Ken Kutaragi Interview by Hiroshige Goto (PC Wach)

[mckmas8808]

[rant] This right here guys shows the real truth in jvd and scooby. The man said its hardware and software so to competely call him a BSer or a liar is uncalled for. This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. Regardless of what Ken would have said you two guys still would be saying negative stuff about it.

Just be honest and say that you're going to wait until the console releases before you believe anything. Every interview given jvd either ignores or says that it isn't right. [/rant]

A couple of things that are interesting and need to be talk about more are these points.

KK: The Cell is bi-endian (has the ability to switch between usage of big endian and little endian ordering), so there are no problems.

In fact, some of the demos at E3 were running without a graphics processor, with all the renderings done with just the Cell. However, that kind of usage is a real waste.

The Cell has an architecture where it can do anything, although its SPE can be used to handle things such as displacement mapping.

Prior to PS3, real-time rendered 3D graphics might have looked real, but they weren't actually calculated in a fully 3D environment. But that was OK for screen resolutions up until now. Even as of the current time, most of the games for the Xbox 360 use that kind of 3D. [However, we want to realize fully calculated 3D graphics in fully 3D environments. In order to do that, we need to share the data between the CPU and GPU as much as possible. That's why we adopted this architecture. We want to make all the floating-point calculations including their rounded numbers the same, and we've been able to make it almost identical. So as a result, the CPU and GPU can use their calculated figures bidirectionally.

A lot of VRAM will especially be required to control two HDTV screens in full resolution (1920x1080 pixels). For that, eDRAM is no good.

If we tried to fit enough volume of eDRAM [to support two HDTV screens] onto a 200-by-300-millimeter chip, there won't be enough room for the logics, and we'd have had to cut down on the number of shaders. It's better to use the logics in full, and to add on a lot of shaders.

When fixed-pixel devices become the default, it will be the age when TVs and PCs will merge, so we want to support everything perfectly.

For example, some question where will the results from the vertex processing be placed, and how will it be sent to the shader for pixel processing. If one point gets clogged, everything is going to get stalled. Reality is different from what's painted on canvas. If we're taking a realistic look at efficiency, I think Nvidia's approach is superior.

To me this is the only quote that could be PR. But I would hope that we could all be adults and talk about this like one. Could he or does he have a point. The debate should be about that not how he bashes MS.

 

[Fafalada]

All emulation is hardware + software.

Ehm no.

Care to explain to me how the cell and the rsx are going to use calls for the ee and gs when they are very diffrent hardware setups and have very diffrent feature sets?

We don't know what Ken meant by "hardware" yet. Maybe RSX was tweaked a little to offer some legacy addressing modes for GS (GS has something similar to facilitate PS1 GPU compatibility better). Maybe they will have a full GS chip in there somewhere. etc.
Personally I think IOP+EE side is likely to be fully software emulated, but we don't even know that for sure.

 

[scooby_dooby]

[rant] This right here guys shows the real truth in jvd and scooby. The man said its hardware and software so to competely call him a BSer or a liar is uncalled for. This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. Regardless of what Ken would have said you two guys still would be saying negative stuff about it.

Just be honest and say that you're going to wait until the console releases before you believe anything. Every interview given jvd either ignores or says that it isn't right. [/rant]

Not at all dude. This is my problem.

it doesn't matter whether or not Sony DID find a solution, the point is what the hell is KK doing once again talking crap about the 360?

The PS3 will use software emulation just like the XBOX, and both teams faced the same challenges. So there is no reason to say MS won't be able to do it, but somehow Sony will. Please.

How does KK know that MS hasn't come up witha solution as well?

Why is he even speculating?

What does X360's emulation have to with his machine? the PS3?

Why is KK always talking about things he knows nothing about?

I could care less if Sony has figured out BC, I never thought they wouldn'. I'm just sick of KK's factless, baseless, ridiculous slander and speculation. How about a little class? Concentrate on your own system and quit clinging mud.

 

[gurgi]

So there is no reason to say MS won't be able to do it

Except MS themselves have said that the popular games will be emulated first and you can download new emulation profiles as they are available.

To my knowlege, Sony is at least aiming for 100% BC out of the box.

