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

[omgwtfbbq]

MikeB said:
@ omgwtfbbq

While the GPU can handle the graphics, there are still three cores to split between physics and AI, as opposed to the PS3 where the PPE has to handle the AI as well as other things.

The SPEs can be used for AI, to quote a Heavenly Sword developer:

"So basically you have the army game which has up to 2180 AI’s (I checked the other day cos somebody on Beyond3D asked and I didn’t actually know, its can probably go a little higher but thats the current number embedded in the code) running on SPUs with the normal main game logic mainly running on PPU. For fighting the SPU code selects the 20-30 closest army guys and hands them over to the normal game so you get the full fight engine and AI for them. For ranged weapons (like the Bazooka) its all handled internally to the armies, and they try and run or dive and also get blown up quite spectacularly(its very satisfying ). The army AI is hierarchical, each guy has his own brain and avoids and tracks important things but there is also a battalion level intelligence that guides each unit around the field following a specialised virtual machine with commands and orders. Its quite hard to control an army and not make it look silly, so we use a few tricks to make it look visually interesting as well"

well, just because something isn't designed for a particular thing, doesn't mean it's not possible. I understand that it's possible to run the AI routines on the SPE's, but it would take a performance hit when compared to a general purpose core.