PS3 Open Platform - some big news

[inefficient]

I haven't seen this posted. Looks interesting, of course I'm not sure what the numbers mean considering it's probably running only on the PPE without even touching the SPEs.

http://www.geekpatrol.ca/2006/11/playstation-3-performance/

It means the PPE is about what we expected in performance compared to a desktop CPU. Though there is some curious data here. There seems to be a huge disparity between memory read and write performance on the PPE according to this benchmark. And some numbers like stdlib write seem too high to be telling the full story.


I just ran the same benchmark on my A64 X2 3800.
There are 3 areas where the PS3 PPE is faster.

Dot Product single-threaded scaler is almost 3x faster.
Stdlib Write single threaded scaler 5.3x faster
Stdlib Write multi threaded scaler 4.3x faster

 

[idsn6]

The write scores are a result of XDR?

 

[Gubbi]

It means the PPE is about what we expected in performance compared to a desktop CPU. Though there is some curious data here.

Right, fantastic at arithmetic, pants at most everything else.

There seems to be a huge disparity between memory read and write performance on the PPE according to this benchmark. And some numbers like stdlib write seem too high to be telling the full story.

Don't know if it's non-temporal streams, but either way: reads are probably latency limited, even for the multi threaded approach.

I'm guessing writes are coalesced into large transactions with write-buffers, so are much closer to actual bandwidth peak.

cheers

 

[one]

Hopefully we see SPE benchmark in the near future including the one that has many branches!

 

[SPM]

According to this link:
http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html
a 1.6GHz G5 ia about as fast as a 2.53GHz P4.

That is perfectly usable for a general purpose desktop, especially when you consider that for a desktop OS, it is media acceleration and not integer performance that is the system bottleneck. Use the SPE's and RSX for media/graphics acceleration (are you listening Sony?) and you have a pretty decent desktop machine.

 

[heliosphere]

Any idea what he means by this:

I’m reporting the baseline score, rather than the raw score, for each test (where 100 is the score a PowerMac G5 1.6GHz running Mac OS X would receive on the same test). As always, higher scores are better.

When the 1.6GHz G5 doesn't score 100 in any of the tests? Presumably the baseline is actually for some other system, an Intel one?

 

[patsu]

According to this link:
http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html
a 1.6GHz G5 ia about as fast as a 2.53GHz P4.

If true, this is really good news for me !

 

[luke76]

but linux on ps3 use spe or only ppe ?

 

[pjbliverpool]

According to this link:
http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html
a 1.6GHz G5 ia about as fast as a 2.53GHz P4.

That is perfectly usable for a general purpose desktop, especially when you consider that for a desktop OS, it is media acceleration and not integer performance that is the system bottleneck. Use the SPE's and RSX for media/graphics acceleration (are you listening Sony?) and you have a pretty decent desktop machine.

According to this, in gaming a 2.5Ghz G5 (dual) is quite significantly slower than a 2.6 Ghz Athlon64 or dual Opteron.

The closest they get is in the multithreaded and very mac optimised (as well as PC obviously) Quake 3 test. Here the G5 is only 10% slower than the Opteron.

In the CPU tests the G5 fares better, trading places with the 2.6Ghz Opteron in most areas.

http://www.barefeats.com/macvpc.html

I think we need a wider array of tests to really tell but I guess overall we could estimate that the PPU is roughly as powerful as a 1.6Ghz Athlon64 from the benchmarks above - assuming the A64 is roughly as fast as the G5 clock for clock. Thats actually a lot faster than I would have thought and would suggest that even two of them in tandem would be at least a match for the fastest single core A64 out there.

A 1.6Ghz A64 would be equivilent to what? Say a 2Ghz AXP? Thats the AXP 2400+ so I guess the comparison above is roughly accurate when is says a 1.6 Ghz G5 is equivilent to a 2.53 Ghz P4. Thats also supported by the rough parity between the 3.4Ghz Xeon and the 2.5Ghz G5 (ignoring the gaming tests).

 

[heliosphere]

Any idea what he means by this:


When the 1.6GHz G5 doesn't score 100 in any of the tests? Presumably the baseline is actually for some other system, an Intel one?

Shouldn't post before I've had my morning caffeine - the 100 is for a 1.6GHz G5 running Mac OS X, the scores in the article are for a 1.6GHz G5 running Fedora Core 4. That actually makes me think the benchmark is pretty poor as a measure of raw CPU performance - there is a pretty big difference in some tests between the same processor under the two different OSs which you wouldn't expect if the benchmarks were good measures of straight CPU / memory performance. He doesn't say in the post what compiler he's using or what settings - is it the same version of GCC on all platforms? Given the G5 under Linux scores as much as 168 vs the G5 under Mac OS X's 100 in one test and as little as 55.6 in another you have to question the value of these benchmarks as a measure of CPU or memory performance.

The PS3 PPU and 360 cores are much more dependent on compiler optimizations than the G5 and presumably the version of GCC used on the PS3 is just a general PPC version and not specifically targeted at the PPU so it's going to give significantly worse results than if you used Sony's version of GCC that ships with the devkits.

 

[idsn6]

According to this, in gaming a 2.5Ghz G5 (dual) is quite significantly slower than a 2.6 Ghz Athlon64 or dual Opteron.

The closest they get is in the multithreaded and very mac optimised (as well as PC obviously) Quake 3 test. Here the G5 is only 10% slower than the Opteron.

