Oddities about PS3

[London Geezer]

Having watched the conference, i now have some questions...


Sony said many things about PS3 and what it will do apparently, and the little demon in my head is starting to work overtime...


Sony said we'll be able to play games but at the same time surf the net and do other stuff. Does that mean that there will be some kind of OS overhead, much like in... *cringe*... PCs? Does that mean that performance in games will suffer? A game that uses the hardware at full power (or as close to "full" as the devs can) won't have power to dedicate to surf the net or watch movies and other stuff.

Also, they said that the double HD output will be used at any one time. Does that mean that when using the double wide video, performance will suffer? Or does that mean that the performance will be capped from the beginning, so that when one uses double output, performance will be the same?

What i mean is, a "double wide" GT5 will use double the fillrate than a single-output GT5, so either the double runs slower, or GT5 runs with an overhead from the beginning - preventing it to use as much power as you possibly can from PS3 - so that when going double, performance will be the same?

Not sure why i'm asking you guys this, you only know as much as i know.. But they are doubts that started creeping in my head as soon as Sony started the big talk...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Regards double monitors, I'd guess it'd be like split-screen gaming. You'd get two displays of less detail.

 

[PC-Engine]

Regards double monitors, I'd guess it'd be like split-screen gaming. You'd get two displays of less detail.

Yeah and you get a big black border running down the center of your FOV.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Wasn't one of the "Cell" design goals to support multiple OS's at the same time, that would go well eith the claimed simultaneous gameplay, webbrowsing etc.. maybe they'll be something like picture-in-picture, or the other app running on the second screen.

It should affect the game framerate though, depending on the heaviness of the game app and the other apps running.

But the OS that will be constantly running on the background, I don't think it'll be much heavier than what the PS2 is running. Wouldn't it only need to be aware to start another app on top of one if needed and then the app would run from either disc or HD, like today.

But what about that 8th "formerly known as SPU" unit that is reserved for "redundancy" or something like that. Could it be reserved also for running the OS?
Doesn't the xbox360 Live/Multimedia interface that you can pop up on top of any game or video reside in hardware? The PS3 OS wouldn't need to be any heavier than that at least.

Edit: I just checked one of the descriptions for "redundancy"

In the world of computer networking, redundant methods are used to protect systems from failure, to protect data from loss and corruption, and to ensure that communication systems stay online and provide a required amount of performance.

 

[London Geezer]

Wasn't one of the "Cell" design goals to support multiple OS's at the same time, that would go well eith the claimed simultaneous gameplay, webbrowsing etc.. maybe they'll be something like picture-in-picture, or the other app running on the second screen.

It should affect the game framerate though, depending on the heaviness of the game app and the other apps running.

But the OS that will be constantly running on the background, I don't think it'll be much heavier than what the PS2 is running. Wouldn't it only need to be aware to start another app on top of one if needed and then the app would run from either disc or HD, like today.

But what about that 8th "formerly known as SPU" unit that is reserved for "redundancy" or something like that. Could it be reserved also for running the OS?
Doesn't the xbox360 Live/Multimedia interface that you can pop up on top of any game or video reside in hardware? The PS3 OS wouldn't need to be any heavier than that at least.

Edit: I just checked one of the descriptions for "redundancy"

In the world of computer networking, redundant methods are used to protect systems from failure, to protect data from loss and corruption, and to ensure that communication systems stay online and provide a required amount of performance.

Well, maybe CPU-wise, things will be ok, what worries me is that with only 256MB of system RAM, there's not much you can do at the same time. 512MB, maybe, and my 1GB system can run a lot of stuff at the same time, but still, i'd want my games to exploit the full potential of the machine, cause i either play games, or surf the net, or watch movies. Never together.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The redundancy is almost certainly offering room for failure, so in printing a 1:8 cell they can be confident of high yields with at least 7 working.

 

[London Geezer]

Regards double monitors, I'd guess it'd be like split-screen gaming. You'd get two displays of less detail.

Yeah might be... That's what i was thinking too.

Anyway, i thought the whole point of having the 8th SPE made redundant and the whole fuss about it was that it just doesn't work.

 

[j^aws]

With 2 multi-taps you get 8 controllers max...but 7 controllers is just plain weird... :?

 

[one]

I don't think most games use PPE so intensely.
In PSP the OS occupies 8MB of memory, I guess in PS3 it occupies some in the main memory area too.

