So is the cell spe's "downgrade" confirmed ?

[Titanio]

Does anyone here want these things? Does anyone want their girlfriend editing photos in a popup on top of your game of Lair?

If you're going to have a second person using your PS3, plug a second screen in. If your girlfriend so often wants to use your PS3 for other functionality, then that would be a good justification for placing a secondary screen in or near your living room

Does anyone want more than one TV in the living room for concurrent activities on PS3?

The placement of two screens connected to PS3 would be dependent on cable-length. I don't know what the limit would be. I know that within reasonable distance of my living room, there's two displays. In my bedroom alone there's two.

With games taking specific advantage of two screens, though, for some there may be incentive to bring two screens closer together if they hadn't considered it before.

Obviously plugging two screens into one system and using a console like this is new. But just because people haven't done this before, doesn't mean they won't if the benefits of that are communicated effectively. They've never had that opportunity before. Who can tell what the typical usage patterns of systems will be going forward? Not everything is 'pull' - there are many examples of things which people embrace which they may never have previously considered, unless someone presented it to them (or, I guess more correctly, marketed it to them effectively).

At least they're trying something different, if this is all true. "Different" isn't always justification in and of itself, but the objectives of this kind of strategy are fairly positive, in that it would appear to be an attempt to offer more entertainment value out of one box, for more people in a home. I think Ken K was pretty serious about PS3 truly being a box you put at the center of your living room. Obviously there'd be kickbacks for Sony in that, too, if more people in a home invest their time in the system and its media. I would say quite typically only a minority of people in a typical home make use of a videogame system, or certainly not all. I guess Sony want to broaden the appeal further.

Of course, this is somewhat my own speculation, based on more vague references Sony has made. We'll find out at E3 what shape or form these things take, I guess.

And that requires one PS3 to be recording one program, showing another, video conferencing, video blogging, and serving two PSPs, while gaming. That's either a stupid number of windows on one TV, of a slightly less stupid number of windows on a second TV.

No it wouldn't. Across two screens, that might just involve one video chat pop-up on one of the screens. Serving video blogs to other people on the network or media to PSPs or video recording would be "silent" processes as far as local users of the machine were concerned.

But by the time you've got 4 1080p buffers and some applications and even a naffy bitmap based UI, you're not approaching 48 MBs RAM. It would be beyond stupid for Sony to reserve enough space for a dozen 1080p screens.

I first of all don't even think you'd need to reserve 4 1080p buffers, as I said before in that other thread. The framebuffers would be used only for things to be explicitly displayed on screen, and as above, some of this functionality would be "silent". But you're aware that framebuffer reservation is just one RAM requirement for the OS? It's the simplest to quantify I guess, for us looking in trying to figure out what's going on - and that's why people talk specifically about it - but every potential task/process on the system will require working RAM also.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Obviously plugging two screens into one system and using a console like this is new. But just because people haven't done this before, doesn't mean they won't if the benefits of that are communicated effectively...At least they're trying something different, if this is all true. "Different" isn't always justification in and of itself, but the objectives of this kind of strategy are fairly positive...

I can agree with the reasoning to providing untested features, but you have to weigh the costs in terms of lost resources to the main task that PS3 will do doing for certain. If in order to add multifunctionality you have to sacrifice a sizeable chunk from the gaming side of things, the worth of the additions to most people really ought to be something you can be confident in.

I first of all don't even think you'd need to reserve 4 1080p buffers, as I said before in that other thread. The framebuffers would be used only for things to be explicitly displayed on screen, and as above, some of this functionality would be "silent". But you're aware that framebuffer reservation is just one RAM requirement for the OS? It's the simplest to quantify I guess, for us looking in trying to figure out what's going on - and that's why people talk specifically about it - but every potential task/process on the system will require working RAM also.

That's precisely my point. If you count multiple 1080p buffers, the most obvious resource hog, it still seems hard to justify 96 MB reserved. I was trying to think the of the worst case requirements that'd need to be reserved, to run multiple tasks concurrently with gaming that most people by my reckoning won't use. And even then it was hard to fill up 48 MBs.

