Cell & 3ds max

[bettlejuice_001]

hi @ all

im following this forum every day. im very excited about cell, although im not a tech guru.
i have think about a app like 3ds max using Cell... i have tested several 3d apps like max, maya personal edition. All this apps running on my AMD 1700+. Now i imagine about the speedup when using cell. Do you think, cell would do the work much better?

sorry, for my bad egnlish... i am from germany lol

Share your thoughts.

 

[barnak]

I cant comment on Cell on those apps but I used to have a 1700 + as well. slow and terrible processor now days, Im glad I updated to my 4800 + =)

 

[RavenFox]

hi @ all

im following this forum every day. im very excited about cell, although im not a tech guru.
i have think about a app like 3ds max using Cell... i have tested several 3d apps like max, maya personal edition. All this apps running on my AMD 1700+. Now i imagine about the speedup when using cell. Do you think, cell would do the work much better?

sorry, for my bad egnlish... i am from germany lol

Share your thoughts.

Well these apps arent coded to utilize cell but if they were Im sure it would have great performance. others here Im sure can give you a more detailed explanation.

 

[bettlejuice_001]

I cant comment on Cell on those apps but I used to have a 1700 + as well. slow and terrible processor now days, Im glad I updated to my 4800 + =)

looking at the way the cell works it would fit perfectly in such an app.
Im not going to update my cpu any time soon. I will wait how the cell and Ps3 are going to establish and which options they are providing:
btw a Nvidia GeForce 2 MX is working in my computer for many years and i think i will never update

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This is the wrong forum. What you're asking isn't really console based. Unless you worm PS3 and Linux and HDD into the discussion!

I imagine optimised programs will see substantial gains in some areas. In actual rendering I don't know. 3D raytracers are moving towards double precision for quality (are there any not on double precision out there still?) plus a full raytracer with unpredictable memory accessing hasn't been benchmarked yet and doesn't look to fit well with Cell's architecture.

Modelling and animation could well be much faster. Don't know about rendering.

 

[bettlejuice_001]

This is the wrong forum. What you're asking isn't really console based. Unless you worm PS3 and Linux and HDD into the discussion!

ok, what about this: It´s not max, but it´s an 3d app running on linux and linux is running on ps3...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

What parts of a 3D app are you interested in?
Realtime 3D display might get somewhat faster, as a lot of it is still reliant on the CPU.
Rendering could be accelerated to a small percentage because it requires 64-bit precision, especially for the geometry part, and Cell isn't too good at that. Probably not significantly better than the upcoming dual-core CPUs from Intel, so translating such an app to Cell wouldn't really worth the investment.

As for the actual, interactive 3D modeling and animation work, with deformations like matrix skinning, cloth and muscle and skin simulation, or lighting, or the actual modeling using very dense meshes (we're soon approaching tens of millions of polygons)... it's a more interesting question. I'm not familiar with the programming approaches, but I'd imagine that it's pretty much all high-level code, and because of the interactivity, it requires paralel access to a lot of data. Not quite fitting for the rather small local memory of SPEs or a small pool of RAM... But on the other hand, if they could stream through the vertices fast enough, it might work. Someone with more coding experience could elaborate on this...?

 

[3dcgi]

Rendering could be accelerated to a small percentage because it requires 64-bit precision, especially for the geometry part, and Cell isn't too good at that. Probably not significantly better than the upcoming dual-core CPUs from Intel, so translating such an app to Cell wouldn't really worth the investment.

I've heard mixed things about 64-bit being a requirement for rendering. Many people say that, but at Siggraph last year I asked Larry Gritz (architect of Gelato renderer) if 32 bit is enough or if 64 bit was desired and he said 32 bit is fine. Now maybe he was just referring to the parts of Gelato that are designed to be run on a GPU, but he seemed pretty clear in his answer.

 

[randycat99]

Ooh, you just wait till 128-bit precision becomes all the rage...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Geometry needs that kind of precision, maybe even more...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I've heard mixed things about 64-bit being a requirement for rendering. Many people say that, but at Siggraph last year I asked Larry Gritz (architect of Gelato renderer) if 32 bit is enough or if 64 bit was desired and he said 32 bit is fine. Now maybe he was just referring to the parts of Gelato that are designed to be run on a GPU, but he seemed pretty clear in his answer.

Historically images produced from 64 bit engines definitely had a visible quality advantage over 32 bit. Gelato is AFAIK more for realtime rendering than best quality, so I'd interpret Larry's comments as '32 bit is good enough' and not 'there's no visible difference between SP and SP'.

