Look at this Google-cached (pulled down) PlayStation 3 page

I REALLY dont know why some people get so worked up for something we know very little about and wont come out for at least another 2 years....

all we know is that Cell will be a HUGE thing for Sony and MAYBE other manufacturers (after all, nothing's to stop Sony licensing the thing to other people, given the right amount of money).

Deadmeat is just the usual fboy making comments on what he obviously knows very little about. i mean, the Saturn-PS2 comparison was all nice and funny at PS2 launch, but comparing saturn to PS3 is just abnormally psychotic.
Saturn was just a rush job by a COMPLETELY different company that ended up broke and not in the hardware market at all.
PS2 and PS3 are from a company that seems to do pretty much everything right whatever they do, be it for a magic chip inside the plastation hardware telling us "playstation is cool" or whatever u wanna call it. the situation is VERY different. like comparing apples to monkeys.

 

Heh ! I like this line.

 

and dont forget Saturn was an evolution of 32-bit console hardware that started development in 1990-1991, the GigaDrive.

 

Well this guy better stick his neck out alot more maybe 10-20 times more for the raw polygon count

 

Re: ...

And this was confirmed where again?

Which console was it that had developers complaining about not being allowed to "touch" the metal?
PSone had libraries from the very beginning, to make it especially easy to develop for.

It’s the only way to use the die area to it full potential.
Anyway, the basic idea in this kind of architecture is "very" old. One of the first examples is the Illiac IV, from the mid sixties, for which the first sketches was made in the fifties (when tubes was still used!).

And Mediocresoft has lots of experience?
Sony has been working with realtime 3d since (IIRC) 1984.

 

...

To Phil

You tell me what it will do beside playing games, I just don't see it. Will CELL powered DTVs will automatically perform 16X AA to enhance TV image to almost film level?

Because SCEI is Sony's profit generator and it is in Sony Group's interest to maintain their current market dominance. Not that CELL is going to be useful for anything else beside gaming.

IBM is merely a contractor delivering a chip ordered by its customer(SCEI). CELL's success or failure doesn't really affect IBM that much, CELL has no place in IBM's product portfolio.(CELL workstation? CELL mainframe? Forget it) As for Toshiba, they had to get involved or lose business they already had with SCEI, they had no choice.

To Vince

I am able to distinguish fantasy from reality, what is possible in real world and what is just some executive's dream to go unfulfilled.

This issue was already settled 6 years ago, consumers already dollar-voted they didn't want PCTVs and Gateway and DELL PCTVs flopped badly on the market, neither have consumers gone for TV sets with builtin WebTV functionality. TVs and Internet do not mix. TV is for one-way entertainment. You turn on your PC for two-way entermainment.

Some visions will just remain visions.

The DC hardware was completed in early 1998 and its rough spec was already well-publicized in media due to NEC Vs 3Dfx fallout by 1997. I doubt Toshiba offered a twin VU design to SCEI(Doesn't make any sense), because Toshiba proposal and LSI proposal for PSX2 CPU were roughly similar, Toshiba one being more programmable and LSI one being more fixed like PSX1. VU1 was a later date add-on, driven by Kutaragi san's desire to beat published DC specs by a substantial margin.

1997??? Sources please....

Please provide me with EE papers dating back to 1997.

To Panajev

You don't understand how Saturn functioned. Saturn was not a SMP machine; the second SH-2 is configured differently from the master and serves a fuctionality similar to VU, that you would treat it like a programmable device running on its local program rather a CPU. The second SH-2 would have generated minimal bandwidth traffic if used properly.

Something like that.

Saturn was designed in 1993, not 2003. But the architectural principles were very similar. PSX2 was Sony's Saturn, except for the difference of Sony's marketting muscle and budget.

Why would VDPs stall? They are output devices, not input devices. The CPU uses the DMA engine to move a block of data into VDPs, VDPs don't read system RAM on their own.

