Nvidia and ATI Technologies wants a piece of PS3

[dantruon]

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Playstation 3 ; Sony banks big on cellular theory
Electronic Gaming Monthly. Lombard:  Jul 1, 2003.  pg. 34
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Computer & video games,  Product introduction
Companies:
Sony Corp(Ticker:SNE, NAICS: 334310, 334419, Duns:69-055-3649 )
Product Names:
Sony PlayStation 3
Article types:
Feature
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Press Start
Publication title:
Electronic Gaming Monthly. Lombard: Jul 1, 2003.  pg. 34
Special issue:
Issue: 168
Source Type:
Periodical
ISSN/ISBN:
1058918X
ProQuest document ID:
357021471
Text Word Count
634
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Abstract (Article Summary)

In 2002, Shinichi Okamoto, chief technology officer for Sony's games unit, outlined the technology the company will use as the brains of its third-generation machine. The system will pack a new microprocessor jointly developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM at an estimated R&D cost of $400 million.

Full Text (634   words)

Copyright 2003 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originallyappearing in Electronic Gaming Monthly.


ETA: 2005

Sony declined our request for a comment on its PS3 strategy, but the company has already spilled the guts of its gameplan in a few ways. In 2002, Shinichi Okamoto, chief technology officer for Sony's games unit, outlined the technology the company will use as the brains of its third-generation machine. The system will pack a new microprocessor jointly developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM at an estimated R&D cost of $400 million. "Moore's Law is too slow for us," Okamoto said, referring to the computer-geek axiom that chip performance doubles roughly every 18 months. "We can't wait 20 years to achieve a thousand-fold increase in PlayStation performance."

Recent patent disclosures show that PS3's "cell-computing" architecture will pack many processors onto a single chip, as opposed to just the one processor that's on conventional chips. This cell technology - described as a "supercomputer on a chip" - will break down processing duties and assign them to the various processors. In a way, it works like a beehive, in which tasks are parceled out to specific worker bees.

Since programming duties could even be buzzed across a network - passed via PS3's sure-to-be-included broadband connection - there's wild speculation that the system could tap other machines over the Internet for extra processing power. Okamoto said the console would be capable of 1 trillion floating-point operations per second, or the processing equivalent of 100 Pentium 4 chips (just one of these chips serves as the brains of a modern PC).

Graphics-card makers Nvidia and ATI Technologies are itching to get their technology inside PS2's successor, but Sony's engineers could simply dedicate a separate cell chip to the task of crunching graphics. However, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says that bypassing the graphics-chip makers' shader technologies would be a big mistake. (Shaders are miniprograms that can quickly and easily draw effects such as reflective surfaces.)

The reaction from game developers is mixed. Some express awe at the machine's proposed power. But others, like Epic (Unreal Championship) President Tim Sweeney, say it would be virtually impossible to program games for a system with so many processors working in parallel. "I've never heard from Sony [about] how they intend for people to use the hardware," Sweeney says. "I can't imagine how you will actually program [for that console]." Meanwhile, Peter Glaskowsky, editor of Microprocessor Report, says it doesn't make sense to spread the processing for a single game across a network, since the delays in fetching results from a remote console are huge compared to the speed of internal processing.

Beyond the chip front, we've heard much speculation that the next generation of Sony's machine will act as a home server, with a hard drive, TiVo-like recording capabilities, PS1 and PS2 backwards compatibility, and Web-browsing capabilities. "Sony's next box will make good on the unfulfilled promise of the PlayStation 2," Okamoto said in a speech to game developers. "It will compete not only with game consoles from Nintendo and Microsoft, but also with PCs from the likes of Dell...and Hewlett-Packard, and with TV set-top boxes from Motorola and Philips." Of course, Sony made the same prelaunch pie-in-the-sky predictions about PS2, and three years later, we're still waiting for the hard-drive add-on. One chipmaker says Sony may include CD- or DVD-burning capabilities in its next box. Rumors suggest that Blu-Ray, a technology co-developed by Sony that fills discs with five DVDs' worth of data, will also be used. But the old question remains: Is this box for gamers or for an entire family looking to control all of its digital entertainment? And since the processes to mass produce cell chips will be unavailable until at least 2005, could Sony run into the same manufacturing problems that plagued the PS2 graphics chip and led to shortages at the system's launch?[/i]

I know is old news but is still interesting...
So enjoy the read and comment on it if u wish..

 

[MfA]

No offense to you ... but this isnt only not news now, it wasnt news then. If we want industry analysis we will provide our own. Water under the bridge, the topic of NVIDIA wanting to be in the PS3 has been done to death and is entirely irrelevant now.

