SONY to present the PLAYSTATION 3 platform

Angelcurio

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SONY to present the PLAYSTATION 3 platform

SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT EUROPE
A new games platform always presents new challenges and opportunities for game developers. Igor Makaruks of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, introduces the PLAYSTATION 3 at Digital Scarborough 2006 - a new state-of-the-art entertainment platform from Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. due for launch next year. This technical presentation will provide an overview of the system architecture including the Cell processor and the new graphics processor (RSX) along with the Blu-ray storage medium. It will also include information about the new development tools and is aimed to give potential developers and new media companies an insight into PLAYSTATION 3 title development.
TALK 1 - Developing for PLAYSTATION 3 (with 30 minute Q&A Session)

CENTRAL LIBRARY (Saturday 14th October 2006: 11AM—12.30PM) - Igor Makaruks of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Charles Cecil of Revolution Games . Coffee & biscuits provided.
A new games platform always presents new challenges and opportunities for game developers. Igor Makaruks of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, introduces the PLAYSTATION 3 - a new state-of-the-art entertainment platform from Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. due for launch next year. This technical presentation will provide an overview of the system architecture including the Cell processor and the new graphics processor (RSX) along with the Blu-ray storage medium. It will also include information about the new development tools and is aimed to give potential developers and new media companies an insight into PLAYSTATION 3 title development.

Igor joined the SCEE Technology Group in the summer of 2005 after completing his Computer Science Degree in Riga, Latvia. Igor's primary role is supporting PSP (PlayStation Portable) and PLAYSTATION 3 developers by creating graphic related sample code to improve game performance. He is also involved in consultancy and training developers throughout Europe and actively participates in public game developer conferences worldwide.

This session is aimed at individuals who are currently working in the games industry, for students from the School of Arts & New Media (The University of Hull) and for those who are interested in developing PLAYSTATION 3 games with help from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's developer support programme. Over a few cups of coffee you will also have the chance to discuss and listen in on PLAYSTATION 3 games development topics with Igor Makaruks in a 30 minute Q&A session chaired by Charles Cecil of Revolution Games .

If you would like to attend please book your place via the Digital Scarborough website www.digitalscarborough.org. Just click on the link - 'Book Online'.
TALK 2 - PLAYSTATION 3 Technical Overview & Graphics Demonstration

CENTRAL LIBRARY (Saturday 14th October 2006: 2PM—3PM) - Igor Makaruks of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
Igor Makaruks of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, introduces the PLAYSTATION 3 - a new state-of-the-art entertainment platform from Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. due for launch next year. This basic introduction will provide an overview of the PLAYSTATION 3 system architecture including the Cell processor and the new graphics processor (RSX) along with the Blu-ray storage medium.

If you would like to attend please book your place via the Digital Scarborough website www.digitalscarborough.org. Just click on the link - 'Book Online'.

Link: http://www.digitalscarborough.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19

So, will Sony finally talk about RSX?
 
So, will Sony finally talk about RSX?

What's there to talk about? the information is already out there -- the meaningful differences between G70/G71 and RSX have been stated on this forum and you can find out the info about G70/G71 from various reviews. Sony and Nvidia will likely never straight up give us exact information about RSX -- there isn't any reason for them to. We might hear some quirks here and there from devs (since there are bound to be some neat things about RSX/G7x that aren't necessarily exposed the same way in a PC environment), but I wouldn't expect Sony/Nvidia to come out and give us the detailed tech docs. In reality, we know about as much about RSX as we do Xenos (likely even more).

Also, the wording "overview" generally implies just briefly talking about it. I wouldn't expect anything indepth. They'll restate what's already been said -- "Cell has 7 SPEs enabled, RSX has 24 pipelines, we got 256xdr, 256gddr3, there's a fat pipe between RSX and Cell, FlexIO is cool, etc."

I am curious how big this Digital Scarborough thing is though. Never heard of it (although I don't exactly keep up on all the EU tradeshows/festivals/etc.)
 
What's there to talk about? the information is already out there -- the meaningful differences between G70/G71 and RSX have been stated on this forum and you can find out the info about G70/G71 from various reviews.
Isn't there still the transistor count discrepency though? The same number of trannies as G70 but an assumed removal of things like PureVideo? They probably won't touch upon technical details, but I'd like to hear if there's any hardware PS2-ness in there, and what the few differences are between RSX and G70.
 
There is a good bit that needs to be discussed.

First of all, there are the larger cache sizes. This is not some amazing miracle or anything, but is important. Additionally, the PS3 is said to have it's own unique shader paths. I doubt that they are very different from the 7800, but it would be interesting to be told the differences. Also, I'm almost certain there would be other minor tweaks that would be interesting to hear about. All these small things do add up to better performace than the PC part (from what I have been told) so I would love to be at that conference if the information is to be revealed.
 
Isn't there still the transistor count discrepency though? The same number of trannies as G70 but an assumed removal of things like PureVideo? They probably won't touch upon technical details, but I'd like to hear if there's any hardware PS2-ness in there, and what the few differences are between RSX and G70.

Why remove PureVideo? It could be useful. Afterall, it is a Blu-Ray player...
 
Isn't there still the transistor count discrepency though? The same number of trannies as G70 but an assumed removal of things like PureVideo? They probably won't touch upon technical details, but I'd like to hear if there's any hardware PS2-ness in there, and what the few differences are between RSX and G70.

Yeah, that has sort of been left unresolved...