In the CPU tests the G5 fares better, trading places with the 2.6Ghz Opteron in most areas.

http://www.barefeats.com/macvpc.html

I think we need a wider array of tests to really tell but I guess overall we could estimate that the PPU is roughly as powerful as a 1.6Ghz Athlon64 from the benchmarks above - assuming the A64 is roughly as fast as the G5 clock for clock. Thats actually a lot faster than I would have thought and would suggest that even two of them in tandem would be at least a match for the fastest single core A64 out there.

A 1.6Ghz A64 would be equivilent to what? Say a 2Ghz AXP? Thats the AXP 2400+ so I guess the comparison above is roughly accurate when is says a 1.6 Ghz G5 is equivilent to a 2.53 Ghz P4. Thats also supported by the rough parity between the 3.4Ghz Xeon and the 2.5Ghz G5 (ignoring the gaming tests).

OSX has had shit OpenGL drivers from Apple forever, and applications where the Mac has a negligible presence (like, for instance, games) have been tuned specifically for x86, with comparable PPC performance being at least a total rewrite away (Doom 3 is a glaring example).

This is a shootout with too many intermediate layers to come to any conclusive ratio of what clock G5 matches up to whatever other clock on whatever other architecture, and certainly has even less relevance for a PPE running Linux.

 

[Fafalada]

Right, fantastic at arithmetic, pants at most everything else.

To be fair - these are binaries optimized for dramatically different PPC then what these consoles have. Particularly when some 3 letter company implemented a "highly efficient" memory subsystem that will happilly stall on cache hits when the stars aren't in the right alignment.

Hopefully we see SPE benchmark in the near future including the one that has many branches!

I doubt many anti-SPE proponents really want to see those.

 

[Rangers]

Have you guys seen this?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=130532

It looks to my untrained eye like linux is making PS3 piracy a lot easier. I always wondered about that, but just assumed Sony wouldn't do anything that stupid.
________
Ocean View Condos

 

[Titanio]

It looks to my untrained eye like linux is making PS3 piracy a lot easier. I always wondered about that, but just assumed Sony wouldn't do anything that stupid.

Err..maybe I'm missing something, but if it's just an ISO dump, that's hardly a big deal. There are ISOs for games on virtually every platform out there, so if that's the extent of it..even as Faf points out in there, you can read PS2 discs in a PC drive! The real step would be hacking the XMB to allow playback of copied games, which is something Sony can combat with XMB updates if it happened.

 

[Kryton]

Err..maybe I'm missing something, but if it's just an ISO dump, that's hardly a big deal. There are ISOs for games on virtually every platform out there, so if that's the extent of it..even as Faf points out in there, you can read PS2 discs in a PC drive! The real step would be hacking the XMB to allow playback of copied games, which is something Sony can combat with XMB updates if it happened.

Isn't there something strange related to BluRay burning and disk compatability? The formats are quite different, aren't they (and can easily be distinguished by readers)?

 

[Rangers]

Err..maybe I'm missing something, but if it's just an ISO dump, that's hardly a big deal. There are ISOs for games on virtually every platform out there, so if that's the extent of it..even as Faf points out in there, you can read PS2 discs in a PC drive! The real step would be hacking the XMB to allow playback of copied games, which is something Sony can combat with XMB updates if it happened.

PS3 l33t hackerz guy seyz

Being able to back-up next-gen games is imperative to gamers around the globe, especially those with children who break $60+ discs. This is nothing short of astounding news, and from it will come many experiments (via Disc, HDD, Exploit, etc) to run the game images on the PS3 in coming days, weeks, months. Sooner or later there will be a PS3 iSO launcher/method of some type, and we can look back on it and reminisce of Thanksgiving 2006. Up until tonight, the public didn't know just how similar the PS3 images are to PSP game images...

But yeah, it (should) mainly be an offline situation, much like Xbox/360. I'm just wondering if linux is going to somehow make it a whole different ballgame, and for that I have no knowledge.
________
MiAmore cam

 

[StefanS]

PS3 l33t hackerz guy seyz

I am sorry, but that guy is just plain wrong. He's making backups because his disc get scratched? Last time I checked, you can get your scratched disc changed by the publisher.

 

[Gubbi]

.... happilly stall on cache hits

Cheers

 

[Titanio]

Isn't there something strange related to BluRay burning and disk compatability? The formats are quite different, aren't they (and can easily be distinguished by readers)?

Not sure what you're referring to..

But yeah, it (should) mainly be an offline situation, much like Xbox/360. I'm just wondering if linux is going to somehow make it a whole different ballgame, and for that I have no knowledge.

Well they're not going to be running backups via Linux (at least not directly) Like I say, they'll have to compromise the GameOS to do that, and as we argued before, I'm not sure if having Linux significantly alters the odds of that happening eventually. If it can be done, it will be done either way (and Sony would obviously move to close off whatever hole was exploited with an update)...game piracy didn't just start with PS3, lots of closed systems have been compromised, so it seems somewhat inevitable unfortunately.

And yeah, the whole "backup in case my disc gets damaged" stuff is obviously bull, but it allows them to be bolder in discussing all this openly

 

[Titanio]

In other news, more "obvious" stuff, someone has got Quake 3 running on it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpvIHFBoMNk

Dodgy framerate - the game is using a software implementation of OpenGL in the absence of RSX access, of course. I actually wonder if someone will port that ogl implementation to take full advantage of Cell, or if they figure it would be a waste of time if Sony releases RSX access soon. For things like that it'd be nice if Sony could give a definitive indication as to whether there will be RSX access shortly or not.