Why did Sony abandon the idea of having cell in PS3 doing gfx?

[Lazy8s]

Thank you, Geo.

Sony's study of the Visualizer idea would be interesting to know.

Ken Kutaragi mentioned the limited research they did on the CELL-based GPU.

"One of our ideas was to equip two Cell chips and to use one as a GPU, but we concluded that there were differences between the Cell to be used as a computer chip and as a shader, since a shader should be graphics-specific. The Cell has an architecture where it can do anything, although its SPE can be used to handle things such as displacement mapping."

Toshiba (Sharp 903) can apparently compete very well with nVidia (Sony Ericsson W900i) in graphics processor design if the cellphone sector is any indication.

http://www.jbenchmark.com/result.jsp?benchmark=hd

The PCX, CLX, Neon, Kyro, and MBX graphics processors were all leaders in performance, so no count of the top GPU design companies could be absent Imagination Technologies' PowerVR.

The GPU design sector is not short of competitors: AMD ATi, ARM Mali, DMP Pica, Fujitsu, Imagination Technologies PowerVR, nVidia, SMedia Glamo, Toshiba, UChips Feel3D2000, VirtualDigm Feel3D1000, etc.

 

[babcat]

Can anyone explain to me how the original GETAWAY demo using only the CELL processor made such a beautiful demo? Are we sure that the RSX was not being used? Was the CELL doing EVERYTHING including vertex and pixel shading, texturing, etc?

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Can anyone explain to me how the original GETAWAY demo using only the CELL processor made such a beautiful demo? Are we sure that the RSX was not being used? Was the CELL doing EVERYTHING including vertex and pixel shading, texturing, etc?

The quote that it was "only using CELL" was misleading. RSX was not used in the sense that RSX did not exist in any devkits at the time . And no CELL was not doing texturing and pixel shading -- I doubt there will ever be a day that can happen. I don't count TRE as a valid example because it's a single object with a single texture and a skybox. Hardly representative of a real in-game render.

The point of that demo was the activity of objects, particles, fragments, etc. going on in the video, not the graphics. i.e. everything that *mattered* was happening on Cell, and the GPU served no function other than to draw it.

 

[pipo]

I doubt we will ever know the truth, but since this thing keeps popping up have a look at this thread for some theories and inside 'information' from nAo.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?p=820287#post820307

 

[Darkon]

I doubt we will ever know the truth, but since this thing keeps popping up have a look at this thread for some theories and inside 'information' from nAo.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?p=820287#post820307

also fafalad and few other pretty much said the same thing .

 

[Panajev2001a]

The quote that it was "only using CELL" was misleading. RSX was not used in the sense that RSX did not exist in any devkits at the time . And no CELL was not doing texturing and pixel shading

Then Masa Chatani did lie about that Getaway demo as he INSISTED that texture filtering and lighting were calculated on the CELL. Not a problem, he is only their C.T.O. . Of course people do also misleading PR talk, but the following quote would require a great Spin Master to be turned around in such a way that suggests what you are saying so it would be BAD PR (a bold LIE!!!!! ).

Q. In regard to PS3, because there are small number of devkits are supplied, I hear 2 kinds of opinions, some expect it'd be hard to extract performance and others are surprised as they can extract performance very easily in an actual development. How is it in the real development scene?

A. To be honest, since it has so much margin in performance, we've heard no such feedback that it's difficult to develop on it. It's different from single-core programming naturally, but it doesn't add to man hours required for game development that much. I repeat it but entertainment programmers have tremendous ability.

For example we showed the demo that renders London City, it's not rendered in the GPU but the CELL does lighting and texture processing then outputs it to the frame buffer. Even without GPU, only CELL can create good enough 3D graphics.

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2005/0520/e303.htm (even the babelfished translation does give the same answer)

 

[joebloggs]

Ok so someone's wrong here. Whos is it?

 

[swaaye]

Those who are wrong are those who think Cell is so magnificent that it can beat up dedicated graphics silicon from ATI or NV. It's as simple as that.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Those who are wrong are those who think Cell is so magnificent that it can beat up dedicated graphics silicon from ATI or NV. It's as simple as that.

That doesn't really answer the question though. Was the Getaway demo rendered on Cell or not? If it was, it shows the processor isn't too shabby at rendering. That pics have a load of baked in GI, but the texturing isn't great. The car's also look low poly relative to other examples, but then there's quite a lot of people. So I really don't know.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

For example we showed the demo that renders London City, it's not rendered in the GPU but the CELL does lighting and texture processing then outputs it to the frame buffer. Even without GPU, only CELL can create good enough 3D graphics.

"Texture processing" sounds a lot like some sort of post-processing. I seriously doubt that the ability of CELL to hide memory latencies is anywhere good enough to handle texture reads and interpolation or alpha blending and so on. Frequent random memory access working on tiny little bits of data is pretty much a mortal sin on any CPU, Cell being no exception.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Then Masa Chatani did lie about that Getaway demo as he INSISTED that texture filtering and lighting were calculated on the CELL. Not a problem, he is only their C.T.O. . Of course people do also misleading PR talk, but the following quote would require a great Spin Master to be turned around in such a way that suggests what you are saying so it would be BAD PR (a bold lie!!!)

