Ubisoft Dev: PS3 Can't Handle AI as well as the 360

[omgwtfbbq]

I can see most people here have absolutely no idea about programming from the "devs are lazy" angle that seems to be coming across in this thread.

The simple truth is, the PS3 will never be as good as the Xbox360 at AI. The PS3 is designed for "Embarrassingly parallel" tasks. The baby of the PS3 is it's SPE's, each one of them can be given a small task, do some heavy number crunching on it, and spit out an answer. This is perfect for tasks such as graphics processing and physics for example. Graphics processing is one of the most paralellisable tasks that can be done on a computer, the typical GPU has multiple graphics pipelines each with seven or eight different steps (projecting, face culling, clipping, rasterisation, etc) that can all be done simultaneously. Physics is based on a whole lot of objects moving around each other with predetermined laws.

The simple truth is AI is a completely different beast. AI involves branching, testing different conditions. The vector processors of the Cell are completely unsuited to decisions, they're designed to perform calculations. As well as this, AI cannot be broken down into smaller chunks that can be run simultaneously, each decision depends on the result of the previous one. The simple result is that the AI has to be run on the PPE, which is basically similar to one of the cores of the Xbox360, but of course it needs to take up a lot of time with other things, such as making sure all the SPEs are doing the right thing.

Unfortunately, this is a trade-off that is very well known in Computer Science, You can make something more specialised, and you get better performance for one thing, ut less performance in other things. The Cell is a highly specialised processor (obviously not to the standard of a GPU, but still specialised) which gives it advantages in some areas (Physics, Graphics) but disadvantages in others (AI)

That's just the way of the world. The Cell is a processor like any other, it has its limits, its strengths and its weaknesses. No amount of development effort will make the PS3 etter suited for AI than the Xbox360.