Well, I still remember all the developer outrage against "insane" PSX2 architecture back in 2000, which is to be heard even louder when Kutaragi demos PSX3 sometime in the future.

X86 Linux boxes cannot be beaten for those applications. Anything non-standard costs money.

To London Boy

Some people read more from cryptic patent applications than other people do. I already learned all I needed to judge the system

Who is going to license? Why? Let's get real here, CELL is Betamax2 that no other manufacturers care about.

I never compared CELL to Saturn(I compared Sega Saturn to Sony Saturn(aka PSX2))..

 

Re: ...

...and this little quote illustrates exactly the sheer lack of understanding of remotely technical subjects for even suggesting such a thing. The rest of his postings should be equally subject to uncertainty for validity. The whole basis behind 16x AA is that you can indeed render the native image at 4x by 4x the resolution of the end product. How would a DTV fed by a digital videostream be able to do this? The videostream is the end product. The best you could do from there is 1x AA, which is essentially just blurring the image a bit. If it were possible to receive and process the "16x resolution scheme", wouldn't it make sense to just present that resolution (or whatever highest resolution is compatible)? Maybe the exception could be if you happen to be receiving an uber, uber HDTV signal and wanted to show it at 640x480 for some insane reason...but then why would you even be concerned with video quality in the first place for doing such a thing? The point is, achieving 16x AA from a DTV signal won't have much to do with what hardware is present, Cell or otherwise. Perhaps, in some crazy new compression format to appear in the future, but we view all hypothetical, crazy new things with great pessimism, don't we?

All of this is besides the point, as the original statement was worded to mean exactly what it meant- "enhance TV image to almost film level". So some how he expects this TV to magically be able to upscan a signal resolution to "film level" (using a severly data-reduced digital signal as a starting point, no doubt)?

What could happen is a low-powered Cell functions as the general purpose processor in a DTV. Any moderately complex modern TV needs one for basic operation (a general processor, that is). This should be of no surprise (except to DM). Being a Cell processor with network compatibility, it certainly is a possibility spare cycles could be used in the function of a separate game console (on some distributed-computing project, of course, most likely not realtime gaming), for example. Naturally, the more Cell appliances you have laying around, the better the effect on whatever ends up being the cycle-hog (assuming this admittedly crazy architecture does work in the end). If a simple Cell unit could become as obiquitous in use as a general processor in various appliances (as say an ARM or some Motorola job), then I'd say the possibility for such a networked scenario is certainly possible.

 

I can see the rationalisation in yours posts but..

and

creeps the hell outta me, by striking me as disturbingly paranoid. while you offer some welcome analysis can you support the above claims with more than cricumstancial evedence?

 

...

It was meant to be a joke for hardware junkies.....

1. Take the standard HDTV frame decoded to some resolution, say 800x600.
2. Blow up the frame to 1600x1200.
3. Do a 4x4 interpolation.
4. The "processed' frame looks sharper than the original, presuming the TV screen supports higher resolution.
5. Works with any video source.

Why would any manufacturer want to bother with CELL when single chip DTV decoding solutions are dirt cheap???? Your mentality is like that of NOUN guys, that "Consumers will pay more to play games on other DVD players". Well no one did, and NOUN went bankrupt.

ARM has the embedded market covered. ARM cannot be beaten.

Yap, and my TV running on some ARM chip should be playing Tetris on its idle cycle. Why haven't TV set makers figure that out???

Doesn't work like this. The merit of console gaming is consistency, it is not acceptable to have a game run at 30 FPS on one TV set, and 60 FPS on Sony TV set.

A big assumption, that is.

Evidences are gone. You know them if you were around 97~98. All I can definately tell you is that Toshiba and LSI competed for PSX2 CPU project with their respective proposals, both designs being fairly similar in capability with Toshiba one being more programmable, Kutaragi picked the Toshiba design, the final outcome of Emotion Engine is not what Toshiba initially proposed in spring of 1997, etc....

http://www.informationweek.com/649/iufin.htm

 

then your point on this matter is moot.

the link you posted tells me that's true. do you have any specific details on toshibas original design Vs LSI.