To the moderators : given how interesting threads get deleted by accident for being only slightly redundant how about at least locking this one down for being entirely so?

 

[Megadrive1988]

of course Nvidia and ATI want a piece of PS3.

Playstation is the biggest thing going in the console world.
things probably won't change all that much with the coming
generation, in terms of Sony's console marketshare.

that said, I highly doubt Sony will allow nvidia or ati to get a
piece of the Playstation biz.

Sony is designing its own GPU for PS3. while Nvidia and ATI
are probably much better than Sony at building GPUs, Sony is
no doubt perfectly happy making its own in-house GPU for PS3.

the only thing I have seen that would tie Nvidia and ATI to PS3,
is the fact that Sony, Nvidia, ATI are all funding some university
shading project. I'm sure what Sony has learned there, will be
(or has been) applied to PS3's GPU.

 

[jvd]

while i personaly think having a nvidia or ati gpu/vpu inside the ps3 would make the system much better all around sony would be stupid not to reuse cell else where in the console. The investment is to high for them not to

 

[Vince]

while i personaly think having a nvidia or ati gpu/vpu inside the ps3 would make the system much better all around

Why? Name recognition? Or does ATI and nVidia know something Sony and the rest of the world doesn't? Seriously, I'm curious.

 

[Sazar]

I love all these recent hardware reports with Peter Glaskowsky @ the helm

its just too funny...

 

[jvd]

while i personaly think having a nvidia or ati gpu/vpu inside the ps3 would make the system much better all around

Why? Name recognition? Or does ATI and nVidia know something Sony and the rest of the world doesn't? Seriously, I'm curious.

Lets see vince. Image quality , anistropic filtering methods , full screen anti alasing methods . Frame buffer compression tech . Hidden surface removeal tech. Advance pipeline tech .

Tons of things ati and nvidia has constantly enhanced and pushed in working tech that is actually being used.

Mabye this time we wont just get huge fillrate with the quality of a voodoo chipset.

And perhaps we will get filtering on par with the pc tech of the time .

I don't know about u . But if they have a geforce 2 lvl image quality in the ps3 i will not touch it with a ten foot pole.

But then again your comment is what I expected from you. After all only sony can do everything and not only do it but do it better than anyone else .

 

[Megadrive1988]

[warning, negative Sony/PS3 comment below]

If PS3 had less than GeForce3/GeForce4 image quality (thus Xbox IQ) it will be a complete joke.

I hope Sony's graphics people have grown by leaps and bounds since 1995-1998 when PS2 was designed.

 

[Vince]

Lets see vince. Image quality , anistropic filtering methods , full screen anti alasing methods . Frame buffer compression tech . Hidden surface removeal tech. Advance pipeline tech .

Of which all are actively researched in the public field and there is no reason Sony couldn't impliment them the same way. Have you seen the recent Toshiba patent application by the way? What do you think?

Tons of things ati and nvidia has constantly enhanced and pushed in working tech that is actually being used.

Um... what is this? I mean, it's like IHV talking points or something. Also, of course they're work is more visable than, say, Sony's because Sony doesn't release a new product every year.

Mabye this time we wont just get huge fillrate with the quality of a voodoo chipset.

And perhaps we will get filtering on par with the pc tech of the time.

Teh PC Tech of teh time, eh? So, when 3dfx was launching it's Voodoo3 after Sony had launching it's Graphic Synthesizer and Emotion Engine, they were behind, eh? How little I seem to remember of the time - I mean, seriously, who would have thought those Voodoo3's could keep up with todays PS2 games.

I don't know about u . But if they have a geforce 2 lvl image quality in the ps3 i will not touch it with a ten foot pole.

But then again your comment is what I expected from you. After all only sony can do everything and not only do it but do it better than anyone else .

First off, you won't touch it anyways. Second, I just don't see how your comment is anything but rancid BS. Sorry.

 

[Tuttle]

while i personaly think having a nvidia or ati gpu/vpu inside the ps3 would make the system much better all around

Why? Name recognition? Or does ATI and nVidia know something Sony and the rest of the world doesn't? Seriously, I'm curious.

There would be no benefit to Sony, of course.

But it would give some much needed validation to the people who suggest it.

 

[AzBat]

This is a real honest question. But what kind of graphics rendering IP does Sony have itself? And how does that compare to ATI and NVIDIA's own IP?I'm totally being honest here as I don't know nothing of Sony's IP. Depending on what they have or don't have, I could see that being a possible limiting factor for Sony as compared to ATI and NVIDIA.

