Use ps3 as a workstation for 3d?

[weaksauce]

Or whatever it's called. Would it be possible to use like Maya with it together with linux?

If you care:
Ok, so I have two computers. One is faster (barton 3200+,fx5200,512mb) and the other is slower (p3,gf4mx,512mb)...
I'm thinking of ditching the faster one. It sucks but it will do for some source games and ut2k4 and such, but mostly I just want to keep it so I can learn CGI. hey I already have "the complete maya reference".
Ok so I'm not really ditching it, I'm selling it, because I'm getting fed up with it (it won't do that much more than the slower one either, and it sounds like an ass) and it'll help me save for ps3. I'll play my games on the ps3.

Getting TigerOS on it would be teriffic, what exaclty has Apple to lose on this one?

 

[j^aws]

You're gonna need loads of RAM. I'm hoping that they would produce a version that can be expanded that way...

 

[weaksauce]

You're gonna need loads of RAM. I'm hoping that they would produce a version that can be expanded that way...

Would lack of ram just increase rendering time or does it limit the amount of detail and so on?
I guess I could dig the first one.

 

[j^aws]

Would lack of ram just increase rendering time or does it limit the amount of detail and so on?
I guess I could dig the first one.

It will generally slow things down because of using virtual memory on slow hard disks...

 

[NaMo4184]

Would lack of ram just increase rendering time or does it limit the amount of detail and so on?
I guess I could dig the first one.

If you have enough ram, you can render large objects (think Giga bits) completely in ram. ram is 40 times faster than your hard drive so yeah... I would say that lack of ram would increase render time.

However, if you decrease detail you would decrease render time. So you have to decide which is more important to you.

About Mac OS X and Cell. Apple has already stated that They will not use the cell as a main microprocessor.

 

[macabre]

In the beginning your 512MB will be enough, but once you start to do more complex scenes lack of ram will effect your workflow. Then the whole program will turn to a slideshow and you will have to wait some time for every single change you make to your scene.

 

[weaksauce]

In the beginning your 512MB will be enough, but once you start to do more complex scenes lack of ram will effect your workflow. Then the whole program will turn to a slideshow and you will have to wait some time for every single change you make to your scene.

Ouch. Well I won't probably do that much in the beginning yeah...

NaMo4184, Yes but if they could sell it for the PS3.

http://www.alias.com/eng/support/maya/qualified_hardware/QUAL/maya_60_linux.html
I guess Maya must have support for the CPU and GPU and also ps3 must be able tto run red hat. Would any of that be possible?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

In the beginning your 512MB will be enough, but once you start to do more complex scenes lack of ram will effect your workflow. Then the whole program will turn to a slideshow and you will have to wait some time for every single change you make to your scene.

The PS3 only has 256MB RAM, remember, it's a non-unified memory architecture. And that's hopelessly small for any serious 3D work, especially with highend apps like Maya.
Should the PS3 have proper Linux support, with a GUI and OpenGL and all, it might get a version of Blender or such an open-source, more simple 3D app though - but I certainly wouldn't call it a 3D workstation with that small amount of memory.

 

[Npl]

The PS3 only has 256MB RAM, remember, it's a non-unified memory architecture. And that's hopelessly small for any serious 3D work, especially with highend apps like Maya.

Its 512MB unified, Non-uniform-Memory Architecture. You can treat both Pools the same Way, just one is faster than the other. And you could of course use the HDD for swapping.

 

[Sonic]

It really depends on what you want to do in 3D. I'd imagine CELL would be pretty good to help out in the rendering process and speeding things up by a very decent amount. Again, you would need a good bit of RAM for it to actually be useful.

I would like to see CELL as a coprocessor in regular workstations and be able to take use of the 2 or 4 GB of space.

 

[Sis]

Getting TigerOS on it would be teriffic, what exaclty has Apple to lose on this one?

Development costs, support costs, splintered focus, no return on investment, enhancing a competitor's product and bottom line.