I am curious as to whether RSX is G71 derived or G70 derived -- I'm wondering if it even has the tweaks G71 did (losing those transistors) at all, making it ~300m instead of ~271m no including the known changes done to make it an RSX (cache size changes and mem controller stuff). Purevideo I'm wondering about too... we've no confirmation about if it was removed or not (it would make a lot of sense to remove it, if you ask me). Saying it is G71 derived and Purevideo-less unit that'd be 50+m transistors to burn up to get the stated 300m (which was from e3'05, so who knows if it was actually valid or just a guess at that point?). There is also the possibility of PS2 hardware being in there... etc.

Those things are more or less moot in terms of performance concerning specifications of RSX -- those are physical architectural issues, not really features of RSX. Whether or not Purevideo or PS2 hardware is there doesn't really change what things it can do in games, you know? And Sony/Nvidia are definitely less likely to give us the "phantom transistor" information than actual RSX rendering information.
 
Why remove PureVideo? It could be useful. Afterall, it is a Blu-Ray player...
You have got a fully progammable streaming media CPU in there too... PureVideo is adding transistors (cost) to perform a limited role that could be as well if not better handled on the other components. Unless they are intending to use PureVideo a lot (video conferencing while you play?), it doesn't make economic sense to leave it in.
 
Why remove PureVideo? It could be useful. Afterall, it is a Blu-Ray player...

The idea is... why waste transistors for it specifically when you have something like Cell which has to be there regardless and can do the job. It's a fixed hardware cost (for sony) that could be replaced by a (more or less) one time software cost.
 
I am curious how big this Digital Scarborough thing is though. Never heard of it (although I don't exactly keep up on all the EU tradeshows/festivals/etc.)

How big... This is Scarborough man, practically the most important town in the world... the list of visionarys to come from Scarborough is well endless.. but you need to know no more than our very own DeanA is one of them...

Ask him bout the library go on...

For the humor impaired, "Digital Scarborough" was funny enough an idea to be all staffed as a joke at NT... then we realised it was real... Next i'll find out the framley examiner is real paper...
 
You have got a fully progammable streaming media CPU in there too... PureVideo is adding transistors (cost) to perform a limited role that could be as well if not better handled on the other components. Unless they are intending to use PureVideo a lot (video conferencing while you play?), it doesn't make economic sense to leave it in.

By the same token, it may not make economic sense to spend the engineering resources to remove it.
 
A developer recently said that the RSX was designed after NVIDIA had finished with the 7800 and 7900. I would at least hope they would utilize the more efficent 7900 architecture (fewer transistors same or better performance). However, even if the RSX does indeed have a more efficent architecture similiar to the 7900 (with fewer transistors) taking our pure video and 8 rops would indeed leave them some extra transistors.

I think we know that some of that was used to add extra cache (we are still left hanging on that one since now it's being reported Barbarian gave us incorrect information) both for post_transform and for textures. Additionally, the extra texture lookup logic may have cost some transistors too.

Now, since those of you under NDA cannot comment what do those of you who are NOT under NDA think these extra transistors could have been used for? Any guesses?

I really hope that the truth about the RSX comes out soon. I've been facinated for a long time about it, and I'm getting exhausted from searching daily for information but finding little or none.
 
By the same token, it may not make economic sense to spend the engineering resources to remove it.
You might think that, but sony's aiming to make a hundred million plus of these things. To corporations who revise hardware to cost-reduce away a couple screws, 20+ million transistors could be more than enough worth the (one-time) effort.
 
You might think that, but sony's aiming to make a hundred million plus of these things. To corporations who revise hardware to cost-reduce away a couple screws, 20+ million transistors could be more than enough worth the (one-time) effort.

On the other hand, those transistors will become cheaper over time as they shrink the die.
 
What do those of you who are NOT under NDA think these extra transistors could have been used for? Any guesses?
As I said above, my best guess is some BC hardware. It has been mentioned PS3 includes hardware support for BC, and short of bunging an EE+GS or somesuch in there, the other solution would be adaptations to the GPU to fit in some GS emulation. I thought the logic of the GS was 15 million transistors. That'd mean you could fit the GS pipeline and some logic to use compression with DDR to get the required BW for GS, I think.
 
On the other hand, those transistors will become cheaper over time as they shrink the die.
The cost of a chip increases exponentially with size, right? So reducing the transistor count by 10% will have a greater than 10% drop in cost. If RSX is costing $100 each at the moment, that'd be upwards of $10 saved per console. For the first 5 million consoles that'd be $50 million saved. That sound like a large percentage of the supposed investment in RSX. If they left PureVideo in to save engineering costs, the cost of removing a part of your GPU design must be astronomical!
 
Could the final secret of the RSX be that whatever is included to help with backwards compatibility is also able to be used by the PS3's graphical rendering system for PS3 games as well?

I'm not an engineer or a scientist. But I suspect there must be some way to put in the hardware needed that cannot be emulated and keep it usuable by the PS3 and RSX.

For example, I read that the PS2 had 4 megabytes of EDRAM. What if that was on the die of the RSX and could be used not only for backwards compatibility, but as a quick "cache" or storage unit for texture data or other data?

So many developers have said that the RSX is impressive. Also, many have said it's nothing more than a pretty common 7800 with a few modifications such as extra cache, a few more shader instructions, a little more texture lookup logic, etc. What if the truth is that the PS2's hardware was *smartly* incorporated into the PS3 in such a way that it could be used for PS3 games?

This is something that has bugged me for a while. In my opinion, if they have to literally put the PS2 hardware into the PS3 (even for a short period of time) however are not going to be able to use it for PS3 games that is a waste.
 
We have been told there is no edram for a framebuffer. However, no one has specifically said there is no extra memory of anykind in the system. For example, what if they replaced the older EDRAM with an ever faster bit of memory? What if they used SRAM instead?
 
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