Does Cell = PPU in Physics Calculations?

Does he really have to go into super deep detail. For you (jvd) these guys have to give a 30 minute presentation of everything thats possible to make you think it maybe possilbe on the PS3 and 360.
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Yes , yes I do . He doesn't go into detail about which ppu he is talking about. posts on this forum (Well the 3d tech part ) speak of parts from 100-500$

I believe some things are possible but i don't believe that the x360 cpu and the cell that both have many other things to do are going to out do a dedicated ppu with its own memory pool .

I don't see the need to run around in every thread trying to make the ps3 and x360 sound more powerfull than a pc that you can spend lots of money on
 
mckmas8808 said:
Well I was referring to Mark Rein and I think that his comment adds to the conversation. We can't discuss these things without this great interviews. I suggest we look at what these guys say and take it at face value with some common sense of course. See the following quote is what I'm trying to stay away from.
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Mckmas don't take my meaning the wrong way, I wasn't saying this thread doesn't contribute to the dialogue - by all means if you feel you have a new interview go ahead and post it (using neutral language in the topic if possible!) - I was just commenting on how I myself interpret information as in comes into my field of perception. ;) And in that sense, I never let any one statement or article get me excited.

So to recap, my comment wasn't directed at you, it was directed at Sweeny himself.
 
jvd said:
The PhysX chip will be manufactured with 0.13 micron technology at TSMC, and the 182sq.mm die will host 125 million transistors, which is larger than that of mainstream graphics processing units, such as ATI RADEON X700.
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From what i recall the cards currently have a 128 megs of ram on them
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This is all we know? ...that it's 125 mil transistors and comes with 128 MB of RAM? How are those transistors arranged? Is it just a bunch of parallel execution pipelines similar to a GPU? Is it a bunch of SIMD's? What? What about the clockrate? Are we talking about 125 million transistors at 400 MHz or 125 million transistors at 2/3/4 GHz? How many of that 125 is embedded RAM? Lot's of questions there. Couldn't hurt to at least restate them for the topic if the answers are known.
 
Yep, that's all we know. Yet JVD, who knows next to zero about how physics simulations work or what kind of hardware is needed to accelerate them, is running around mindlessly promoting a device on which little information is known, which could very well turn out to be a Physics DECELLERATOR like the S3 VirgeVX "3d accelerator" compared to existing hardware.

Ageia could very well be another BitBoys, or worse, a company with alot of venture capital and high burnrate, which turns out to have a dud of a device and has nowt turned to PR in order to salvage something, because they don't have anything to sell. I bet that Ageia's most valuable posession turns out to be their software API and Physics SDK and not their actual hardware.

Why? Because the PPU is neccessary to exist to support his anti-Sony and pro-PC bias. No PPU, and therefore PC is vastly inferior to consoles because of shitty x86 legacy architecture and bias towards scalar workloads.
 
Democoder you need to stop with the personal attacks . Its getting tiring . Telling people what I know or don't know when you know nothing about it is trolling .

Then your ridiclous reply about me being anti sony and pro pc is to laugh at when others were calling me pro ms yet i put down the x360 here . Its very telling that you need to attack someone to try to prove your point which is false to start with .
 
Well, could you explain how the PPU works to accelerate which operations that are standard in a physics engine, and how it does so in a way that is better than anything else?
 
DemoCoder said:
Well, could you explain how the PPU works to accelerate which operations that are standard in a physics engine, and how it does so in a way that is better than anything else?
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Yes actually I could because I took the time to read the threads on this forum and asked the questions that i needed to ask .

Not only that but I don't have the trouble with reading that you have. Because my suggestion was never that hte ppu alone would be more powerfull than the ps3. My suggestion and belief is that the pc with a cpu , dedicated sound card , gpu and a ppu would be better at most things than the ps3 at the time of release and the pc will quickly over take them .

A cell chip while doing nothing but physics may well be faster than the ppu . However the cell chip isn't doing only physics .


So once again stop your constant trolling when you do not even bother to read what is being talked about and stop your sony is best bash anyone who disagrees stance as its getting very old and its very sad since most of your posts have good information in them
 
jvd said:
Yes actually I could because I took the time to read the threads on this forum and asked the questions that i needed to ask .
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...and....? You forgot the part where you explain what you found out! What are the functional units inside a PPU? Is it SIMD-based? CPU-based? DSP-based? Need the 411 on the hardware specs, please...
 
Well, I'd still isn't in hearing how this PPU is supposed to accelerate physics. And the other claims are without merit. It's just handwaving. You have no data on what percentage of the CPU in games is dedicated to each workload, nor how fast the PPU is. What if the PPU was only as fast as a single SPE? What if processing AI, sound, and game logic took up only 20% of CELL and the other 80% was still much faster than Ageia PPU?

All of this is vaporious speculation in total absense of anything solid.

And your argument completely falls down when you consider software support. Remember real-time simulated sound? Remember Aureal, and how "Wavetracing" was the wave of the future? Basically, an Audio Physics accelerator? What happend? They got killed and replaced with a shitty reverb by Creative.

Even if a hypothetical PPU was any good at all, it would be like owning a Rendition Verite', NV1, or PowerVR's first chip: prioprietary API, probably poor performance, and very little developer uptake.

The PS3 and XB360 will likely be 5 years old before PPUs are all the rage, if they ever take off at all.

I personally think PPU's are like Aureal's cards, nice ideas, but will be killed by CPUs. No one is going to buy a super-specialized $300 card when upgrading their CPU to one with a better vector unit/DSP will fix the problem, and will be more generally applicable to ALL their applications.
 
I already provided the links for you guys to read up on it . I don't need to type it all out . Its been typed up and posted already by others . Go ahead and start reading
 
Why don't you read what you link to first. In every one of those threads, people are asking "I still don't know anything about the PPU. The patents, whitepapers, etc say nothing about how it works"

If you really know what you're talking about, you'd either be able to explain it in your own words, or quote something relevant.
 
I agree. This reminds me of that infomercial skit on SNL where 4 ladies gush over "the incredible thing" over and over, and reveal absolutely nothing about what it is that is so wonderful. ;)
 
then apprently u didn't look at all the threads since one of them isn't even a link to threads .

Yes all the hardware isn't released but we do know alot about it and the capabiltys of the chip. We also know it will be able to give at least the same amount of physics capabilitys as the x360 and cell can .

If you took time to read all the threads and links and sub links you would know alot more about it
 
...or you could tell us here in one short little post..., but you can't, because all you know are the claims. Obfuscation via many, many, many links- it doesn't build your case much that you have any idea what a PPU is, either. One would think that if you are enthused about it, we couldn't stop you from rehashing the specs and descriptions we have requested from you. Yet, we are given...obfuscation. Hmmm...

Can anybody else here elaborate??? Surely with so many discussions having occurred, some simple hardware specs and general functionality should be common knowledge? Anybody?
 
no because its not one tiny little post and it takes alot of time to write it up and to write it up correctly .


I'm not going to waste the time to retype things i've already linked to so that you can not read them and keep argueing which is what you've been doing in other threads .
 
cut and paste is your friend, as is "quote". This is getting real old jvd. You think I haven't been reading about the PPU? There is no good information on it, period, except for non-informative marchitecture.

No one on B3D knows anything about this chip, which is why all of the regulars, are asking for info on it, skimming patents, and trying to find SOMETHING that indicates its architecture.
 
there is alot of info democoder . There are posts from devs , interviews with devs and presentations .


I like how randycat99 and you attack me , esp you who is following me around trolling me . I linked you to everything you need to read about it .


So now how about u link me to exactly what the physics capability is of the cell processer in the ps3
 
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