for multi-core processors and adapting to architectures that are radically different from the one's he's been used to for the majority of his life. The hiring of the Naughty Dog programmer and EDGE contributer is further proof that Carmack wants nothing to do with the PS3 directly. I just find it odd that a graphic engine genius spends more time complaining about the PS3 than paving new ground and coming up with superior best practices for Cell/RSX development.

Last I checked the 360 was multi-core.