Watch Impress PS3 Technical article, from GDC (some new info)

[Titanio]

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20060329/3dps3.htm

I'm sure a better translation can be done by some of our resident experts, but here's what I've been able to glean from Google Translator:

6 SPEs are available to applications - as speculated/expected by many, a SPE is reserved by the OS.

RSX, 24 2D texture lookups simultaneously, 384flops/clock = 24 pixel pipelines, it would seem.

Two models for RSX programming:

PSGL - high level
libgcm - low level, to the metal

2,900 dev kits shipped since last summer.

That seems to be most of the main new stuff..

 

[Carl B]

The PPE upgrade is a nice move. Have I been saying for a while now that DD3.1 means more than a simple yield-driven revision or what? You don't go from DD2.x to DD3.x for yields alone.

Anyway RSX is looking to be essentially G70 as has been the prevelant thinking to date - I'm sure some will be disapointed on that front - but I'd like to know more about this cache talk on-die that's popped up now and then with some of the devs. That is, if anyone wants to discuss it.

PS - What's the latency on the XDR? I know the on-die memory controller should be responsible for a good bit of that low access time on the main memory side of things.

 

[RavenFox]

SO Nv47 is meaning like 7800GTX part but more advanced technically for RSX?
Okay the one spe for OS I think we already knew about.
24pipes>speculated now concrete
memory latency seems to be kick ass.

edit:whats up xb buddy

 

[Titanio]

PS - What's the latency on the XDR? I know the on-die memory controller should be responsible for a good bit of that low access time on the main memory side of things.

Well it says 140 cycles, but whether there's a subtlety to that or not, I'm not sure..

Okay the one spe for OS I think we already knew about.

Heavily speculated, but not confirmed til now I don't think.

 

[Carl B]

Well it says 140 cycles, but whether there's a subtlety to that or not, I'm not sure..

Well I guess upon closer inspection, the latency given isn't for Cell in PS3 per se, but just for purposes of an example... so moot point it seems.

 

[superguy]

Summary:

If you were hoping for upgrades you didn't get any.

If you were hoping for downgrades you didn't get any.

No RAM upgrade as was "speculated" a few times lately.

Biggest news was the SPE locked for OS, which is a somewhat downgrade, but of little significance.

 

[nAo]

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20060329/3dps3.htm

I'm sure a better translation can be done by some of our resident experts, but here's what I've been able to glean from Google Translator:

PPE has 128 VMX registers now, and a dot product instruction (I think).

Memory latency for Cell is:

Register: 1 cycle
L1 cash: 8 cycle
L2 cash: 32 cycle
Main memory: 140 cycles

bollocks

 

[ERP]

bollocks

beat me to it!

 

[Mmmkay]

If you were hoping for upgrades you didn't get any.

Well the PPE got upgraded it seems .. or did it? were testicles directed at the rest of the information or just the latency numbers

nAo: Yeah. Turns out Game Watch took the picture just too early...

 

[RavenFox]

Looks like the info is just there as a reference. Its not actual at all. Oh well there's a show supposedly in April but E3 is where the meat will be.

 

[pixelbox]

So dev's are using 6 spe's now.

 

[scooby_dooby]

were testicles directed at the rest of the information or just the latency numbers

lol...so THAT's what bollocks means....awesome

 

[j^aws]

In summary, what new info was there?

VMX upgrade = false

RSX based on NV47= true

RSX with 24 PS units = true

SPU reserved for OS = true

Anything else? Nothing new really...

 

[heliosphere]

I'm 99% certain the claim that the VMX register count has been upped to 128 and a dot product instruction has been added are also bollocks. Nobody here has heard anything about it and I think Sony would probably have told us... It would mean updates to the toolchain (new compiler) and all kinds of upgrade issues (new code wouldn't work on old hardware) and that's the sort of thing that we'd usually get plenty of advance notice on, even from Sony.

 

[Megadrive1988]

RSX is based on NV47 (aka G70 @ 110nm, aka G71 @ 90nm) ........knew it, knew it!

 

[dukmahsik]

so does that mean rsx > xenos?

 

[Megadrive1988]

now we need to know how many ROPs are in RSX. has it been reduced from the 16 that are in the PC version of NV47 ~ G70 ~ G71 ?

we need the ROPs figure to know the true fillrate of PS3.

24 pixel "pipelines" is not the real full story.

 

[j^aws]

RSX is based on NV47 (aka G70 @ 110nm, aka G71 @ 90nm) ........knew it, knew it!

It's still annoying that they haven't mentioned the number of VS and PS units explicitly!

We can infer 24 PS units but NO VS units!

 

[dukmahsik]

can anyone tell me if the spe's are good for AI type of work?

 

[Megadrive1988]

It's still annoying that they haven't mentioned the number of VS and PS units explicitly!

We can infer 24 PS units but NO VS units!

since NV47 / G70 / G71 and RSX do not use a unified shader architecture, I am going to assume the 24 "pipelines" are pixel shader units, and that RSX still has the 8 vertex shader units that the normal PC versions have.