Well there doesn't have to be any confusion; if you follow the links I provided on the last page, that will take you right back in time to when the ps3portal thing got published, and what the discussion was at the time.
Is the PS3 on track to deliver full specs?
- Thread starter Rash'
- Start date
Well there doesn't have to be any confusion; if you follow the links I provided on the last page, that will take you right back in time to when the ps3portal thing got published, and what the discussion was at the time.
I think the game wouldn't need to run at all. Instead, it would go into pause mode. It should just be able to deal with a context switch for one of the SPEs properly.
Well well well well well....
And I'm going to quote him on this, lest there be the 'lighning' edit.
10-Apr-2006, 17:48
Um, this correct. As far as we know, OS takes 1 SPU, there's one on call, and the Cell processor has 1 redundant SPU, namely the 8th, disabled one.
I'm not defending the place, just pointing out that its somewhat questionable population has bred a very small community of people who have inside information.
Dopeyfish is not an insider in any way. He's a poster who's wandered from Teamxbox and is riding the coat-tails of Fishie (who's also a very disgruntled character but does actually have industry connections).
It sounds to me quite reasonable that the OS (menuing system + browser + networking + webcam), might use 3 SPEs (including the one reserved for DRM) when not actually running a game. When you run a game you just need to swap out the local store of the two that are not reserved when starting the game and swap it back when you finish the game - no big penalty since this only happens at the start and end of the game - and you can use 6 SPEs for whatever you want in games. If it wasn't for DRM, you could could use the 7th for whatever you wanted in games as well.
The reserved 7th SPE may also run OS code that is useful in games - maybe sound/networking, maybe drivers for hardware, maybe de/compression or de/encryption, so it may not be true to say only 6 SPEs are usable in games.
I found the slides talking about using the SPE's for physics very interesting. They were posted here and there is a thread about them somewhere. Up to four SPE's can be usd for physics processes but significantly all four SPE's do not occupy 100% runtime in the SPE's at any time according to those slides.
What does it mean for this discussion? It means that even if the PS3's OS was using 3 or 4 SPE's for the OS at some point, the SPE's will likely not be taxed 100% whilst taking care of OS chores and would be available for other work as well. Whilst not in a game I don't really know what those other chores would be if they were not related to the OS in some way.
What does it mean for this discussion? It means that even if the PS3's OS was using 3 or 4 SPE's for the OS at some point, the SPE's will likely not be taxed 100% whilst taking care of OS chores and would be available for other work as well. Whilst not in a game I don't really know what those other chores would be if they were not related to the OS in some way.
Sorry if this is posted already, found it on IGN:
(Interview with Julian Eggebrecht / Factor 5 / Lair at TGS)
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/733/733921p5.html
(Interview with Julian Eggebrecht / Factor 5 / Lair at TGS)
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/733/733921p5.html
Cell hasn't been an issue for months! Apart from silly rumours of more disabled SPEs, Cell has been ready for months, sitting somewhere waiting for RSX or Bluray to be used on PS3's.
Whatever they did with the RSX, 5 x 1080p games prove it works
We never did know the full specs of the PS3 since the very start. If the RSX truly has some ammount of extra cache in it's design and other optimizations that make it unique then comparing it to a PC part is not fair at all. The only aspects of it's design that we know are truly different from a common N47 is the FlexIO interface and of course a few ROPs stripped out along with a small bus to it's GDDR3 RAM. What's going to be exciting is not the knowledge that it's going to hit 550MHz like announced so long ago, but that it's truly a special and unique part that you could not buy at any common computer shop.
Why?
I dont understand these people who think "off the shelf part" means "bad".
Those people dont seem to understand, the cutting edge of graphics performance is not custom console parts, it's "off-the shelf" PC video cards.
I would rather have a X1900XTX "off the shelf" in my console than either RSX or Xenos. Because it's more powerful.
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CiaraDarling
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But that power will be totally gimp'd by lack of BW. You'd also need the 512MB fast GDDR, and that means you'll be paying an extra...$300 or more on your console? Consoles are a different environment to PCs, and raw power isn't the only thing to consider. Xenos's flexibility might well see it a much more suitable part for XB360 than an X1900XTX. That's absolutely true if you were just swapping the GPU but now of the other components. How great is your X1900XTX going to be sharing 22 GB BW with the entire system?!
The reason that I would want a customized GPU in a console is so that it can be fully optimized to work in it's native and unchanging hardware environment. For example, the RSX is in a situation where it can recieve vertex work from the CELL processor. It's theorized that some of the "geometry shading" of next-gen GPUs could be done by the CELL processor in the PS3. Also, it will need to be able to acquire texture data from the XDR RAM which could cause additional latency. Basically, the RSX as an example of a console GPU is in a highly specialized environment. I would rather such a GPU be specially customized or modified to work optimally than a generic one being put in the console.
I have no issue with a PC GPU being placed in a console. I'm just facinated with how it was modified to work optimally in it's new closed environment.
I have no issue with a PC GPU being placed in a console. I'm just facinated with how it was modified to work optimally in it's new closed environment.
