Panajev2001a said:I do not see what Hofstee is saying is contraddicting what I am saying.
Whether CELL based or not, the GPU in PlayStation 3 will be programmable enough and with enough bandwidth between itself and the CPU to effectively act as a media co-processor: similarly to how it will work on Xbox 2.
The era of 1-way communication between CPUs and GPUs is ending IMHO.
Hofstee talked about things that were possible in the short term and then long term goals: he said that we would go away from textures (he wants an all procedural system [textures are still used in the most advanced off-line CG production today and the trend seems to continue]), do you believe that PlayStation 3 will go to a kind of rendering system that does not leverage textures (even if you limit this to saying "no bitmaps to fake detail" which would apply to normal mapping, detail texturing, displacement mapping , etc...) ?
I'm not saying texture mapping will be replaced. Like you say, even offline rendering using REYES, still uses texture maps as you cannot procedurally create textures for all surfaces that look realistic. Perhaps they have a majic box/ fractal algorithm that converts real textures to a procedural one, who knows!
And without sounding like a broken record, all I'm suggesting and Hofstee too, is you should be able to try 'new' things...whatever that means...your a developer...think up some stuff!
Panajev2001a said:3. However, if the VS is NOT done on the CELL CPU but on the GPU, then the entire GPU may OR may not be CELL based then, no?
I am not saying VS will not be done at all on the APUs, even if the GPU had VS units.
I am disputing your premise that says "if Vertex Shading is done on the CPU then the GPU uses CELL technology".
Your argument relies on this, basically:
Quote:
Premise 1: If Hofstee was talking about two-way comms between CPU<=>GPU,
Premise 2 (a conclusion based on the validity of premise 1): then these VS CELL threads should run on the GPU also, no?
---------
Conclusion: This should imply the GPU is CELL based.
This is what you are using to say my argument is contraddictory, isn't it ?
I call it a non sequitur on the passage from P1 to P2 and especially from P1+P2 to the Conclusion.
Your argument might be valid, but it does not seem sound to me as your premises do not appear more known than the conclusion you are trying to proove.
I thought you gave up and we agreed to disagree!
My premise is more known than my conclusion. Therefore if you accept my premise you should accept my conclusion...
But obviously not as you're now questioning my premise! I've supplied Hofstee's slides and video on his presentation...that is more known than my conclusion OR YOUR conclusion...
Anyway my FIRST EVER post, 6 Months ago was the SALC/SALP patent thread... , which really is more pertinent to what Dave is discussing in the other thread. But the relevance is that the patent was a replacement for fixed functionality with programmable functionality without incurring any extra cost in terms of die space/ transistors.
However, my SECOND ever post in the same thread,
Jaws said:Fafalada said:Taking a guess based on what I've read so far, this strikes me as an attempt at a fast and compact programmable replacement for conventionally hardwired circuitry (eg. rasterization, filtering, primitive setup etc.).Jaws said:but could this potentially be the patent relating to the much vaunted PixelEngine in the PS3's GPU aka Visualizer?
If I'm right, implications would be interesting - how about a programmable primitive processor? And jvd and co. should jump for joy about idea of having a configurable pixel feature set
That said, I don't think this is a patent related to entire Visualizer, just the blackbox parts previously thought as fixed hw yeah. (Then again that may have something to do with me refusing to accept any idea of having multiple ISAs for geometry and fragment computation parts... In my dream world we're still using APUs for all shading ops ).
Would it really matter if APUs doing all shading ops (vertex and pixel) be replaced by say, vertex shading via APUs and pixel shading via these SALPs in the PixelEngine? Indeed, the GPU maybe without APUs and replaced by these SALPs entirely...
mmm... I also see accepting one ISA for APU's and SALPs difficult from a Cell philosophy. Maybe the Cell ISA has extensions for graphics?
I'm not clear how software Cells will work on the SALPs. Or is there meant to be a consistent ISA for Cell graphics? I never really got the whole distributed graphics thing with Cell. E.g, an app written for a Cell PDA client work on a Cell PS3 (with a different GPU)? Would the Cell OS use a JIT type compiler to hide this from other types of GPUs on different Cell clients?
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=297459#297459
I asked the same questions then...
I also suggested that the CELL CPU's ALUs consisting of S|APUs be complemented by a CELL based GPU who's ALUs consisted of SALC/SALPs. The VS work done on a CELL CPU and the PS work done on the CELL GPU.
That concept that I proposed still has not changed by having different contractors, whether it was Toshiba, SONY in-house, or NVIDIA providing the GPU...It just seemed to make more sense than the Visualizer.
And I can't freakin believe I'm still having the same discussion now! ...At least I've remained consistent!
Anyway, believe what you want...