What exactly does Apple have to gain on this one?

.Sis

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Its 512MB unified, Non-uniform-Memory Architecture. You can treat both Pools the same Way, just one is faster than the other.

I wasn't aware of that... AFAIK Cell can't access the GDDR VRAM, only RSX has a kind of access to the XDR through Cell.

 

[weaksauce]

Development costs, support costs, splintered focus, no return on investment, enhancing a competitor's product and bottom line.

What exactly does Apple have to gain on this one?

.Sis

I was thinking they could sell a version for PS3 or add support for PS3 in a newer release of tigerOS. I don't know but maybe alot of people would buy it if it wouldn't be too expensive. Also they would have more people having the OS, which should be a good thing if you look at how MS so desperately wants to get in to your house. :smile:
Sure, fewer people might buy Mac's then, but they'll have larger sales on the OS, like MS. right?

 

[Sis]

I was thinking they could sell a version for PS3 or add support for PS3 in a newer release of tigerOS. I don't know but maybe alot of people would buy it if it wouldn't be too expensive. Also they would have more people having the OS, which should be a good thing if you look at how MS so desperately wants to get in to your house. :smile:
Sure, fewer people might buy Mac's then, but they'll have larger sales on the OS, like MS. right?

In the next week or two Apple will announce their mechanism for getting into your living room (that sounds so naughty). But it won't be through a game console.

Seriously, I believe supporting two platforms is probably difficult enough, regardless of how good their dev staff is. Adding a third sounds unreasonable.

.Sis

 

[Bobbler]

I wasn't aware of that... AFAIK Cell can't access the GDDR VRAM, only RSX has a kind of access to the XDR through Cell.

Both Cell and RSX can dip into each others pools. It might not be completely transparent, but it's supposed to be quite possible (so Cell can dump stuff into GDDR and RSX can dump stuff into XDR).

 

[Shezad]

I wasn't aware of that... AFAIK Cell can't access the GDDR VRAM, only RSX has a kind of access to the XDR through Cell.

This is not true, in the final devkit CELL will be capable to write directly into the RSX memory.

Shezad

 

[_phil_]

Alias had their beta cell based workstations last year.They allready worked on intensive and parallelized realtime cloth simulations.

 

[hey69]

what COULD be intresting is a freeware 3d app included with ps3 linux on the harddrive. to let the creative people ponder around a bit..

oh man ,this excites me like when we had an Amiga at home

 

[London Geezer]

what COULD be intresting is a freeware 3d app included with ps3 linux on the harddrive. to let the creative people ponder around a bit..

oh man ,this excites me like when we had an Amiga at home

That would be a good starting point, but i can't help but think that in a "CELL Workstation" with only a 512MB RAM (not all of which will be usable because of OS overhead i guess), Cell would be sitting there waiting for the kettle to boil most of the time, when things gets busy in whatever you're trying to work on.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

512 MBs is fine for beginning. I was using a 512 MB PIII for raytracing and rarely created anything complex enough to be hit by the lack of memory. 3D takes a long time to master. Depending on how much free time you devote to it, for the first year or two you'll likely be creating simple models, character setups, etc. You're not that likely to be creating hugely complex meshes because you won't have the modelling skills or time to work in such fine detail, and you're unlikely to be using lots of high-res textures either. So for learning, if the software was there (which we dont know, but I'm sure Blender and the like will make the port) PS3 should be as a good for learning the principles of 3D as a 512 MB PC. Though obviously, don't sell your PC to learn 3D on PS3 until you know PS3 can do the job! Your Barton should be many times faster than your P3 (unless you've overclocked it to 4 GHz ) - mine was! And if it's loud, mine was, but I replaced the PSU, whacked on a large heatsink and a panaflow to the CPU, and replaced the GPU fan with a fanless heatsink (Ti4200). It's very quiet now. Rather than going to all that effort and cost you can just replace the loudest part or so. And besides, for all we know PS3 is even louder!