I'll see if I can find any links.

 

Re: ...

??? You end up with the worst looking, blurry 1600x1200 image evah! What's the point? Just show it in the native 800x600. ...and you want to try this from heavily compressed digital video as the source??? Talk about magnifying your artifacts!

Naturally, you would ASSUME that a Cell would only be useful as a DTV decoding chip (not that it couldn't). What I said was a general processor. Something has to drive all those sophisticated electronic functions and draw all those pretty onscreen menus. We're long past the age where a TV is just a collection of knobs and a power switch that leads through a set of fixed logic pathways.

Perhaps, but competition and introduction of new paradigms can be a good thing. Mind you, the point was not that ARM has to be beaten. All I said is that a Cell chip could conceivably go into appliances where ARM has gone.

Was the ARM developed for distributed/networked scenarios? Your comment is nonsensical.

Naturally, you make the faulty assertion that this could only benefit fps, but a benefit is a benefit...

 

...

1600x1200 is always better than 800x600. You see more detail than 800x600, even if 3/4th of pixels were artifically created.

ARM is also a general purpose processor.

ARM has been doing that just fine all these years.

Why use CELL when ARM costs $1 a piece and is proven to work? Do you need 1 Telaflop to change channels? Why pay $200 and even more expensive software suits??? It is not logical.

I welcome competition and new paradigm. But the new paradigm must be auto-parallelism, not "We throw in a bunch of processors in a die for a massive marketting hype, now you code slaves figure it out how to work this thing" kind of paradigm.

Is CELL then??? CELL does not do networking automatic, developers had to code in the networking. You do networking cheaply and more reliably on proven ARM platform than an unproven and beastly complex CELL.

 

Re: ...

HA! I usually don't like giving out individuals information, but to show just how ignorant and insanely biased you are... it's understandable.

First lets start with the basics. This is what Howard did at Toshiba:

Ok, now lets look at this:

Amazing the people you run into online in the Go! community.

Um, alrighty buddy. More like, "Evidences never existed." Revisionist history is funny as shit to people with a clue:

So, we know the program started in 1996 when Kutaragi layed out the specs. You stated that by 1998, Kutaragi would have known the DreamCast specs for CPU when the CreamCast's design was completed. That means that in 1998, SCE/Toshiba must have changed the front-end specifications of the EE.

The chip taped out in August 1998. That leaves under one year for the front-end work, resynthesis, netlisting, subsequent development and 3 tape-outs (2 revisions) of a CPU. IMPOSSIBLE.

You do realize that the psycological test wasn't a joke, I was seriously trying to help you in the diagnosis.



Onto Cell:

Um, no. The incentive is easy interoperability with other devices utilizing Cell from Sony Group and Toshiba initially. The incentive is a scalable architecture that's can be used in all a companies home electronics and has the ability to interoperate and access the broadband internet to access digital media.

That's why. Because Sony's intention is to make the Sony Group into a broadband connected commodity that is self feeding and self sustaining. Sony Movies is the hottest film producer in Hollywood and holds enormous resources of digitized TV shows, movies, etc. Sony Music is huge in itself....

They, unlike any other company in existence, not only produces the digital media at the front end but they sell the back-end products. What Cell and Broadband will do it interconnect the backends between themselves and allow for Broadband to connect the digital creation with the digital presentation.

This is unprecedented if it's pulled off. No other company is in this position to control the entire spectrum of media transmission, nor has one been since the invention of the printing press. Not even AOL-TimeWarner had this potential in it's heyday.

People buy commodities. Sony is a commodity and it's about to increase this many-fold.

Because: (a) The present day architectures aren't designed as Cell is - both in terms of hardware and software. (b) Who said it's going to share resources like that for RT apps? (c) What other company could?

No shit sherlock, nor did Sony or myself in this discussion ever state that developers would be programming to this paradigm.

