PSP question

[passerby]

The question is for devs and "devs in the know". I suppose some devs should be working on PSP by now.

Quick recap: 2 CPU components. The "core" is a MIPS CPU with vector processing extension sitting on 6MB EDRAM. Then we have another identical CPU without the vector processing extensions, sitting on 2MB EDRAM. This second CPU is named "media processor".

Just what is the "media processor" in the PSP for? Or more interestingly, what is the programming model? How does it fit into the programming model?

OT#1:
Since the proposed technology for Sony's next generation processor is said to be highly scalable, it should come as no surprise if some ideas find its way into PSP. A look at PSP may yield more concrete info than all the other speculative threads running rampant everywhere. Or it may not.

OT#2:
It was revealed that the next generation playstation will have CELL working together with a "media processor". Opinions identify it as the graphics component, but no suprise if it turns out to be refering to something functionally similar to the "media processor" in the PSP. Or maybe not.

 

[Panajev2001a]

The question is for devs and "devs in the know". I suppose some devs should be working on PSP by now.

Quick recap: 2 CPU components. The "core" is a MIPS CPU with vector processing extension sitting on 6MB EDRAM. Then we have another identical CPU without the vector processing extensions, sitting on 2MB EDRAM. This second CPU is named "media processor".

Just what is the "media processor" in the PSP for? Or more interestingly, what is the programming model? How does it fit into the programming model?

OT#1:
Since the proposed technology for Sony's next generation processor is said to be highly scalable, it should come as no surprise if some ideas find its way into PSP. A look at PSP may yield more concrete info than all the other speculative threads running rampant everywhere. Or it may not.

OT#2:
It was revealed that the next generation playstation will have CELL working together with a "media processor". Opinions identify it as the graphics component, but no suprise if it turns out to be refering to something functionally similar to the "media processor" in the PSP. Or maybe not.

1.) The main RAM is 8 MB not 6 MB.

2.) it is not user-programmable and should work on DRM, Input/Output and work with the AVC decoder and the VME ( Sound DSP, reconfigurable, but not user-programmable ) and both of these processors are not user programmable.

OT#1: CELL is not going to be part of PSP.

OT#2: I would doubt this media processor is a 333 MHz R4000i

 

[passerby]

2)it is not user-programmable and should work on DRM, Input/Output and work with the AVC decoder and the VME ( Sound DSP, reconfigurable, but not user-programmable ) and both of these processors are not user programmable...

...T#2: I would doubt this media processor is a 333 MHz R4000i ...

The interest is in functional role/programming model.

With regards to (2), is there concrete information regarding that, or is it just "most popular speculation/deduction of the net"? (no rudeness intended)

I'll like to keep speculations away from this thread, and restrict to concrete information.

If no one has any, it'll be better this thread just dies off naturally.

BTW, thanks for the info about 8MB.

 

[DeadmeatGA]

...

Just what is the "media processor" in the PSP for?

An i/o processor. Handles I/O and networking code, so that the user process CPU doesn't have to be shared with OS functionalities. Wireless networking driver and stack can eat up to 50% of available CPU cycles, it is better to run them on its own CPU than on the user process CPU.

Or more interestingly, what is the programming model? How does it fit into the programming model?

Should be "Traditional". In other word, PSP is a fix of everything that was wrong with PSX2 in the first place.

It was revealed that the next generation playstation will have CELL working together with a "media processor". Opinions identify it as the graphics component, but no suprise if it turns out to be refering to something functionally similar to the "media processor" in the PSP. Or maybe not.

From the context of Kutaragi's announcement, it appears that this media processor is from Sony Electronics and not from SCEI. Their semi-conductor divisions were merged and Kitaragi had somebody else's processor on his hand.

 

[marconelly!]

In other word, PSP is a fix of everything that was wrong with PSX2 in the first place.

What was wrong with PS2 is that Sony didn't deliver programming APIs and libraries as soon as they should have. In all honesty we have yet to see if that problem is 'fixed' for PSP as developers have yet to receive devkits.

 

[London Geezer]

What exactly was wrong with PS2? (NOT PSX2 for god's sake)
Apart from a complete lack of support from Sony at the beginning of its life for 99% of Devs out there? Worsened by the fact that support was needed even more than usual, being a new and unusual architecture?