 

[BlueTsunami]

I just wish KK would release information accompanied by an actual plan. I am a Sony fan (just wanted to state that) but when KK releases information and doesn't go in depth with it...I just can't take the seriousley....this applies to Nintendo and Microsoft. I do believe that there has to be some type of hardware tweak to make emulation more broad and easy (who would know PS2 and PSX hardware best? Sony of course) but until more technical explanations are released i'll take his comment accept it...but wait and see what the future holds.

 

[Titanio]

Concentrate on your own system and quit clinging mud.

It'd be nice if MS did the same, though in fairness the press brings up PS3 with MS more than the same brings up x360 with Sony.

 

[creon100]

it doesn't matter whether or not Sony DID find a solution, the point is what the hell is KK doing once again talking crap about the 360?

. . .


Why is he even speculating?

What does X360's emulation have to with his machine? the PS3?

Why is KK always talking about things he knows nothing about?

I could care less if Sony has figured out BC, I never thought they wouldn'. I'm just sick of KK's factless, baseless, ridiculous slander and speculation. How about a little class? Concentrate on your own system and quit clinging mud.

This is quite a specious argument considering the fact that KK was discussing backwards compatibility without even mentioning the X360 until the INTERVIEWER made mention of the X360. It wasn't KK that brought the X360 into the conversation it was the interviewer.

Why does Allard have to talk about how he wants Kuturagi's resignation letter hanging over his bed? Why can't he just talk about his machine instead of talking "ridiculous slander"??

 

[scooby_dooby]

To my knowlege, Sony is at least aiming for 100% BC out of the box.

And MS's "goal" is to have every game playable on X360.

So we'll see what happens, both companies have stated the same goal. Lets give them BOTH the benefit of the doubt.

in the end studies showed <5% of people ever put a PS1 game in their PS2 so it doesn't even really matter, everyone says they want BC then no-one ever uses it.

 

[Carl B]

Scooby chill out man.

First of all, we ALL know Microsoft hasn't come up with a solution other than partial software emulation - we know because they've stated it themselves.

Plus of all of KK's digs at Microsoft, I'm just not seeing it here in this particular interview. He's basically like, "Yeah MS won't have the luxury of full BC..." This is hardly a ruthless attack - I think Gamespot just ran that in their headline because they've noticed a correlation between 'KK Slanders Microsoft' articles and site traffic.

 

[gurgi]

And MS's "goal" is to have every game playable on X360.

I'm sure that's why they've been performing damage control on the issue since before e3. I think the xbox360 looks hot, but they should call thier backwards compatibility something else and just get the distinction out of the way. I could care less if it didn't play any Xbox 1 games to be honest.

 

[BlueTsunami]

To my knowlege, Sony is at least aiming for 100% BC out of the box.

And MS's "goal" is to have every game playable on X360.

So we'll see what happens, both companies have stated the same goal. Lets give them BOTH the benefit of the doubt.

in the end studies showed <5% of people ever put a PS1 game in their PS2 so it doesn't even really matter, everyone says they want BC then no-one ever uses it.

BC is good for the start of a Consoles life. When launch games are released and people are done with them...theres usually a buffer zone where theres still good quality games coming out for the consoles succesor and people still want to play previous generations new games.

Also...I for one like Backwards compatability...I'm an avid RPG player. I'm really into oldschool games...as a matter a fact, i'm going through my Collectors Edition of Arc the Lad (For the PSX). Backwards compatablity I know for a fact is pretty big with PSX RPG'ers and will be just as big when the PS3 hits and people want to play their RPG collections that came from the PS2.

And MS's "goal" is to have every game playable on X360.

I'm sure that's why they've been performing damage control on the issue since before e3. I think the xbox360 looks hot, but they should call thier backwards compatibility something else and just get the distinction out of the way. I could care less if it didn't play any Xbox 1 games to be honest.

He's correct Scooby, Microsofts version of BC is all popular games (what that means, I don't know). But thats not a good sign, if there was any confidence in their ability to allow BC with 360 they would have outright said it...but they haven't. Also there was a post a few weeks ago that stated that NVidia will allow Low Level Registry access to Microsofts...other than that..their on their own. The hard part of that is getting an emulator to work on a CPU that their probably unfamiliar with and an ATI GPU....all in all theres seems to be an uphill battle their...