Now if we take a different approach, and look at resources that are probably going to be, I guess we could say 2 1080p buffers for movie playback with double buffering, at 16 MBs, 2 PSP sized buffers at about a meg, even a 1080p buffer for video chat, compositing multiple streams, adding all that up you come to 25 MBs. If the OS is reserving 96 MBs, and that's not all going on image buffers, what is it being spent on? . We've another 70 MBs to fill accounting for multitasking several tasks that 95+% of the time most people won't be using, right? What can we think of to account for an extra 70 MBs of reserved space?

I guess a file cache is a possibility, accomodating HDD and BRD caching. That could use up a bit. You could potentially load entire audio tracks into this space, but why wouldn't you stream them? Is 96 MB set aside because the OS is that inefficient? Is 32 MB taken up with bitmap OS graphics?

I ask you personally Titanio for your guess. How do you think that 96 MB is going to be used? I'd like to hear from others too, anyone who thinks they've a good way to divide up that much RAM into services.

[quote-nAo]a 1080p image (color + z-buffer) takes 16 MB (24 MB if they want to use a FP16 render target :smile: )[/quote]For a game buffer, but for things like movie playback they'd be no need for more than 24 bit RGB which I make 6 MB, which I round up to 8 for 32 bit per pixel. Though if Sony want 16 bpp colour output too, that could go up to 12 MB a frame.

Now if the OS reserved space is incorporating game buffers, that'd go part way to explaining how 96 MB can be consumed with OS. At the moment I'm (worst case) considering everything in the game side of things is external to this OS side, so the game has it's own buffers elsewhere in RAM. We don't know otherwise yet, and I certainly hope that 96 MB incorporates the game buffers too! If it has shared responsibilities for games it's not as bad as it first sounds. Though that's still only 24 MB from 96 for FP16, leaving 72 MB to be explained by other functions.

 

[patsu]

I believe 96 Mb (if accurate) is merely a starting point, and an upper bound. Sony and their partners will need time to refine the OS and the games. The number may go down when things are finalized.

I don't mind having 1 device do multiple tasks -- See the fax/printer/copier combo machines that caught HP printers by surprise. However I think PS3 should not do too much in the background. It may slow down or end up crashing like a PC even though the SPEs have hardware protection against total failure.

I thought PS3 should delegate background tasks to home PC/Mac or other dedicated hardware (running DLNA software). Features such as serving out blogs and streaming encoded video should be done on a PC/Mac and "sync" with the PS3 occassionally.

As for PVR, it's definitely ok for PS3 to act as one (recording multiple streams), when I'm not gaming. However if I'm gaming, it should just route the data to a nearby DLNA-enabled PC/Mac for recording.

It's also ok for Sony to run a P2P software on every PS3 perhaps to save server bandwidth (e.g. Bit-Torrent). Again this P2P platform is started explicitly by the user, or does not kick in unless the machine is idle.

Finally the "alert" mechanism (e.g., for informing users of in-coming call, emergency software update) should not require 96 Mb of memory. So I think it's a good idea to keep it on a PS3.

I can understand why Sony wants to push the envelope. It's trying to establish multiple revenue streams. If successful, we can see the PS3 price drop even faster than before. This will also pre-empt MS from licensing Xbox* production to cheap manufacturers in the future.

Half of me feels that Sony should go out of the way to _explore_ the "Living Room platform" now, just like Windows became the "Office platform" in the 80s. By having these extended functionality available to other developers (e.g., LocationFree SDK will be open sourced), Sony can also start to cultivate a strong following of non-game developers.

That way they will have a leg up before Xbox 720 come. In my mind, it's something like:
* Xbox vs PS2 (new-comer vs 10 million installed base and rich software library)
* Xbox 360 vs PS3 (High-Def game machine + matured online gaming vs Entertainment Hub + Entertainment-on-demand for 100 million PS2 and PS3)
* Xbox 720 vs PS 4 (Xbox + Vista + MSN vs 200+ million node Playstation Entertainment Network + supporting industry)

Ok, I'm day-dreaming again. Back to work...

