What significancy does this have? Older PAL 60GB PS3s had EE emulation already.
Downloadable PS1 games and backwards compatibility
- Thread starter eloic
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What significancy does this have? Older PAL 60GB PS3s had EE emulation already.
Here is the patent.
I found the part of the graphics sub-system most interesting.
It is interesting that they offer two alternatives for supporting emulation of the graphics subsystem and that the GPU carrying out the GS work is capable of executing shader programs.
I´d say emulation is coming to the PS3 pretty soon, the EE emulation part has been working for over two years now, it´s the JIT compiler for the GS code that seems to be the hard part. After seeing what free PS2 emulation sw is capable of I´d expect Sony to have come pretty far by now.
The verification process must be really time consuming considering the game library of over 2000 titles for different regions as well.
Edit: this part doesn´t even mention the option that the Cell may have only 7 working SPEs, but explains that it may have even more SPEs and PPEs.
I found the part of the graphics sub-system most interesting.
It is interesting that they offer two alternatives for supporting emulation of the graphics subsystem and that the GPU carrying out the GS work is capable of executing shader programs.
I´d say emulation is coming to the PS3 pretty soon, the EE emulation part has been working for over two years now, it´s the JIT compiler for the GS code that seems to be the hard part. After seeing what free PS2 emulation sw is capable of I´d expect Sony to have come pretty far by now.
The verification process must be really time consuming considering the game library of over 2000 titles for different regions as well.
Edit: this part doesn´t even mention the option that the Cell may have only 7 working SPEs, but explains that it may have even more SPEs and PPEs.
Maybe they binned the Cells with 7 working SPEs with the EE+GS or GS harware and binned all Cells with 8 working SPEs to all current non-PS2-BC PS3s. The eight working SPE may currently be idling waiting for the new BC-emulation sw to get ready.
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That would be cool, I am thinking of binning my JAP 60GB model and get a "slim PS3" so that I can play my DVD's on it and then drop the old DVD player.
I have a hypothetical: Kotaku had a report a month ago or so that Sony was looking to extend the Playstation Brand and open the PSN store up to other devices.
This says there are 8 SPE when we all know one is locked out. Could this also have something to do with plans by Toshiba and Sony to put the Cell into other devices? Hypothetically, could they brand and sell say a laptop or even just an accelerator board for PCs that allows you to play downloaded or maybe even the actual PS2 discs?
The longer odds hypothetical is that Sony's yields are so great, they plan on freeing up that 8th SPE through a firmware update that may also enable BC for those currently lacking.
Anyways, it is an interesting and timely development, considering we were speculating yesterday and then that article drops.
I have kind of a side question for anybody who may know: What is going on exactly when I set my PS3 to fully upscale and "smooth" PS1 & 2 games? And could this development actually improve IQ? Because on some games, that "smoothing" option is hideous while on others it almost looks like added AA.
This says there are 8 SPE when we all know one is locked out. Could this also have something to do with plans by Toshiba and Sony to put the Cell into other devices? Hypothetically, could they brand and sell say a laptop or even just an accelerator board for PCs that allows you to play downloaded or maybe even the actual PS2 discs?
The longer odds hypothetical is that Sony's yields are so great, they plan on freeing up that 8th SPE through a firmware update that may also enable BC for those currently lacking.
Anyways, it is an interesting and timely development, considering we were speculating yesterday and then that article drops.
I have kind of a side question for anybody who may know: What is going on exactly when I set my PS3 to fully upscale and "smooth" PS1 & 2 games? And could this development actually improve IQ? Because on some games, that "smoothing" option is hideous while on others it almost looks like added AA.
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I don´t have any answers, but I do know that the current PS2-BC emulation sw on on the Euro-PS3s is taxing the the Cell pretty hard, since the PlayTV background recording does not work when playing PS2 games, but works when playing PS3 games.
I guess if the technology specified in the patent allows more efficient EE-emulation than in the current BC-sw it could potentially free up some CPU-power for better upscaling, smothing etc. That is if Sony would bother to spend even more money on testing old games, which I doubt.
grandmaster
Veteran
The 7 SPUs came about due to yield issues right? Your suggestion would indicate that Sony is binning tons of chips that would otherwise have worked just fine in the PS3. And not only that, but they did it when they were aggressively trying to cut costs on the machine. At the point where the 40GB PS3 was introduced, would Sony really have had the financial leeway to bin off tons of CPUs like this? Or did their yields on Cell increase enormously?
Strikes me as somewhat unlikely to be honest.
I am pretty sure that the yields improved a lot when they went from 90 nm to 65 nm, which happened during the first year of the PS3.
