Yoshida confirms SCE working on new hardware
- Thread starter Versatil
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I don't think it is about CELL. Look at Blu-Ray's cost. I wonder what the situation would be if they didn't have to put Blu-Ray in.
You're thinking in terms of single player, offline games.
Halo 2 was the most popular Xbox 360 Live game for a long time. It was a killer app for Xbox Live even when people were buying 360s. Allowing people to keep playing Halo 2 removed a barrier to transitioning to 360.
Keeping people hooked on Live not only generates huge returns from Live subscriptions, but it encourages them to pay for DLC and crap like "Gamer Pictures." Getting a strong Live community for the 360 early on (with which BC for Halo 2 helped massively in achieving) made it more likely that Xbox 1 Live users would have to move to 360 to stay connected to their friends, and it also helped to reach a critical mass for attracting new users.
The easier it is to make a clean break with your service, the more people will do it.
[Edit] Which is not to say that either of them will have some kind of BC next gen, just that there can be tangible benefits to it. I think it's more likely that Sony will dump BC next generation than MS, but I guess we'll find out in due course. [/Edit]
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It's just none of those are workloads appear to be in multiplatform games.
And multiplatform games are the only place where it matters. It doesn't matter how well your stuff performs in exclusive games.
Can you name me an example where the PS3 version has worse physics? (to give but one example where CPU could be a bottleneck on consoles) I may not be looking right, but I don't see any evidence of the Cell processor being a major factor in holding back the PS3 version of a game. Trying hard, I can think of maybe one game having trouble porting their PPE based AI to the PS3 (was it Assassin's Creed?). On the other hand, physics normally always run better on PS3, as most physics drivers are optimised for SPEs (look up Havok performance on PS3 for engine version 4.5 or higher, first used in Motorstorm 2).
Multi-platform games aren't well known for their CPU usage (even native 360 games don't have a great reputation, imho - PGR4 may look decent as a 360 exclusive, but Blur, though now multi-platform, is more advanced and uses a multi-threaded renderer, versus single-threaded renderer for PGR4). How many 360 games have one core dedicated to sound processing alone?
In my opinion, the Cell is in its current form too hard to support as a generic CPU for desktop use, before anything else because current desktop OS's are not ready for that kind of multi-core processing, but also because it's much harder to optimise the Cell for that kind of broad range of applications and multi-tasking.
Even then though when you look at the stuff that causes most CPU usage, like encoding, decoding, compression, decompression, even xml parsing, an SPE is very good at exactly those kind of things. It took quite a while for instance for my PCs to catch up on ripping music to my PS3's harddrive, and then the bottleneck was for a large part simply the DVD drive. Take that to gaming, and you have an environment that is much more predictable and the Cell design can be put to even better use.
We can discuss this endlessly, but in the end the CPU is probably one of the last problems that the PS3 had. Imagine that the PS3 had had a 3 core PPE based processor like the 360, and nothing else changed. Would it have been that much better off, you think?
I was simply pointing out that ultimately what matters is how well the two run multiplatform games. And not in theory, in practice. If, for all the money spent on Cell, it doesn't make the PS3 a more attractive purchase then it's wasted money.
That kind of illustrates why you might not want to use a CPU that requires lots of threads and lots of hoop jumping to get decent performance if you can avoid it.
A console won't win any bonus points for having a CPU that's powerful but underutilised, but something like PS3 Orange Box is a definite mark against it.
And yet 360 games look better and run better, even today. There's a gap between how things were supposed to work out and how they've ended up working out, and I'm sure there's no-one more aware of this than Sony.
Probably not. At least not if it still had a GeForce 7 in it.
If Sony hadn't thrown truck loads of cash at Cell they'd certainly be better off though.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Well a few years into it and the CPU is definitely not a problem for the PS3. At the start however, it was definitely a major barrier and just another stumbling block that allowed the competition to roar ahead. Only the RROD issue for MS allowed the PS3 to stay within sight.
Fast forward a few years with some solid libraries and a good understand of Cell and it's SPU's you can certainly consider it one of the strengths. But definitely not for the first couple years. At least where game developement and thus games were concerned.
Regards,
SB
Cell performs GPU jobs in multiplatform games also. It will still track motions and drive natural interfaces for cross platform motion gaming titles between Wii, 360 and PS3. Remember, we are discussing CPU performance here.
Not necessarily. It's also about market momentum. e.g., PS3 is doing better in Japan and Europe. The real picture is more complex than only technical performance.
... which is why it's an open question whether Sony will use a Cell-like architecture next generation.
Well you don´t know what I think.
Beside the technical issues such as parsing GS code to shader code you have all the legal issues with copyrighted material: game ip, songs, art etc. that may need to be re-negotiated if you want to put out a new binary. By emulation you by pass that all that trouble and Sony can go to third parties like SEGA and say: Hey we have this PSN thing with X million subscribers, we think some percentage may consider re-buying some of your old PS2 games do you want to make some money with very little hassle?
Edit: It should be noted there will still be legal issues for digital distribution that has to be solved.
aaronspink said:
I take that as you are accepting my bet. :smile:
I don´t care much for BC myself and still have my PS2 left, but at another place, therefore I sold my 60 GB PS3 when the Slim was released. I put my PS3 out for sale just below the price of the Slim. I got mail bombed and had to take it off the net within hours. So there were many people who prefered a more than two year old 60 GB PS3 with PS2 BC and no warranty to a brand new 120 GB PS3 with full two year warranty at basically the same price.
Anecdotal I know, but I think the console companies know what they are doing when they are including BC. And yes both the 360 and the PS3 has had BC in various ways and yes there have been vocal complaints about shitty BC and removal of PS2 BC.