 

[AlNom]

BC may be more important to Xbox360 if nVidia is stopping production of the NV2A...

 

[jvd]

jvd wrote:
All emulation is hardware + software.

Ehm no.

So the software is run by some guy writing it out free hand ?

Of course hardware allways is used in emulation

We don't know what Ken meant by "hardware" yet. Maybe RSX was tweaked a little to offer some legacy addressing modes for GS (GS has something similar to facilitate PS1 GPU compatibility better). Maybe they will have a full GS chip in there somewhere. etc.
Personally I think IOP+EE side is likely to be fully software emulated, but we don't even know that for sure.

Of course we don't know what he means by hardware yet but he said they weren't going to have the ps2 or psone hardware in it

But when Sony announced the PlayStation 3 specs, the machine didn't include any subprocessor chips

so its giong to have to have some type of hardware in it . Yu can tweak the hardware to address legacy modes but that wont solve a 100% of your problems and some things will be done much diffrently between the chips then you have the ee and cell.


He doesn't make sense when he talks about stuff . He says that ms is can'tcommet to 100% backwards compatability because of emulation but sony itself is using some hybrid trick or is just bsing and using complete emulation .

Not to mention that even when they had the complete hardware in the ps2 they failed to hit 100% compatibilty .



Anyway fal since u jumped in can you answer this

Third-party developers sometimes do things that are unimaginable. For example, there are cases where their games run, but not according to the console's specifications

whats he mean by this ?

 

[mckmas8808]

You guys are really funny (i.e. scooby and jvd). I can see right through you. I listed a good number of things to talk more in depth about and you straight skipped it. You guys instead talk in depth about how you think Ken is a liar.

Why is it that ATI's main man can get a interview and talk about 2XAA and 4XAA for free (meaning very little slowdown 1-5%), yet when Ken talks about the CELL doing X,Y,and Z with helping graphics you completely dodge the subject?

This is what I call being bias up front. Can we talk about the other things please?

 

[jvd]

You guys are really funny (i.e. scooby and jvd). I can see right through you. I listed a good number of things to talk more in depth about and you straight skipped it. You guys instead talk in depth about how you think Ken is a liar.

All I saw was a post from a trolling user who was admitedly ranting about people not agreeing with him .

If you want someone to responed to you perhaps you should quit with the trolling and the claims of trolling when someone doesn't agree with you .

Why is it that ATI's main man can get a interview and talk about 2XAA and 4XAA for free (meaning very little slowdown 1-5%), yet when Ken talks about the CELL doing X,Y,and Z with helping graphics you completely dodge the subject?

There is a huge article on this very site backing up each of those claims . Perhaps you should read it .


However with the cell all we have is that these demos were run on a cell but there was also a 6800 sli set up in it .

As for hdr it would make no sense for the rsx to have dedicated hardware for it and the cell to suddenly take over this task. Mabye the cell can do hdr but why would it ?

This is what I call being bias up front. Can we talk about the other things please?

Like what ? we start a thread about titles and we have certian people jump in saying it looks like an xbox game and start trolling that thread .

 

[Titanio]

As for hdr it would make no sense for the rsx to have dedicated hardware for it and the cell to suddenly take over this task. Mabye the cell can do hdr but why would it ?

I've already mentioned this before, but haven't been shot down yet, so I'll mention it again if only to gain more feedback on the possibility, positive or negative - in bandwidth-limited situations you may wish to eschew RSX's HDR capabilities in order to do it on Cell, as it would cut down on mem bandwidth usage (burn internal cell bandwidth vs memory bandwidth).

HDR asides, there's possibly a better case for doing other scene postprocessing on Cell..? A dev may have ideas for post-processing that may simply not fit as easily on a GPU, I guess..

 

[jvd]

ve already mentioned this before, but haven't been shot down yet, so I'll mention it again if only to gain more feedback on the possibility, positive or negative - in bandwidth-limited situations you may wish to eschew RSX's HDR capabilities in order to do it on Cell, as it would cut down on mem bandwidth usage (burn internal cell bandwidth vs memory bandwidth).

