PS3 could transform video game industry!

[Deepak]

Sony chip could transform video-game industry


Imp quotes:

Sony's next-generation video-game console, due in just two years...2005!

Since it can take a couple of years to write a game for a new system, developers will be pressing Sony and its rivals for technical details of their upcoming boxes, which are scheduled to debut in 2005.
...couple of years!!

With the PS 3, Sony will apparently put 72 processors on a single chip: eight PowerPC microprocessors, each of which controls eight auxiliary processors.

 

[epicstruggle]

No offence but I think sony is making a mistake by not having a refresh PS2, where they improve the graphics power. I dont think they can accuratly predict when they will have PS3 out in the market. Or how hard programming is going to be. This is where the PS2.5 could at least satisfy people into getting something a bit fresher. Allowing programmers greater flexibility, and leway.

Well just a thought.
later,

 

[London Geezer]

No offence but I think sony is making a mistake by not having a refresh PS2, where they improve the graphics power. I dont think they can accuratly predict when they will have PS3 out in the market. Or how hard programming is going to be. This is where the PS2.5 could at least satisfy people into getting something a bit fresher. Allowing programmers greater flexibility, and leway.

Well just a thought.
later,

now that would be SOOOOOOOOO not Sony..... it would be a lot Microsoft-y....... just a thought......

 

[randycat99]

I don't even know what the point would be of buying a "PS2 refresh" model. Having Sony waste resources (in my estimation) in launching something like that would be a sure way to hand market dominance right over to M$.

 

[Blade]

Sony had really better deliver with the PS3 after all this hype..

 

[randycat99]

What are people really expecting out of the PS3, anyway? Is the hype based more in people's expectations (sometimes unrealistic) or based in a few preliminary specs that Sony has released? If the former, what is the point in holding PS3 responsible for the hype that someone else has completely synthesized?

 

[Blade]

Randycat: Sony has announced technology for 2005's Sony console that will be "100-1000 times as powerful as PS2" and will possess "the power of 100 CPU's in a single chip". That's gonna build hype.

 

[randycat99]

Even more nebulous is what sort of game will that translate into. Some will take those vague numbers and imagine a technically infeasible game. Then when they don't see it in the checkout aisle, it's all about Sony lying to them. Others may take those numbers that Sony touted, and simply think, "Wow, those are impressive numbers. Should be a hoot to see how it turns out." If the games are worth buying when they come-out, they will buy them. They're not going to have some sort of seizure over how said game isn't supportive with the Sony numbers that were touted. If you choose to believe that Sony is going to "change the world", you will be a victim of your own expectations. They are just an electronics company en route to enabling a next era of videogaming. That's about all, realistically.

Aside from that, I only ask for people to attempt to articulate just what sort of game they are expecting based on what they know of the PS3. I think it should be an interesting exploration.

 

[megadrive0088]

Heh you know what?

there was almost a Playstation1 refresh.

remember Playstation Type C?

for those that dont remember, it was to be a PSX with more video memory, faster CD-ROM drive (4x) and maybe a 50% faster CPU. it was to make the transition of Namco System 12 games like Tekken 3 to the home alot easier. then the idea for a seperate Playstation Type C was changed to being just an addon to the regular Playstation, with just some extra video memory. neither happened, but several magazines insisted it was for real.

there will never be a PS2.5 but there will almost certainly be a PSTwo

 

[megadrive0088]

Also the article seems to be off on something. the PS3 CPU wont have 72 processors. or 8 PowerPC cores. more like 4. the GPU will have the other 4 PPC cores. methinks they looked at the diagram of EE3 and GS3
and saw it as one whole chip. (they are very close together)

 

[Deepak]

Now that Nintendo's plans for next gen console is also taking some shape, I wonder what MS is doing about XB2.....atleast get started!

 

[Simon F]

PS3 could transform video game industry!

Is that a homogeneous transformation including rotations and translations?

 

[DeanoC]

PS3 could transform video game industry!

Is that a homogeneous transformation including rotations and translations?

Well given the current state of the games industy (very flat), it would have to be an unprojection transform followed by a homogenous divide to get it back into a healthy shape

 

[zidane1strife]

They are just an electronics company en route to enabling a next era of videogaming. That's about all, realistically.

