Booth: PS3 misconceptions and spin

[Andir]

billsalias said:
Are the people calling developer's "lazy" or "mediocre" trained developers themselves? Do you have any idea what the differences are between developing software on a symmetrical multiprocessor system with a shared memory model versus an asymmetrical multiprocessor with a distributed memory model?

I studied both in school while getting my degree in computer science, have built software professionally using both models, and for two years was a PC and mobile game developer. Any objective person trained in the field will tell you there is no question that it is more difficult to develop software for asymmetrical processor systems and the distributed memory model complicates it even further. The same person will also tell you that there is also no question that the more complicated model in this case uses hardware more efficiently so given equivalent power can do more work.

So please stop calling developers "lazy" and "mediocre" for telling a scientific truth, the PS3 is more complicated to develop for then the 360. But please feel free to mention that it is also true that the PS3 architecture is more flexible and has greater potential power.

P.S.: I am glad I am not in the game development business right now. There are three system that all have substantial differences, one in the control scheme the other two in software design philosophy. This makes it extremely hard to be efficient which makes it even harder then usual to make money. Disruptive technologies, which the Cell and motion control both are in this case, cause painful transitions.

I do multithreaded application programming for a worldwide company. My last application runs on a dual quad core server and pulls in over 50,000 files from FTP servers every hour, parses the files and injects needed data into an SQL server. It manages roughly 50 FTP sessions, and 20 SQL sessions depending on the file sizes and server load. I also do OpenGL programming as a hobby on the side. Needless to say it's not doing work on the PS3, but I've read the IBM programming documents on it and it's pretty straight forward and exactly as I've stated above when it comes to Cell vs "standard" multithreading. Same functionality, different calls.

My friend just graduated from a gaming school in Arizona. I asked him how much he learned in OpenGL and he informed me that they taught them how to use a premade engine and a few simple programs. A big chunk of his focus was on new technologies such as motion capture and "movie" tricks. This is where I draw my information from. Developers and teams that want to get the best out of the system have to do homework and rework some code. So far there have been few studios that even attempted to rework the code. Others, along with all the fans crying about games, have been trying to get games on the market and using old technology and half-assed ports. It's evident in a lot of the titles. My information comes from experience in the field and some long and boring (but interesting) IBM documents.