 

[London Geezer]

With 2 multi-taps you get 8 controllers max...but 7 controllers is just plain weird... :?

I was just gonna mention that other oddity... 7? either 6 or 8 would have been easier on my brain... but 7?

 

[rabidrabbit]

In one of the powerpoint slides from Sony E3 conference there was that Cell diagram. The 8th unit did look like it had some function, other than just sitting there idle because of not surviving the yield.

So it must be functional, to at least some degree. But can you just take some half working Cell from the yield with one partly functioning SPU and use it for less demanding tasks than the functioning SPU's?

 

[London Geezer]

In one of the powerpoint slides from Sony E3 conference there was that Cell diagram. The 8th unit did look like it had some function, other than just sitting there idle because of not surviving the yield.

So it must be functional, to at least some degree. But can you just take some half working Cell from the yield with one partly functioning SPU and use it for less demanding tasks than the functioning SPU's?

Don't think so, hence the deactivation. Which means it just sits there doing nothing.

 

[j^aws]

With 2 multi-taps you get 8 controllers max...but 7 controllers is just plain weird... :?

I was just gonna mention that other oddity... 7? either 6 or 8 would have been easier on my brain... but 7?

...and 3....

3 network ports... :?

 

[rabidrabbit]

Actually it makes sense when you think about it beyond the tech.

In your living room you might have just one comfy chair, then there'd be one player and one controller.

You could have a two seat sofa - two players - two controllers.

A two seat sofa and a comfy chair - three

A two seat sofa and two comfy chairs - 4

A three seat sofa - three players and three controllers

A three seat dofa and a comfy chair - 4

A three seat sofa and two comfy chairs - 5

A three seat sofa, two seat sofa and a comfy chair - 6

A three seat sofa, two seat sofa and two comfy chairs - 7

etc.

You won't have two three seat sofas and two comfy chairs - which would be eight players. That's just not good interior decorating.
Or eigth comfy chairs, four two seat sofas.

Sony really thought of everything

 

[London Geezer]

With 2 multi-taps you get 8 controllers max...but 7 controllers is just plain weird... :?

I was just gonna mention that other oddity... 7? either 6 or 8 would have been easier on my brain... but 7?

...and 3....

3 network ports... :?

Well they seem to be different kind of ports, i still have to understand why one is a plain network port and the other 2 are "internal" network ports... What's the difference?

 

[rabidrabbit]

In one of the powerpoint slides from Sony E3 conference there was that Cell diagram. The 8th unit did look like it had some function, other than just sitting there idle because of not surviving the yield.

So it must be functional, to at least some degree. But can you just take some half working Cell from the yield with one partly functioning SPU and use it for less demanding tasks than the functioning SPU's?

Don't think so, hence the deactivation. Which means it just sits there doing nothing.

But in the slide it had lines going to and fro. It was wired a bit differently from the 7. That means it is connected and doing something else than just being pretty.

 

[j^aws]

With 2 multi-taps you get 8 controllers max...but 7 controllers is just plain weird... :?

I was just gonna mention that other oddity... 7? either 6 or 8 would have been easier on my brain... but 7?

...and 3....

3 network ports... :?

Well they seem to be different kind of ports, i still have to understand why one is a plain network port and the other 2 are "internal" network ports... What's the difference?

Nah...it's 3 ethernet ports...

1 in
2 out

Networked PS3's!

8)

 

[London Geezer]

In one of the powerpoint slides from Sony E3 conference there was that Cell diagram. The 8th unit did look like it had some function, other than just sitting there idle because of not surviving the yield.

So it must be functional, to at least some degree. But can you just take some half working Cell from the yield with one partly functioning SPU and use it for less demanding tasks than the functioning SPU's?

Don't think so, hence the deactivation. Which means it just sits there doing nothing.

But in the slide it had lines going to and fro. It was wired a bit differently from the 7. That means it is connected and doing something else than just being pretty.

Not sure what slive u're refferring to, but to me deactivation means the thing is doing its nails while the others work.

 

[rabidrabbit]

No, it means it's posting at forums while others work

 

[Shifty Geezer]

7 controllers apparently because of 7 BlueTooth channels. BlueTooth has 8 channels so I hear, which beggars the question what the 8'th channel is doing?

Maybe it's a shift it KK's aesthetics of twos beliefs? Maybe odd numbers and primes are the way to go? 3 ports. 7 SPUs. 7 controllers. PS3