Well, I'll tell you that you're quick to judge and ignorant of the industries want for cross-platform standards for electronics. Sony is already doing great with their Linux derivative being designed by Sony, Samsung, Philips and LG Electronics, etc. And the extention to Sony's OpenMGX designed with Philips/Intertrust.

The industry wants to sell their product. People want their products to be simpler to use together (eg. anti-Microsoft) and they want pervasive computing and allways connected. This is the direction cell is moving in.

 

Re: ...

It is scalable. But then if you actually read the patent or overcame your psycological problems you'd have realized this by now.

Infact the patent shows examples of chips based off the Cell architecture (which it is, an architecture not a specific chip) that are under 1/5th the size of the BE. And they can scale lower is necessary, although for the 2005 window this is great.

You don't know this. You don't know anything about the architecture and especially the software programming of it. I don't know the details, so I can be sure as hell you don't.

I feel that the XBox Next and Nintendo 5 must be so much harder to program because their preformance is so much greater and the effort to extract this preformance must scale linearly.


< Tries to slit wrists with plastic spoon >

Bullshit again. Prove it, I want emperical comperasons based on numbers - not words. Isn't anyone else sick of your useless ranting based on your ideals and not any shred of evidence?

Software Cells anyone?

 

I need to see something of the actual architecture before I have something to bitch about though. I'll leave speculative bitching over old patents to you.
Though mind if I ask - this patent has been floating around for months, why start bitching about it now? It hasn't changed in any way since we first saw it.

But VU1 IS the geometric/T&L processor in PS2.
It's both easier to use for that purpose and faster at it then VU0 (which should be obvious since VU0 wasn't designed to function as a T&L unit to begin with).
To anyone with ANY realworld usage experience it's painfully clear VU0 was the worse thought out part of the two, however, architecturally VU0 is even less likely to be an afterthought since it's actually coupled as coprocessor to R59k and extends the CPU instruction set, as well as working as a standalone unit.

 

My take DeadMeat

I think PS2 was more based on the response from PS1 than any other architectures ( Otherwise they might have stuck colour blending on!!! )
The design acts on the breakdown of scene graph data into static ( background and simple geometry ) and complex ( animated or physically modelled ) with VU1 probally having more in common with the 3D transform engines on SGI reality engines, and the HW opengl pipe... and VU0 being an extension of all of the requests/complaints about the original GTE on the PS1

I do agree that the 'cell' and 'ps3' need to be considered as a console though - that's how most people will use it, and if the architecture appears elsewhere
it's a bonus ( like the ATI chips in the new high end SGI machine... )

If you wanted to compare architectures PS2 probally shares more with the N64 than the DC..

 

Re: ...

it would be funny though!!! i mean, imagine Sony marketing their new Cell powered range of TV's... NEW CELL-WEGA WIDESCREEN TV LETS U PLAY YOUR FAVORITE PS3 GAMES AT DOUBLE THE FRAMERATE!!!

AND COUPLED WITH THE NEW SONY CELL-POWERED MP3 PLAYER, U WILL GET 30% INCREASE OF PERFORMANCE!!!



come on... in the next generation, the only pc-like options we will have will be the choice of video output (interlaced or HDTV), the sound output (DD or DTS) and THAT'S IT.
and depending on the BR functionality, all recording options.

everything else must still be easy to use for Mr Joe Dunnowottodo.....

Cell powered TV's will probably only be able to "communicate" with PS3 so that the PS3 will automatically output the best signal for that specific TV without us even knowing it. Cell powered surround sound systems will communicate with it so that the best sound output will be fed through, without us even knowing it....

unless i'm wrong, the video out of any console is what it says, OUT, there is nothing coming in. signal goes from ps3 to TV and thats it.

 

small point

Actually Deadmeat, Saturn SH2's did operate in crude SMP manner.
Master/Slave was more bus arbitration than control...

However most efficient use tended to be with locked D$ so second SH2 could run geometry and animation calculations while first worked on game logic.