That guy is quite used to lying. Remember the originial claimed "in-game" screenshots to the first Getaway game? The first screenshots had crazy stuff like motion-blur (crazy for being a game released in 2001, on a PS2..)

 

[Panajev2001a]

"Texture processing" sounds a lot like some sort of post-processing. I seriously doubt that the ability of CELL to hide memory latencies is anywhere good enough to handle texture reads and interpolation or alpha blending and so on. Frequent random memory access working on tiny little bits of data is pretty much a mortal sin on any CPU, Cell being no exception.

He does mention "without using the GPU" and "writing directly to the framebuffer". I think the case is clear: either he is speaking out of his butt/lying or that demo was done as he says.

 

[Panajev2001a]

That guy is quite used to lying. Remember the originial claimed "in-game" screenshots to the first Getaway game? The first screenshots had crazy stuff like motion-blur (crazy for being a game released in 2001, on a PS2..)

I do not think he is related to that "event", he should know what he talks about being SCE's C.T.O. after-all.

 

[croc hunter2]

Isn't there a video of a landscape flyover done in real-time that combines radar 3d imaging and something else (NFI what, whether it was a series of photos or something made) to give a realistic landscape flyover.

I think it was an IBM or Mercury demo of what would be possible. Altho IIRC that was a dual cell server blade running the demo.

So given that the demo was doing that i suspect the london demo may be possible on a single cell and they do advertise that it can help the RSX in game with rendering.

 

[DJ12]

What are the chances that the next playstation has a CELL like GPU created by Nvidia?

 

[DJ12]

Isn't there a video of a landscape flyover done in real-time that combines radar 3d imaging and something else (NFI what, whether it was a series of photos or something made) to give a realistic landscape flyover.

Yes, I believe that clip was shown just before the Getaway clip, which is what has caused all the confusion. They said the landscape demo was rendered entirely on CELL and I think people assume that the Getaway clip was also rendered only on CELL as there followed each other in the same segment (I think)

Someone is bound to have a copy of Sony's conference from last year, they should do us all a favour and watch this part and clear what was said and when up for us all.

 

[Titanio]

Yes, I believe that clip was shown just before the Getaway clip, which is what has caused all the confusion. They said the landscape demo was rendered entirely on CELL and I think people assume that the Getaway clip was also rendered only on CELL as there followed each other in the same segment (I think)

Those clips didn't follow directly on from one another IIRC. Anyway, at the conference itself nothing was said about The Getaway only being rendered by Cell. It was in a seperate interview with Masa Chatani after the show that that was said, and he was clearly referring to the getaway demo.

I personally have my doubts about that, and reckon there was some confusion there on his part, but the context of his comments was clear. Then again, although intuitively Cell ought to be a relatively bad texturer, that doesn't really tell us how much it could do in absolute terms i.e. whether it could render a scene like that on its own or not. That scene was predominantly PS2-era assets (or assets produced in the making of the PS2 games, at least), but with much better lighting and some nice effects synthesising the processing video goes through in a camcorder...the latter is what made it so good, not necessarily super detailed assets (geometry/texturing).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Those clips didn't follow directly on from one another IIRC. Anyway, at the conference itself nothing was said about.

I shall correct you here. The recordings I made on my own consciousness are quite clear on the gist of Harrison's comments when talking about the Getaway demo. the specific language may be wrong, but basically he said something like...

"Forgive the cars. They've all got the same numberplate. That's something you only find out at the last minute...As you can see here, we've got modelled here in realtime London, with HDR lighting. As well as being able to create beautiful graphics, Cell creates a living world."
That probably needs a bit more hyperbole like "the uncompromisingly awesome power of Cell creates a living world populated by living, breathing characters more real then life itself."

Harrison definitely mentioned Cell rendering the graphics at E3 '05. I think subsequent interviews confirmed that. A search of this forum should uncover that whole debate, as it was definitely broached and discussed how much Cell was doing and how much the GPU was.

 

[kimg]

I generally try to avoid speculating too much, until we all can enjoy the benedfit of acces to the full thing. Some here is devs, some not.

And i think the quotes from Harrison is correct. He did talk about "entirely on cell".

 

[Cheezdoodles]

"Forgive the cars. They've all got the same numberplate. That's something you only find out at the last minute...As you can see here, we've got modelled here in realtime London, with HDR lighting. As well as being able to create beautiful graphics, Cell creates a living world."
That probably needs a bit more hyperbole like "the uncompromisingly awesome power of Cell creates a living world populated by living, breathing characters more real then life itself."

In the same presentation he also says that "This is only possible with blu-ray as this scene takes up hundreds of megabytes"

Hundreds would mean several hundred, so its not 100, its not 200 its atleast 300 mb. Okay. So in order for that comment to make any sense, it would mean that the game needs to load 300+ MB to its RAM every time you run around a building. Which would mean, that the game is unplayable... (because any modern game "scene" theese days takes up several hundred MB, but thats including the game engine etc etc etc, and in reality your not gonna need to load up 300mb of new information into the RAM every time you run around a building),

Its all a bunch of PR BS.