Tommy McClain

 

[gurgi]

This thread should be locked for those links alone.

 

[jvd]

Of which all are actively researched in the public field and there is no reason Sony couldn't impliment them the same way. Have you seen the recent Toshiba patent application by the way? What do you think?

all of which are patented and wont be used by sony.

Look at the last group to put out a 3d product in the pc world. It featured no hdr and no frame buffer compression and crappy fsaa . Heh it wasn't even fsaa it was edge aa .

Their last part also came out the last time sony put out a part.

Show me some examples vince of sonys fsaa methods. The resulting image quality. Show me examples of their anistropic filtering methods. Show me examples of any tech that is more advance than a voodoo 2 card .

Teh PC Tech of teh time, eh? So, when 3dfx was launching it's Voodoo3 after Sony had launching it's Graphic Synthesizer and Emotion Engine, they were behind, eh? How little I seem to remember of the time - I mean, seriously, who would have thought those Voodoo3's could keep up with todays PS2 games.

Ps2 was released in 99 was it not ?
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/19991011/index.html

geforce sdr .

Less than 6 months later the geforce 2 gts was on the market .

I'd even rather have a geforce sdr image quality over the ps2 image quality any day of the week.

and i'd take the radeon image quality over that .

First off, you won't touch it anyways. Second, I just don't see how your comment is anything but rancid BS. Sorry.

guess we are at a impass. At least I never try to hide my bias . Which is more than I can say about you.


Of course why would sony want anything that someone else made... Oh wait . Thats right they wanted the blue gene from ibm to turn into the cell.



Go ahead vince. List all the patents sony has for fsaa , anistropic filtering and other things that will allow to produce a card on par with even a r300 class card.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Tommy McClain wrote:

But what kind of graphics rendering IP does Sony have itself? And how does that compare to ATI and NVIDIA's own IP?I'm totally being honest here as I don't know nothing of Sony's IP. Depending on what they have or don't have, I could see that being a possible limiting factor for Sony as compared to ATI and NVIDIA.

that's a damn good question Tommy. something I'd like to see addressed here. this would be one of the main reasons for (or against) Sony knocking on Nvidia's or ATI's door.

with Nvidia out of Xbox, certainly they'd like to get into the Playstation 3.
I could see some awesome things coming out of a possible Nvidia-Sony partnership. Nvidia supplies their expertise. Sony provides the bandwidth.

but in all likelihood, Sony is going their own way with PS3. will be interesting to see how GS3/Visualizer (or whatever) turns out.

 

[speng]

AzBat I'd recommend openning a new thread with that question. I'd like to know myself.

 

[Vince]

all of which are patented and wont be used by sony.

This just isn't true. I don't think it's that much of an obscure fact that nVidia and ATI both assimilate research done by the academic and research fields. I mean, where are you comming from?

Look at the last group to put out a 3d product in the pc world. It featured no hdr and no frame buffer compression and crappy fsaa . Heh it wasn't even fsaa it was edge aa/

What does this have to do with anything tangible? It's a true non sequitur line of argument.

Show me some examples vince of sonys fsaa methods. The resulting image quality. Show me examples of their anistropic filtering methods. Show me examples of any tech that is more advance than a voodoo 2 card

What part of my comment about Sony's cycles being 5 years did you not comprehend. But, if you must see - I suggest you look at the GSCube and it's output and compare that the nVidia and ATI demos you so treasure.

I'd even rather have a geforce sdr image quality over the ps2 image quality any day of the week.

and i'd take the radeon image quality over that .

Ahh, so this is a joke thread. My fault.

Go ahead vince. List all the patents sony has for fsaa , anistropic filtering and other things that will allow to produce a card on par with even a r300 class card.

Well, JVD, I can have you search for the patents Panajev primarily posted concerning the PSP's 3d pipeline several months ago. Or did you forget about PSP already.

PSP is quite the odd entity from your position. The hands down premier mobile 3D part in existence and, yet, it's from Sony and shouldn't exist due to Sony' incompetance and lack of patents. I mean, why is nVidia putting out such lackluster products like this compared to the PSP if their so much better than, say, Sony or he rest of the CE industry? And where's ATI's PSP killer?

 

[jvd]

Go ahead vince. Search it . Because from what i have read and scene on the psp its image output is less than that of the dreamcast .


Oh and remember the advice I gave you. Because I"m sick of your holier than thou crap and sony is god bullshit that I have to hear from you in very post.