 

[ninzel]

I don't buy it. It seems uneccesary and overkill to isolate that much RAM while in game when really you can only interact with one thing at a time anyway, or focus on a few things at once.
I could see that being reserved to be available for when your out of game and multitasking on the OS to meet possible peak demands, but not while playing game.

 

[_phil_]

perhaps is there a very hungry library dedicated to some aspects of the gaming experience ,that happen for now to consume a big chunk of memory ,but a lot of dev don't really care because they won't use it anyway ? and perhaps this thing will end up shrinking dramatically very soon ?
..just speculating ..

 

[ROG27]

a 1080p image (color + z-buffer) takes 16 MB (24 MB if they want to use a FP16 render target )

You NT guys, always hating on FP16.

 

[Barbarian]

Why are they upset about SPE while they've known the system reserves 1 SPE since the day 1 of PS3 games development?

Yeah, I'd say developers are mostly upset about the RAM. The 1 SPE for OS was known for a while.

 

[overclocked]

Yeah, I'd say developers are mostly upset about the RAM. The 1 SPE for OS was known for a while.

Let your voices be heard then, they must listen to you guys, right.

 

[_phil_]

Yeah, I'd say developers are mostly upset about the RAM. The 1 SPE for OS was known for a while.

multiplatform ,i guess?

 

[nAo]

You NT guys, always hating on FP16.

LOL! Actually we use FP16 (and even FP32) extensively

 

[mckmas8808]

LOL! Actually we use FP16 (and even FP32) extensively

Anybody here want to break down what this actually means?

 

[luke76]

But your method nao ?

 

[Farid]

But your method nao ?

You can use Multiple Render Targets for rendering a single frame.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Anybody here want to break down what this actually means?

Rendering different parts of the scene on different buffesr. The main opaque geometry is going to be NAO32. Things like light particles and smoke might be in seperate FP16 passes. Maybe bloom is FP32?

It'd be nice if nAo could provide a breakdown of buffers they're using. I'm surprised to see FP32 in there for example, and would like to know why you feel that quality is worth the expense. And are you using small buffers upscaled, such as for smoke or bloom? And how many different 'layers' you're rendering.

 

[luke76]

Well and aa with fp 16 or 32 together ? how it can be possible ???

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

Rendering different parts of the scene on different buffesr. The main opaque geometry is going to be NAO32. Things like light particles and smoke might be in seperate FP16 passes. Maybe bloom is FP32?

It'd be nice if nAo could provide a breakdown of buffers they're using. I'm surprised to see FP32 in there for example, and would like to know why you feel that quality is worth the expense. And are you using small buffers upscaled, such as for smoke or bloom? And how many different 'layers' you're rendering.

Perhaps fp 32 is used in cutscenes with close ups?

 

[tema]

Beat them into submission, and then demand an upgrade to 768mb. Get the developers together and go on strike!

Sony upgraded PSP from 8mb to 32mb because devs were not happy.

 

[nAo]

FP32 can be useful to store very accurate non color data

 

[Fafalada]

FP32 can be useful to store very accurate non color data

Bah, accuracy elitist. I'll have you spend a week with clipping on PSP and then you try telling me accuracy matters.

And are you using small buffers upscaled, such as for smoke or bloom?

Dunno about smoke, but they ARE rendering in HDR, hence bloom(or better put, luminance) data is right there in the main render target.
The purpose for rendering extra buffers for stuff that will bloom, is when you have no adequate HDR capabilities and you have to 'cheat' with multiple buffers.

 

[Titanio]

FP32 can be useful to store very accurate non color data

128 bits seems like overkill for a z-buffer, but..*looks at Faf's post*...(some) geometry? I guess if SPEs are involved somewhere along the way, that might make sense? Or vertices are usually 128-bit anyway, I guess?