Videogames will grow ever more mainstream, all forms of entertainment will change, and as such the culture, and thus the world will change... Who will most likely be a top it all... the playstation brand.

 

[London Geezer]

They are just an electronics company en route to enabling a next era of videogaming. That's about all, realistically.

Videogames will grow ever more mainstream, all forms of entertainment will change, and as such the culture, and thus the world will change... Who will most likely be a top it all... the playstation brand.

well u put in a very dramatical way.. but yeah, the name *playstation* has been synonimous with *videogames* ever since 1996. and as much as people here know it's all marketing etc, it is true. as an example, my mum doesn't say, for example, *that guy likes videogames*. she says *that guy likes playstations!!*.

thats *normal people*. all the billions of people that DO NOT visit and post on this board. and thats the people who made the PS1 and PS2 such a *freak of nature*, as someone put it yesterday... it's just going to get bigger and better with PS3... now whether thats a good thing or a bad thing is all to be confirmed.....

 

[bbot]

Question for SimonF:

If MS were to select PowerVR as the gpu for Xbox2, would you be confident that Imagination Technologies could design a gpu that could rival or exceed the "1 Tflops" power of a cell-based PS3 (with an amazing 72 apus)?

 

[McFly]

Is the Sony speak at the GDC tomorrow? Could light up some speculations.

But maybe they just give us more reasons for more speculations.

Fredi

 

[London Geezer]

Is the Sony speak at the GDC tomorrow? Could light up some speculations.

But maybe they just give us more reasons for more speculations.

Fredi

yeah EVERYTHING will be speculation until actual PS3 GAMES come out. and thats gonna take a while...

 

[fbg1]

Anyone in the know care to comment on the feasability of Cell scheduling?

Using sophisticated software to manage the workload, the PowerPC processors will divide complicated problems into smaller tasks and tap as many of the auxiliary processors as necessary to tackle them. As soon as each processor or team finishes its job, it will be immediately redeployed to do something else.

I know IBM has experience in this from its parallel computing development, but there seems to be a significant difference between using such a scheme to run batches that calculate weather patterns and using it for real-time videogames. The former gains more benefit from the massive parallelism while the effect of any internode communications or scheduling lag is minimal. The latter may gain a lot from the parallel nature of the system, but any lag could have an obvious negative effect on the gameplay (fps stutters, etc.).

Tim Sweeney summed it up from the developers' point of view:

Tim Sweeney, chief executive of Epic Games in Raleigh, N.C., said that programming games for the PS 3 will be far more complicated than for the PS 2 because the programmer will have to keep track of all the tasks being performed by dozens of processors.

``I can't imagine how you will actually program it,'' he said. ``You do all these tasks in parallel, but the results of one task may affect the results of another task.''

I can only assume that IBM is working on scheduling software or a compiler that makes scheduling transparent to the developer. Otherwise Sweeney is right and the PS3 learning curve will be steep indeed.

But Sony and its partners believe that if they can coordinate those processors at maximum efficiency, the PS 3 will be able to process a trillion math operations per second -- the equivalent of 100 Intel Pentium 4 chips and 1,000 times faster than processing power of the PS 2.

Could they be taking a similar approach that Intel did with IA64, by attempting to remove scheduling and execution from the chip itself and putting it in the compiler (or OS or game code) instead?

 

[DeanoC]

Games have massive multi-processsing potential, we just don't use it alot (i.e. we don't have much choice).

Rendering :
Skin/transform/light n characters at once. (n=10? or higher)
Particles system
Landscape
Shadow calcs
Object Culler/Portal etc
Procedural Textures

Sure you need some back end support from the GPU to recombine all the data but they did that for PS2, so it seems a given on PS3.

Physics:
Calculate contact points between pairs of objects.
Solve LCP's.
Collision determination.

AI : Run each AI script on a seperate processer simultanously.

Now it might not fit into a standard PC style engine (say like Unreal ) but it wouldn't be that hard to use if thats what your given.

For some reason people tend to think about automatically creating threads. Why bother? Just take every graphics job a good renderer does and put it in a seperate thread. In many cases no-stalls until triangle stage.