So as you said

I just read the thread and was going to post the same thing. Personally, I'd like to discuss something other than the stereotypical, "Yeah, yeah. We've heard it all before - a couple of months before NV30, and then NV35. It was bullshit then, it's probably BS now." comments. I mean, we all know that ATI is one hell of a company and the undesputed masters of the universe, but must we repeat this in every thread instead of discussing technical aspects?

and remember I said

Vince remember this whenever ps3 is brought up

Remember ?

So really vince we all know sony is one hell of a company and the undesputed masters of the universe, but must we repeat this in every thread ?

 

[Tagrineth]

all of which are patented and wont be used by sony.

This just isn't true. I don't think it's that much of an obscure fact that nVidia and ATI both assimilate research done by the academic and research fields. I mean, where are you comming from?

If it's all public... why do nVidia and ATi's implementations both differ so wildly?

Why do they have such drastically different performance characteristics?

Look at the last group to put out a 3d product in the pc world. It featured no hdr and no frame buffer compression and crappy fsaa . Heh it wasn't even fsaa it was edge aa/

What does this have to do with anything tangible? It's a true non sequitur line of argument.

Matrox's Parhelia-512 was an embarrassment, and it was some five years in the making, too. And Matrox had access to just as many public docs as Sony does.

And apparently, Volari and DeltaChrome use pure supersampled AA (GeForce2 / Radeon R6 tech, PS2 is capable of it, this is a pure public domain method)... and one of the two (can't remember which) isn't capable of AF full stop (it just modifies LOD if you turn it on).

Show me some examples vince of sonys fsaa methods. The resulting image quality. Show me examples of their anistropic filtering methods. Show me examples of any tech that is more advance than a voodoo 2 card

What part of my comment about Sony's cycles being 5 years did you not comprehend. But, if you must see - I suggest you look at the GSCube and it's output and compare that the nVidia and ATI demos you so treasure.

GSCube = PS2 graphics with a fucking ludicrous amount of extra polygons. No amount of parallelism will add features to your graphics pipeline, until you bite the bullet and run a software renderer - at which point the issue is moot.

I'd even rather have a geforce sdr image quality over the ps2 image quality any day of the week.

and i'd take the radeon image quality over that .

Ahh, so this is a joke thread. My fault.

GeForce256 and Radeon R6 both have basic pixel shaders (nVidia Shading Rasteriser and Charisma Engine, respectively). PS2 has alpha blending. WOOP.

Some people actually prefer well-done pixel operations and texturing to fifty billion extra polygons - some people prefer Dreamcast's graphics to PS2's for this very reason.

Go ahead vince. List all the patents sony has for fsaa , anistropic filtering and other things that will allow to produce a card on par with even a r300 class card.

Well, JVD, I can have you search for the patents Panajev primarily posted concerning the PSP's 3d pipeline several months ago. Or did you forget about PSP already.

PSP is quite the odd entity from your position. The hands down premier mobile 3D part in existence and, yet, it's from Sony and shouldn't exist due to Sony' incompetance and lack of patents. I mean, why is nVidia putting out such lackluster products like this compared to the PSP if their so much better than, say, Sony or he rest of the CE industry? And where's ATI's PSP killer?

Judging by the screenshots of "Death Jr" or whatever, PSP has a long way to go as far as pixel maths go. It looks about halfway between N64 and Dreamcast - wow, it has texture filtering and alpha blending! WOWIE!

 

[Vince]

Remember ?

So really vince we all know sony is one hell of a company and the undesputed masters of the universe, but must we repeat this in every thread ?

WTF, get with it.

The difference JVD is I'm questioning your BS anti-Sony comment and asked for you to justify your comment. Which you've yet to give me other than some PSP is less than Dreamcast garbage.


You started this by posting the obtuse comment about ATI and nVidia allways being better than what Sony could do - just as those fools in the 3D Forum I was addressing stated that ATI will allwasy be better than nVidia. In both cases my comment applies, just change a few works and you get:

I just read the thread and was going to post the same thing. Personally, I'd like to discuss something other than the stereotypical, "Yeah, yeah. We've heard it all before - The Graphic Synthesizer is nothing but 25 Voodoo2's in parallel and wasn't impressive. It was bullshit then, it's probably BS now." comments. I mean, we all know that nVidia & ATI is one hell of a company and the undesputed masters of the universe, but must we repeat this in every thread instead of discussing technical aspects?

You're a funny guy JVD.

 

[Qroach]

Jeez, vince, you're a good guy that's pasionate about what you like. However The way you talk about Sony reminds me of the same way you talked about 3dfx.