How ? Its high dynamic range. Your going to have to send the image at a certian point from the rsx to the cell to have hdr added. If anything it may take even more bandwidth cause your going to have to send the completed picture to the cell to have hdr done and then back to the rsx to be out putted to the screen right ?

HDR asides, there's possibly a better case for doing other scene postprocessing on Cell..? A dev may have ideas for post-processing that may simply not fit as easily on a GPU, I guess..

Well mabye. My arguement is this

1) The cell chips needs to do sound , physics , a.i and all the other tasks that a cpu has to do .

2) for the majority of graphics the rsx is most likely much better than the cell chip at these tasks

3) we don't know how internal compersions for framebuffers and what not on the rsx will interact with the cell

 

[Titanio]

How ? Its high dynamic range. Your going to have to send the image at a certian point from the rsx to the cell to have hdr added. If anything it may take even more bandwidth cause your going to have to send the completed picture to the cell to have hdr done and then back to the rsx to be out putted to the screen right ?

The transfers between cell and rsx are eating bandwidth between those two, however, not memory bandwidth. So in situations where mem bandwidth is scarce, it may make sense. The EIB can feed off of flexio directly without the data having to go to xdr and then back to cell. Theoretically you may never touch mem bandwidth, except for the final write to the framebuffer (?)

1) The cell chips needs to do sound , physics , a.i and all the other tasks that a cpu has to do .

True, but there is a lot of headroom there..it's the developers choice how they want to distribute power.

And true, HDR is probably better done on RSX, but with what I'm guessing is a higher memory bandwidth penalty. Above I'm talking about situations where memory bandwidth is a priority, so..

 

[jvd]

The transfers between cell and rsx are eating bandwidth between those two, however, not memory bandwidth. So in situations where mem bandwidth is scarce, it may make sense. The EIB can feed off of flexio directly without the data having to go to xdr and then back to cell. Theoretically you may never touch mem bandwidth, except for the final write to the framebuffer (?)

I dunno you'd have to put hte image some where, I don't think the cell has enough cache in it to hold a 1080p or a 720p image with fp 16 in it ?


Does hdr get applied after or before the textures ? This would be a big thing as if its after the textures I don't see how it can be done (though i'm not ap rogramer ) you'd have to send a completed image with textures to the cell ? I don't see it happening .

True, but there is a lot of headroom there..it's the developers choice how they want to distribute power.

And true, HDR is probably better done on RSX, but with what I'm guessing is a higher memory bandwidth penalty. Above I'm talking about situations where memory bandwidth is a priority, so..

Well i dunno about alot of headroom. If you want next gen a.i and physics its going to take alot of performance away from a next gen hardware .

Anyway i brought up some reasons why i don't think we will see it done. I could be wrong though. But as i said if it was to save badnwidth they wouldn't have wasted transitors putting the hardware in the rsx for it

 

[talyn99]

mckmas8808
Senior Member



Joined: 08 Mar 2005
Posts: 682

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 12:18 am Post subject:

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You guys are really funny (i.e. scooby and jvd). I can see right through you. I listed a good number of things to talk more in depth about and you straight skipped it. You guys instead talk in depth about how you think Ken is a liar.

Why is it that ATI's main man can get a interview and talk about 2XAA and 4XAA for free (meaning very little slowdown 1-5%), yet when Ken talks about the CELL doing X,Y,and Z with helping graphics you completely dodge the subject?

This is what I call being bias up front. Can we talk about the other things please?

I agree, like the short-comings of the PS2 was Ken's fault. MS started the monkey crap slinging at E3. Hell, clearly they feel 'threatened'. One of their chief engineers on his blog presents INSANELY biased opinions. And you rag on Ken, unbelievable. They all full of crap in their own ways.

I do hope many of you on here that assault SOny owns an X-block, and I hope you enjoy it as well. But it boils down to this:
Sony=number one
X-block fanboys, soured cause they can't figure how a weaker system is on top, that what it is all about. many people as have I have been other places and see the utter mad cow-like idicoricy of x-box fanboys.

Sony = USA

x-box= Rest of the world...


seems ironic to me.


They're gonna get their asses handed to them next-gen as well. I rant about this all the time. But you guys who support MS, and allow them to stamp everyone else out. Will be sorry, frickin infestation