MikeB on 25 August 2008
@ Deneidez
Its not like "Yeah, PS3 has incredible amount of processing power. We made game that just took some of it, because we didn't need all of it."...
Its like "PS3 has incredible amount of potential, but this is what we could do. I hope next time we can do it better."
Its not certain can you even use 90% of its potential.
Its like "PS3 has incredible amount of potential, but this is what we could do. I hope next time we can do it better."
Its not certain can you even use 90% of its potential.
Certainly you can use over 90% of its potential, research documents already demonstrated unparalleled efficiency with the architecture.
The problem is the Cell provides a radically different approach compared to current PCs, although the PC is moving in a similar direction. It's also very different compared to the PS2 in terms of what the system can do. So PS2 and PC gaming engines are going through major overhauls. Many modern gaming engines took many years to build and to rebuild those and expand them with new functionality takes time.
Killzone 2 for example last we heard was still only using 4 SPUs and the PPU at this time, they have plenty of CPU cycles to spare when they will try to make a Killzone 3 technically even more impressive.
Moving legacy code over from the PPU to the SPUs is usually not a trivial process, expecting to do a simple recompile will result into failure. As the IBM documentation shows the SPUs are easy to program for, but they have some profound differences.
Its usually not what game really is.
There's tons of random Killzone 2 footage available, ordinary people playing, etc.
Every programmer knows that using assembly is incredible(I can use these words too. ^^) pain in the ass when projects are huge. Especially if you must use it and theres no other way around. Have you ever wondered why they don't make programs only by using assembly?
It takes more time and effort, but on the PS3 you would not use assembly exclusively. It makes sense to hand optimize the most performance and time critical parts of the game engine / middleware. (using x86 assembly is much harder than using assembler on the Cell, this is also a reason why PC developers moved to higher level languages, the legacy bagage x86 architecture is not very modern at all and originates from the 70s)
For embedded situations, many console games, time/performance/results critical settings (nuclear facilities) the art of talking to the hardware more directly through assembly is still in wide use.
The reason why many new programmers have moved away from assembler is that it takes more knowledge and competence, Windows is already horribly inefficient itself, people are constantly expected to upgrade towards new processors and buy more RAM, etc.
This situation is different from the embedded and console market, where a console is expected to last 5-10 years. It makes more sense to go all the way to optimize your engine as tens of millions maybe even well over 100 million people will eventually own a console with a fully known core hardware configuration.