But the vast majority of workload will be games code, the SPUs are designed to deliver predictable real-time behaviour for that purpose, people at IBM were quite outspoken about this. It´s not designed for database-transactions or Linux-multitasking or whatever benchmark workload you were thinking about.aaronspink said:
Many developers have now grown used to divide tasks into jobs to distribute over multiple cores, that skill will not go away as the benefits are numerous and there are now game engines designed around this. If you can stick more cores on the die they will just be happy.
aaronspink said:
I am intrigued. Do you care to elaborate?
Edit: Are you into Quantum computers?
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corduroygt
Banned
I was under the impression that the quality difference in multiplats stemmed from the difference between the RSX and Xenos, not the CPU.
corduroygt
Banned
Really, what task that's not related to running an OS is better on the xenon? Can xenon do MLAA? Can it do folding at home? Can it decode h264 streams that are higher than 10mbits?
The tasks a x86 or Xenon can do better than Cell are not very important or relevant in a game console, I'd love to see you try to run MW2 on a 7900GTX and 1.86 Ghz C2D.
The only point you have is that Cell requires programming effort, but that effort has been largely spent and there are now frameworks each dev uses.
The point I was (doing a bad job of) making was that there hasn't been, and still isn't, a special "Cell advantage" for multiplatform games. The reasons may have changed, but the fact that 360 stuff still looks and runs better hasn't.
Exclusive games don't matter - if you hire the talent and spend the time and money making an exclusive game it'll look good or perhaps even great, and then you can easily market it to your fanbase as being technically impossible on the other guy's machine (because it lacks Cell or BluRay or eDram or Blast Processing or whatever else it is that the core gameplay and art style could easily survive without).
If Sony truly are going to be last entering into the next generation as they're suggesting then all they really need from their next gen CPU is to be able to run quick ports of big games at least as well as their competition. That's it. Any more power would be overkill (which is fine if it's cheap or free), and any extra processing power that came at the expense of multiplatform games would be a mistake. Graphics, at least in the early stages of the generation, are a different matter though.
I'm not sure that a bunch of Cell processors will be as usable as an 8 core x86 or Power processor even by next generation.
corduroygt
Banned
Do you know of any multiplatform developer complaining about the cell any more? Even Gabe Newell says the best console version of Portal 2 will be on the PS3. I don't think it's that hard any more to do a quick 360/PC port to run on the cell, it's the RSX that makes them look/run like crap, or at least, that's my impression, but if you have some examples, I'd like to hear them.
Going with a redesigned/fixed Cell for next gen wouldn't really be as much of an issue as it was at PS3 launch any more, most devs are familiar with it. I'd wager as long as the GPU doesn't lag behind the competition, the PS3 ports would run just as well and look just as good. The x86 pricing makes it impossible to have one on a console that is supposed to sell for a profit, so that's not going to happen.
For example, browser performance will be important moving forward. So the CPU (or PPU) will need to be beefed up for that kind of workload.
However this does not preclude them from using something like SpursEngine for specialized tasks -- *if* they really want to. They have to consider the costs.
Most developers b*tched about the GPU performance and memory size on PS3. Haven't really heard performance-related criticism directed at Cell. It seems to run decompression, play FMV, process interactive audio, handle physics, track motion, and other game logic fine. It's doing extra work for the GPU. However, if they can find an even cheaper and better solution these days, they should (and will) consider the alternatives.
At another level, I am more interested in how the system ties all the parts together. I think that may make or break system performance too.
There are tasks where an algorithm tweaked to work on a "see all memory" type architecture can run faster than an algorithm tweaked to run on "see only a sliver of memory at a time" architecture. If you are talking about any type of task that sequentially churns through data then cell will always win. But there are other cases such as when you are randomly dealing with very large data sets, and being able to see all that data at all times lets you write an algorithm tailored to that strength and possibly run faster on a traditional cpu compared to spu.
One place it has benefit is for the younger audience who are dependent on their parents buying them the console. A very common question a parent will ask in said cases is "does it play our old games", so there is some benefit there.
I'll try and put it as a question:
What's the value in an awesome supercomputer CPU in a console if at first (during the most crucial period) it holds the system back then, later, it sits there underutilised because multiplatform games aren't targeting it?
Cell has to be some of the most expensive (in terms of $$ and silicon) culling and anti-aliasing hardware ever made.
I don't know how expensive re-engineering Cell would be, or if anyone would want to do it. Maybe Cell could easily deal with next-gen engines primarily targeting more complex processor cores, but I wouldn't want to bet on it!
Bobcat could get around many of the x86 pricing issues, and if ATI could integrate Bobcat cores with a powerful GPU maybe that could be the best of both worlds...
This is far too broad a statement. Four years into the generation BC is much less attractive, but early on the story is quite different.
What are you talking about? The PS3 launched with full BC and the 360 had BC for its most popular titles. The PS2 had full BC. The Wii has full BC. If you want to use the market as an argument shouldn't you have the facts behind you?
An algorithm designed to access a very large data set randomly doesn't sound like it'd run very well on any architecture, but yeah, I guess it'd run worse on CELL. Do you have an example, though?
specwarGP2
Regular
Yah but its different now that we have downloadable games and content in the mix. I think the expectation for DD is that stuff you buy now will work on future devices. Plus its a good way to keep people locked in.
Even if people didn't actually care to play their old download games much any more, you could probably convince a certain proportion of your customers that abandoning your brand would effectively lose them convenient ongoing access to their entire library of download games.
To also go back to an earlier point, I think a significant number of early 360 owners would have been put off by the idea that they would lose the ability to play Halo 2 with all their friends (you had to migrate your Live account to 360). BC was important for the Live service itself, and we shouldn't underestimate the ongoing (and growing) importance of Live to MS.
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