 

[SedentaryJourney]

Reverend-IGN: Tech fun again!: In the last chat you said that low video RAM was limiting things like the textures and anti-aliasing. Isn't there some way you can take some Main RAM and assign it to be video RAM? And if not, why?
DavidBioWare: Yes, the video memory situation has improved dramatically since last time.
DavidBioWare: The problem was that there was too little video memory to fit all our textures, and the machine can't use a texture unless it's specifically in video memory.
DavidBioWare: What we've found since then is that the PS2 has enough bus bandwidth to transfer each texture from main memory to video memory as it's needed.
DavidBioWare: That's on the order to 100s of Mb per second. We hadn't anticipated that the PS2 had that kind of brute horsepower on its bus. No other machine I've used does, including any PC or the Dreamcast.
DavidBioWare: We had to reorient our thinking after that. So now we have almost more texture memory than we know what to do with.

Aside from the lack of developer support, devcos also had to acclimate themselves to the PS2 simply because it was untraditional. I wouldn't label such innovation a hardware flaw per se.

And now I see my post was utterly redundant.

 

[London Geezer]

I wouldn't label such innovation a hardware flaw per se.

...since it's the approach taken my the competition too (Unified memory, with the main memory storing textures and all)....
Sony was only rushing to get the final hardware out before having proper tools for developers. they made a hell of a decision (with 80% of devs initially slaggin them off) but it turned out to be the right decision in the end....

also

And now I see my post was utterly redundant.

Welcome to B3D Console boards, Where 90% of posts are either off-topic, redundant or Chap's (a category of its own)

 

[Panajev2001a]

Re: ...

Just what is the "media processor" in the PSP for?

An i/o processor. Handles I/O and networking code, so that the user process CPU doesn't have to be shared with OS functionalities. Wireless networking driver and stack can eat up to 50% of available CPU cycles, it is better to run them on its own CPU than on the user process CPU.

Or more interestingly, what is the programming model? How does it fit into the programming model?

Should be "Traditional". In other word, PSP is a fix of everything that was wrong with PSX2 in the first place.

It was revealed that the next generation playstation will have CELL working together with a "media processor". Opinions identify it as the graphics component, but no suprise if it turns out to be refering to something functionally similar to the "media processor" in the PSP. Or maybe not.

From the context of Kutaragi's announcement, it appears that this media processor is from Sony Electronics and not from SCEI. Their semi-conductor divisions were merged and Kitaragi had somebody else's processor on his hand.

Ken Kutaragi is the head, boss, beast-master, chieftain, emperor, supreme warlord of SSNC which is their consolidated Semiconductor division.

The programming model for the MEdia Engine, the AVC decoder and the VME is basically "use the API functions and shutp up:, it is not user programmable.

On PlayStation 2 developers received more API support later on in the console lifecycle and at the beginning they were left with the exposed metal and little documentation.

The PSP's main CPU , FPU and VFPU are still user-programmable: the VFPU does not behave like the GTE, but the difference with the EE's VUs will be that the API will have support for it: VFPU will work as MIPS COP2 most likely with some optimizations to make it more effective than VU0 in macro-mode.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Interesting thread.

Especially that PSP may offer some clues about PS3's processors aside from the Cell-based EE3.

 

[chaphack]

Welcome to B3D Console boards, Where 90% of posts are either off-topic, redundant or Chap's (a category of its own)

Hey jackass! Can you stop bringing up my name time and again, when there is nothing to do with me.

 

[DeadmeatGA]

...

The PSP's main CPU , FPU and VFPU are still user-programmable:

An irrelevant statement since they constitute one logical processor, not three like we have in EE.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Re: ...

The PSP's main CPU , FPU and VFPU are still user-programmable:

An irrelevant statement since they constitute one logical processor, not three like we have in EE.

Do you have PDFs that prove that the VFPU cannot operate in micro-mode ? VU0 uses MIPS COP2 pipe as well, but in micro-mode can behave the way you just mentioned.

For all we know the VFPU should be at least as flexible as VU0 in macro-mode: more of that is not known.

 

[chaphack]

DMGA,
like what archiez said, the Media Engine is juz Sony new way of naming their components(WEGA Engine/Handheld Engine etc), an obvious influence from KK and his lil Emotion Engine.


