A Factual Article everyone should read.

[joeorc]

selnor said:

joeorc said:

@selnor
"But at the end of the day it still comes back to spreading 512kb L2 Cache between 6 SPE's and 1PPE. As well as having to deal with each instruction in order rather than like a PC CPU which can deal with any code it needs to."

i read this article back in 2006.

your statement only proves how outdated this article is..for one the SPE's do not just rely on the PPE for instruction, because the SPE's have their own instruction's seperate for the PPE. the SPE's can do direct DMA to and from other SPE's with out the need of the PPE.because the SPE's have their own local store.

here is some fact's for people:

users.ece.gatech.edu/~lanterma/mpg/ece4893_xbox360_vs_ps3.pdf

real world tests....

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-cellperf/

@selnor

to me this shows his take has many faults on what you describe as.."facts" about the ps3 though i respect his opinion i do no agree with it. like other's may not agree with mine.

IT doesnt matter when an article was written, the componenets of a machine dont change. That IBM article you posted is what the tech specialist used and has as a source on the final page of his disection. Yes they are tests. But tests are done in a controlled environment. Notice how on IBM's very own graphs they show they can actual only get 75% of the theoretical power when using all SPE's at once?

That IBM article completely backs up this tech persons article. Theoretical PS3 can do 218 GFLOPS with the cell. Actual game environment will be closer to 70 GFLOPS in the best games of this gen. For some reason Cell loses alot of peak ower when all SPE's are being used. 360's Xenon will likely see around 60 GFLOPS peak for actual games. But again Cell can help out The weak RSX where it needs to. And Xenos on 360 has the ability to help out Xenon CPU. Because the Xenos is very much more advanced than RSX. It's catch 20/20.

The article is very factual. Yes developers will always find ways around problems of hardware, and in terms of console hardware these 2 consoles are a big step up from the previous generation. But the actual CPU's inside 360 and PS3 aren't actual capable of more than Athlon 3200+ for instance. Becasue In Order Execution CPU's have a very limited way of being used. And adding multithreading makes that even harder. If cell and Xenon were Out of Order CPU's they would be considerably more powerful and faster at what they could do, but they wouls alos lkely cost you to sell your mum to buy the console.

The only part that can change in from the article is the OS usage. How much ram and how much processing time. But thats it. The rest will never change, but developers will learn ways like they did last gen to overcome any hiccups. And g=create great games like Killzone 2, or Forza 3. It's the nature of the beast.

The main points I got from the article is that in no way Is PS3 or 360 supercomputers. Also PS2 had a better CPU than Xbox 1, yet Xbox 1 provided greater graphics. How advanced the 360 GPU actually is. And how the gap this gen between the 2 are closer than the gap between PS2 and Xbox 1.

You have to remember that the hard facts about machines dont change. The specs dont change, how out of order CPUs work dont change, how memory works doesn't change and the article even talks about how developers can use the SPE's to their advantage or not.

Lets not discredit factual information because it hurts our fanboyism. I have no problem in admitting I was wrong that PS3 Cell wasn't that powerful. But like the article says using SPE's for things like cloth motion etc means the cell can display more on screen than the xenon.

But as he points out on a whole the machines are so much closer than last gen, becasue RSX is helped by Cell and Xenon is helped by Xenos. It's like M$ really went for awesome graphics chip and Sony went for awesome CPU. And in the thick of it both machines can use the stronger chip to help out their weaker chip to overcome an shortcomings. It's funny really. But thats life.

It's also worth noting that multithreaded engines like UE3 are nowhere near fully optimized multithreading code. this can take even another 3 or 4 years to perfect.

once again i respect this guy's Opinion based on what he has read about the Cell but i have to disagree with his take on how that technology is used , based on his experience of the Cell. for instance you say that the IBM test's are in controlled enviroment...but on the same token back in 2005 the API's were not as well developed for the Cell as they are now, the very fact that even back in 2005 they were getting 30 fps TRE on the same CPU that is in the PS3 and this was shown working at the trade show points to the fact that his claim's are based on his OPINION on what data he had on hand. which he did not have all the data of each system. he just had what he had, and he made his Opinion known on his blog based on that data.

 

I do not fault him for it other than its way outdated.

I have no problem in you posting what you did because it give's you and idea what this person's experience with what he has about both platform's,

Me i do not tend to only look at just one article based on 2005, or 2006 to say this is fact's if the person has not done any test's themselves., does it mean he's 100% wrong or right depends on who you ask. me i see some of the thing's he did get right, on the ps3 but his take on how to impliment the development process is wrong, which would give much more results than what he has stated. Like i said i am not knocking his take due to what info he only had on hand at the time.

i am not knocking it being posted i am just knocking on it's relevance today.

EXAMPLE:

IBM has done test's on both the xbox360 processor and the Cell processor both are very powerful processor's but even IBM which created both processor's has stated the Cell canreach close to its maximum Flops compared to the xbox360's. this does not mean much anyway because it's upto the developer and his experience with the hardware.

did you ever think the Cell processor can do unified shader''s but it can.