Maybe they also didn´t bin off 8 working-SPU Cells on the 90 nm process for later use, but just crippled them to 7 or maybe they are used in the Euro-PS3s with PS2-BC which only has the GS hw, there are several options.
I don´t think it´s that outlandish to expect Sony to find some clever way of using the fully working Cells, it would be a true waste of silicon if they didn´t.
Is everyone using the word 'bin' in the same context? Some statements seem a tad ambiguous, but I'm not feeling a cohesive debate here. Maybe I'm out of tune?
I understood Crossbar to mean that Sony sorted (binned) Cell's into 7 and 8 SPE lots. The 7 SPE Cells were used in BC PS3's. 8 SPE Cells were put into the non-GS PS3's with a future eye on using the 8th SPE for BC. If there was any overflow of working 8 SPE Cells, these could be used in the BC-capable PS3s with a SPE disabled. The only way this wouldn't work was if there weren't enough 8 SPE Cells for the non-BC PS3s.
It's a bit of a long-shot theory, but I can see sense in it. The phasing out of any BC hardware across the whole range could also point to 100% 8 SPE Cells across the board now, introduced when yields were high enough. I don't know what yield feasibility if like with this though, how many duff chips are getting disposed of with no home.
There would make their way into IBM's Cell-Blade servers etc., charged at a premium for maximum ROI. If PS3's are now being equipped with 8 SPE Cells, there's no market for 7 SPE duffers, which makes them a loss to the production lines. If yields are high it's no problem. Otherwise this stands against the argument that PS3's now have 1-8 configured Cells.
Yes that was the intended meaning. The term "binning" is commonly used in semiconductor manufacturing where memory and cpu ICs can be sorted for different operating frequencies depending on production tests conducted on the different batches.
Some of them probably did that, but IBM is now using the dp-enhanced Cell with DDR2 interface for their blade servers. If we also consider there are fair bit over 20 million PS3 produced, there should have been quite a few millions of fully working Cells that would find a pretty small market to take advantage of. I don´t know if Toshiba started the production of their hi-end TV-sets using Cell yet, they were probably waiting for the low-power 45 nm version of Cell.
On 65 nm the yields should have improved a lot and there are also other simple ways to add redundancy to improve yields if necessary, such as redundant cache lines.
Looks like Toshiba are going SPURSEngine. Could be Sony go Cell. It'd work well with a cross-device network, as the same code could be used across devices. Still, the market for Cell's in CE devices is looking pretty slim at present.
I think it would be entirely possible for a PS2 game to have some work done on it to work on any model PS3.
The question is, will that work be "worth it"? I don't think so.
Isn't the SPURS Engine basically a Cell with four active SPE's?
Hi,
There's a (maybe stupid) question bo-bo-bouncing in my mind. If the current PS3 models aren't backwards compatible but you can play some PS1 games on them if you download them through PSN, does this mean that the whole game is re-coded (ported) to the PS3? Or... they run through some kind of built-in emulator from the game?
Moreover, what do you think is the true reason of removing backwards compatibility? Is it, just, to force gamers to download PS1 or even PS2 titles from PSN instead of playing their own physical copies?
'Argh'. The end.
If I may correct one major misconception, all PS3s can play PS1 games on disc. You don't have to download them from the PSN Store.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I only see 3 SPEs being utilized in the workflow diagram; 0, 1, and 7.
No, it's 4 SPEs without and PPE. A full Cell with 4 SPE's deactivated would be overized for Toshiba's uses.
Blazkowicz
Legend
It also includes DSPs for realtime decoding and encoding of video. i.e. stream H264 in, perform number crunching on the raw stream, then get H264 out, as a possible scenario.
New info from apparently leaked documents:
http://kotaku.com/5364828/ps2-dreamcast-games-may-come-to-psn-says-apparently-leaked-doc
This document explains that Sony and Sega are deciding on Dreamcast and PS2 games to offer for download on the PSN store. Sony wants to get every PS2 game ever made up on the store eventually.
I wonder how DC "BC" works?
No new info on how they'd implement PS2 BC on currently BC-less PS3s.
http://kotaku.com/5364828/ps2-dreamcast-games-may-come-to-psn-says-apparently-leaked-doc
This document explains that Sony and Sega are deciding on Dreamcast and PS2 games to offer for download on the PSN store. Sony wants to get every PS2 game ever made up on the store eventually.
I wonder how DC "BC" works?
No new info on how they'd implement PS2 BC on currently BC-less PS3s.
ShadowRunner
Veteran
There were several DC emulators for PC, the one in particular i remember is Bleam. It shouldnt be too difficult to create a similar emulator for PS3, especially with Sega's support and internal documentation. DC wasnt nearly as complex to emulate as PS2.