ANYWAY i read that, some ways in which PS2 handles 3D is more like flawed/primitive/troublesome than un-conventional. Im not sure how much of the blame can you push to the poor early devtools. If the hardware is poorly designed around a task, it is poorly designed. Juz like what be seeing of NV30 and DX9, yeay?

 

[DeadmeatGA]

...

Do you have PDFs that prove that the VFPU cannot operate in micro-mode ?

Nope, but Goto Hiroshige confirmed in his PSP articles several times that VFPU is just a vector unit attached to R4000 core, in a similar fashion to SH-4 and altivec. Remember that the CPU doesn't do T&L in PSP, it is all offloaded to the GPU and CPU just handles physics and animation.

As Goto Hiroshige puts it, the PSP is exactly the opposite of CELL in its design philosophy, where most of functionalities are implemented in hardware and abstracted from developers.

 

[Lazy8s]

When a hardware design decision causes performance to lag technological progression, it stands out as a problem. Sony chose to go with embedded RAM for their system launching in 2000 (which, at least, is impressive as an engineering accomplishment) which only afforded a budget for 4MB. As image and texturing performance both rely significantly on display memory, this has proven limiting compared with the advance of the tech curve, set by an older and less expensive system which remained comparable to PS2 and a contemporary system which exceeded it.

While the time for eDRAM wasn't right last go around, I think the efficiencies of this newer technology now outweigh the economies of the old such that PSP can now benefit on the whole from it. PSP shouldn't have those PS2 problems.

 

[Fafalada]

Or more interestingly, what is the programming model? How does it fit into the programming model?

Relying mostly on fixed functionality - actually current spec suggest it could be less programmable then PSOne.

An irrelevant statement since they constitute one logical processor

So you actually believe R4k in PSP will have a dual issue FPU? And I thought Panajev was the optimist here...

not three like we have in EE.

?
EE = R59k + 2xVU + IPU
PSP = R4k*2 + GPU + AVC + VME...
I count more units on the second chip dude.

 

[Almasy]

When a hardware design decision causes performance to lag technological progression, it stands out as a problem. Sony chose to go with embedded RAM for their system launching in 2000 (which, at least, is impressive as an engineering accomplishment) which only afforded a budget for 4MB. As image and texturing performance both rely significantly on display memory, this has proven limiting compared with the advance of the tech curve, set by an older and less expensive system which remained comparable to PS2 and a contemporary system which exceeded it.

While the time for eDRAM wasn't right last go around, I think the efficiencies of this newer technology now outweigh the economies of the old such that PSP can now benefit on the whole from it. PSP shouldn't have those PS2 problems.

Oh, yes, PS2 really is a speed bump in technological progression.

Oh God, please forgive Sony for delivering a system to consumers that is far better than DC in every single spec, including textures, 10X the polygon output, special effects that are way beyond anything DC could ever achieve. Yep, God, please forgive Sony.

The "superior" DC IQ is a myth as is its texture "advantages". Heck, if DC had to "place" textures on as many polygons as the PS2 currently pushes, it would look far worse than present PS2 titles that far outperform anything DC put out on the market after three solid years and a much, much more friendly development environment.

 

[chaphack]

The "superior" DC textures/IQ is not a myth, its a reality and its all about balance. DC has a good balance between poly + texture, Xbox too, GC i would expect too. PS2 didnt. ANYWAY, you are simplifying things too much. I recall one recent topic, http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8136&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 about PS2 filtering.

As you can see, there is some pretty hmhmmm bout how PS2 handles the 3D. And i dont think we can call that "flexible". Of coz i wont know much more...developers! developers! developers~ where arth j00???

 

[chaphack]

ANYWAY, is the 8mb ram enough? yeay, i know its edram yadayada, but we said that about PS2 and then what happen....i duno, even the Ngage has what 12mb(not edram coz)?

Does it mean PSP games will have more loading? smaller areas? How will PSP handle other stuff like a web browser? media player? organiser functions? etc?

The bad thing about PSP is...eh. PSP, itself. Unlike PDAs or even Ngage, it is just PSP, will there be enough written software for PSP? I mean Palm/Winmobile/Symbian are gona run on a large range of hardware by different groups, some standard if you will..PSP is using which OS?

HmmMMm...i guess PSP will be more game playing(duh!) and mp3 than anything else. All the PDA-ish functions might not be as cool.