 

[Jabjabs]

What you're asking isn't really console based. Unless you worm PS3 and Linux and HDD into the discussion!

Will Discreet release 3DS MAX on my Linux power PS3 that can potentially render really, really fast?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If Linux is available and open on PS3, I definitely expect a POVray port. The geeks couldn't resist that! With the propspect of Cell workstations it's likely Maya and Max will get ports for content development. These might not run on only 512 MBs RAM though. There's a few less mainstream apps that also might get a conversion.

The area Cell will really shine is 2D. A 2D image processing app should be phenominally fast and after an initial successful small graphics package or two, I anticipate an explosion in this area with all the heavy hitters considering getting on board. Digital photography and video editing+effects could prove popular functions if the programmability is there and the HDD isn't out of enthusiasts price range.

 

[ADEX]

IBM's Cell forum may be a better place to ask about this:

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/dw_forum.jsp?forum=739&cat=46

There's been quite a bit of discussion about graphics there.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

If Linux is available and open on PS3, I definitely expect a POVray port. The geeks couldn't resist that! With the propspect of Cell workstations it's likely Maya and Max will get ports for content development. These might not run on only 512 MBs RAM though.

We've been actually hitting the 2GB/task memory barrier for a while now... Full 64-bit support in these applications would be very very important, perhaps even more important than speed. That's because if you run out of memory, you page out to disk, which is slow; and if you can't page out to disk, then you can't get it done at all...

So if Autodesk decides to focus their resources on supporting Cell, instead of on 64-bit, then they'll not gonna make their customers happy at all.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So if Autodesk decides to focus their resources on supporting Cell, instead of on 64-bit, then they'll not gonna make their customers happy at all.

Well no company is going to jump ship as it were. Any Cell development is going to be coincidental with PC development. Alias seem to be working on Cell tools but aren't going to stop developing for PC to do this.

My guess for Cell applications will be new startups. We won't see PhotoShop for Cell before a few new products have been released. The only way the big names will 'waste' money writing complex Cell ports alongside the expense of developing PC software is if they see a substantial market in Cell. Which isn't going to happen unless the HDD is affordable, widely available, comes with a suitable OS, and supports homebrew. I hope PS3+Linux becomes the 'home computer' of old, with a large contingent of independent developers, demo scene, etc., but whether that happens or not is an utterly pie-in-the-sky unknown.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

We've been through this debate before - the PS3 does not have enough memory to become a serious tool for any kind of professional work. The only chance for porting professional applications is to produce a Cell-based workstation with memory configurations from 1 to 4-8 GB, combined with a fast openGL-based 2D/3D graphics system and a fast hard drive system. Even Cell-based servers can not justify the porting of major 3D animation packages, especially with the current state of the industry.

FYI: Alias has just been bought by Autodesk, and Ligthwave is constantly loosing marketshare. The only real contender for Autodesk's duo of Max and Maya is Softimage XSI, but even they are in the minority. And Autodesk won't spend any more money right now, they'll be busy with the re-organizing of the company for at least another 1-2 years. And then they'll have to decide what to do with the two 3D applications that they own...

 

[3dcgi]

Historically images produced from 64 bit engines definitely had a visible quality advantage over 32 bit. Gelato is AFAIK more for realtime rendering than best quality, so I'd interpret Larry's comments as '32 bit is good enough' and not 'there's no visible difference between SP and SP'.

Gelato is not for realtime rendering at all and it's designed to compete with Renderman in quality. It's a REYES renderer and only portions of the rendering are accellerated by the GPU. I have never used it so I don't know how well it competes. I looked back at my notes and to paraphrase Larry said "don't need 64 bit very often in production rendering". It might be that all vertex transformations in Gelato are done on the CPU and only the shading doesn't generally need 64 bit precision.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

We've been through this debate before - the PS3 does not have enough memory to become a serious tool for any kind of professional work.

That's true, but it doesn't prohibit PS3 being useful in the enthusiast/home market. 512 MB is plenty for home image processing, video editing etc. PhotoShop as an example is numero uno amongst professionals, but also used by many home users as well, along with alternatives like Corel's. If (big if) PS3 were to become popular for digital photography at home, I'm sure Adobe would give the platform serious consideration, especially if a rical is already there and doing well.

3D on PS3 is likely not to happen from the major players I'll concur. 512 MB is to my mind limited to hobbiests in this area and it's probably fair to say Autodesk's products won't get a PS3 port. No reason (well, memory isn't a reason) why other applications won't find their way over though (all other requirements being satisified).

 

[Laa-Yosh]

3D on PS3 is likely not to happen from the major players I'll concur.

But wasn't that the subject of the debate?