Blu-Ray not the only reason for PS3 delay?
- Thread starter msia2k75
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scooby_dooby
Legend
dukmahsik said:
The much bigger question is how will that affect 3rd part support.
Brimstone said:
The whole SN story has got to be bogus or misunderstood. There is a SN compiler in the works but I don't think anyone is waiting on it.
There is a working gcc 3.4, but so far the hold up has been waiting for the switch to 32bit environment and potentially a move to gcc 4.0 etc. On top of that there is a working XLC compiler from IBM, which for whatever reason Sony are not pushing for PS3 development.
Having said that, "final dev kits in June" is still true. Now, we are definetely waiting on THAT.
Alpha_Spartan
Regular
Sony misleading everyone again? Who's surprised?
Does XLC generate code for the SPEs? Maybe that's why. It also a compiler designed for IBM's high end server processors so probably wouldn't really do much for in-order processors, at least not like you'd hope. IIRC, it was a bit better at FP than GCC on the 970 but about the same, or a bit worse on INT stuff. I think they added a bit of auto-vectorization but that worked about as well as GCC's does. What was good was XLF, their Fortran compiler, but that's probably not relevant.Barbarian said:
The other reason to use GCC (or the SN compiler) is that you have total control of it (in the case of GCC you'd just branch off your own version that you can modify without the need for the usual hand-wringing that it'd take to get it checked into the main trunk). GCC on regular PPC isn't going to amaze anyone with the code it generates, and that's after IBM and Apple put significant resources into making it better these last few years. It's likely to be worse for these IBM cores that seem to need a lot of handholding. Just cranking out a really amazing compiler isn't easy and putting together a solid developer kit for as complicated a piece of hardware (debugging must be fun) as Cell is might take a while. It might be years before they can get something that's really solid (or it could be June
) but from all accounts the situation is better than it was for the PS2.gamespot said:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6146440.html
I feel in the air a second delay launch...
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I don't know what to think if this. I don't really agree that developers will have had little time to optimize for the PS3 at all. I mean the final kits for the xbox360 came out like 2 months before ht launch. That must have been one fo the most tight launces ever, not to mention that the hardware they used in the kits before that final one, was really not re presentative for the xbox360.
Sony on the other hand, has had better hardware and representative for what is going into the PS3 for much longer, I would say that they hardware wise have had better kits than MS even at E3 last year. But sure, what does it matter how good hardware you have if you do not have the software to use it appropriately. So while I believe that software might be a cause for the delay I think that launch period developers for the PS3 are still better of than the ones for the xbox360...
Sony on the other hand, has had better hardware and representative for what is going into the PS3 for much longer, I would say that they hardware wise have had better kits than MS even at E3 last year. But sure, what does it matter how good hardware you have if you do not have the software to use it appropriately. So while I believe that software might be a cause for the delay I think that launch period developers for the PS3 are still better of than the ones for the xbox360...
Platon said:
you just replaced the word "tool" which was oringally used, with your own "kit". They're two different things. When they say tool they arent always talking about physical hardware in Dev Kits in conjunction with Dev Tools. So you may want to edit what you wrote since you basically just pulled that out of no where
.It is pretty well known the tools for the PS3 game development have been lackluster, (no one is questioning the hardware stability) as in a bit difficult to use due to the advanced nature of its hardware, the Xbox360 ones on the otherhand recieved many positive comments, even a 6-8 months before the console launched. Infact they'll be releasing further addition to their dev tools in May.
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SugarCoat said:you just replaced the word "tool" which was oringally used, with your own "kit". They're two different things. When they say tool they arent always talking about physical hardware in Dev Kits in conjunction with Dev Tools. So you may want to edit what you wrote since you basically just pulled that out of no where
It is pretty well known the tools for the PS3 game development have been lackluster, (no one is questioning the hardware stability) as in a bit difficult to use due to the advanced nature of its hardware, the Xbox360 ones on the otherhand recieved many positive comments, even a 6-8 months before the console launched. Infact they'll be releasing further addition to their dev tools in May.
Isn't the kit a "tool" as well or not? I am talking about the whole thing, both software and hardware that is why I am refering to is as kit, the name here really is not the point, call it what ever you want. The point I was trying to make was based on this quote:
The xbox360 developers had even less time on final kits, if there is such a thing as the software side of them will be continuously developed and evolved. They had a couple of months to make their games work on the final hardware, sure they might have had better software tools but still, if you don't have final silicon it is not that much you can do, especially as the kits they had until that time was quite a poor representative for the final hardware.
I just don't think that it is as dramatic as it is presented here, the PS3 developers have had the hardware for a very long time now and soon they will also be getting the appropriate software, so I don't see where the crisis is if one is to belive this report. They will definitetely have longer time t polish their games than the xbox360 devs had for launch.
Could this have been one more reason for the delay? Sure, I don't question that, I just don't see the panic for the world wide launch though...
Does Epic, the developer of UT2007 need the full Sony "toolkit", or just some "basic kit" because they use the Unreal Engine?
Same for those who use Renderware and other middleware, do they rely more on the middleware than SOny provided tools?
Same for those who use Renderware and other middleware, do they rely more on the middleware than SOny provided tools?
Compilers for Cell development has been around for yonks. That's how Deano was able to give talks on programming for SPEs. People are writing for SPEs and that's only possible if they have a compiler.
RSX development is an unknown, though standard graphics development we know has be OpenGL based with devs saying they are getting graphics running. 7800 should be close enough to develop well on without needing RSX, though of course that won't allow the maximise power of PS3 and RSX to be investigated. these tools are nVidia's so there shouldn't be a problem there.
The basic PS3 hardware development has thus been around for many months. Devs have certainly had more time with CPU and similar GPU for PS3 before launch compared to XB360 which received final processor and GPU late in the game. My guess would be that these missing tools might be OS interfacing, networking, and the like. Or just a nice a development environment with proper analysis and monitoring tools and decent debugging. You can develop without these, but that would hamper development! It can't be anything as major as lack of a Cell compiler or else development on things like HS would have ground to a halt and we wouldn't be seeing realtime demos.
RSX development is an unknown, though standard graphics development we know has be OpenGL based with devs saying they are getting graphics running. 7800 should be close enough to develop well on without needing RSX, though of course that won't allow the maximise power of PS3 and RSX to be investigated. these tools are nVidia's so there shouldn't be a problem there.
The basic PS3 hardware development has thus been around for many months. Devs have certainly had more time with CPU and similar GPU for PS3 before launch compared to XB360 which received final processor and GPU late in the game. My guess would be that these missing tools might be OS interfacing, networking, and the like. Or just a nice a development environment with proper analysis and monitoring tools and decent debugging. You can develop without these, but that would hamper development! It can't be anything as major as lack of a Cell compiler or else development on things like HS would have ground to a halt and we wouldn't be seeing realtime demos.
Shifty Geezer said:
No doubt there has been a compiler around, in some form or another. If the artice is to be believed they have had a Cell compilier already at the end of 2005, but how efficient the complier is, that is a totaly different thing and that could have been the problem here. It would be stupid to have hardware that is more power then the competition, just so that you have your software not being able to take advantage of it...
Platon said:
Wouldn't be the first time!!
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