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Forums - Sony Discussion - ps3 as powerful as sandia lab's asci red supercomputer

slowmo on 04 February 2011
snakenobi said:
darkknightkryta said:
snakenobi said:
Crystalchild said:

knewing that w/o being a member. :>

yes, the PS3 is, theoretically, much stronger than 360 Wii combined. The Problem is, that the stuff inside the 360 is more opted for gaming than the PS3, so much of this power is gone to waste.


what do you mean being opted for gaming?

the main problem with the PS3 was its architecture which was completely different from the existing computer architecture but had more capabilities at low price and it would be expensive to extract the same performance out of the existing architecture

360 architecture was the same as computers

and Wii was too

 

Interesting that you say that, cause back at release the 360's GPU was very different from current GPUs with its unified shader architecture, yet the PS3 believe it or not was closer to PC at the time, except with an alien processor (Though the 360 had an alien processor at the time too, though not as alien as what the PS3 had).

whattttt

360 had a unified structure but its workings were the same as the computers being used

CELL on the other hand  was and still is different from normal computers out there

 

you talk about that time and now as if alot has changed.its not.


Architecture means very little on a new system its the dev toolkit that will give you the best results, Microsoft's was outstanding which is expected for a primarily software development company, Sony's was truly woeful by comparison.

Being alien or different didn't cause problems back then it was Sony's poor devkit that caused the most issues.  Thankfully Sony have managed to get their devs to work in unison to improve the tools and knowledge they all have between them.

The 360 was quite different from normal computers too by the way, the difference is the tools Microsoft provided hid the difference to a greater degree.



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DarkintheLight on 04 February 2011
slowmo said:
snakenobi said:
darkknightkryta said:
snakenobi said:
Crystalchild said:

knewing that w/o being a member. :>

yes, the PS3 is, theoretically, much stronger than 360 Wii combined. The Problem is, that the stuff inside the 360 is more opted for gaming than the PS3, so much of this power is gone to waste.


what do you mean being opted for gaming?

the main problem with the PS3 was its architecture which was completely different from the existing computer architecture but had more capabilities at low price and it would be expensive to extract the same performance out of the existing architecture

360 architecture was the same as computers

and Wii was too

 

Interesting that you say that, cause back at release the 360's GPU was very different from current GPUs with its unified shader architecture, yet the PS3 believe it or not was closer to PC at the time, except with an alien processor (Though the 360 had an alien processor at the time too, though not as alien as what the PS3 had).

whattttt

360 had a unified structure but its workings were the same as the computers being used

CELL on the other hand  was and still is different from normal computers out there

 

you talk about that time and now as if alot has changed.its not.


Architecture means very little on a new system its the dev toolkit that will give you the best results, Microsoft's was outstanding which is expected for a primarily software development company, Sony's was truly woeful by comparison.

Being alien or different didn't cause problems back then it was Sony's poor devkit that caused the most issues.  Thankfully Sony have managed to get their devs to work in unison to improve the tools and knowledge they all have between them.

The 360 was quite different from normal computers too by the way, the difference is the tools Microsoft provided hid the difference to a greater degree.

You do realize it's harder to make a devkit on architect thats never had a dev kit then it is to make one that is pretty much the same as everything out, 360 had tons of existing software to pull from for their dev kit, ps3 had none, Sony had to make it from pretty much scratch which hasn't been done in decades, under the circumstances I think they did pretty good, and as software(dev kit) improves so will ps3s overall performance, where 360s was within 90% of potential on launch 



slowmo on 04 February 2011
DarkintheLight said:
slowmo said:
snakenobi said:
darkknightkryta said:
snakenobi said:
Crystalchild said:

knewing that w/o being a member. :>

yes, the PS3 is, theoretically, much stronger than 360 Wii combined. The Problem is, that the stuff inside the 360 is more opted for gaming than the PS3, so much of this power is gone to waste.


what do you mean being opted for gaming?

the main problem with the PS3 was its architecture which was completely different from the existing computer architecture but had more capabilities at low price and it would be expensive to extract the same performance out of the existing architecture

360 architecture was the same as computers

and Wii was too

 

Interesting that you say that, cause back at release the 360's GPU was very different from current GPUs with its unified shader architecture, yet the PS3 believe it or not was closer to PC at the time, except with an alien processor (Though the 360 had an alien processor at the time too, though not as alien as what the PS3 had).

whattttt

360 had a unified structure but its workings were the same as the computers being used

CELL on the other hand  was and still is different from normal computers out there

 

you talk about that time and now as if alot has changed.its not.


Architecture means very little on a new system its the dev toolkit that will give you the best results, Microsoft's was outstanding which is expected for a primarily software development company, Sony's was truly woeful by comparison.

Being alien or different didn't cause problems back then it was Sony's poor devkit that caused the most issues.  Thankfully Sony have managed to get their devs to work in unison to improve the tools and knowledge they all have between them.

The 360 was quite different from normal computers too by the way, the difference is the tools Microsoft provided hid the difference to a greater degree.

You do realize it's harder to make a devkit on architect thats never had a dev kit then it is to make one that is pretty much the same as everything out, 360 had tons of existing software to pull from for their dev kit, ps3 had none, Sony had to make it from pretty much scratch which hasn't been done in decades, under the circumstances I think they did pretty good, and as software(dev kit) improves so will ps3s overall performance, where 360s was within 90% of potential on launch 


Not even close to that, don't quote numbers if you cannot back them up.  Most of the launch titles weren't even using the second and third core.  Multicore and multi threaded architecture has been around for decades, that is no excuse for the development tools Sony put out there.  Sony have a reputation for being a great hardware company, software isn't their fortay and it showed at launch.  Bear in mind their launch was delayed nearly a year and they still has developers making serious complaints after launch about the tools.

The simple fact is Sony make good hardware, Microsoft good software, it's such a shame the two will never collaborate on one machine as the product would be amazing.



dahuman on 04 February 2011
slowmo said:
dahuman said:
Onibaka said:

Cell is not THAT good in GPU. They went from the 2xCell PS3 in 2004/2005 to the  Cell RSX in 2006. They realized that Cell doesn't surpass even a cheap GPU in some tasks. Its a waste for a CPU, with can process complex codes, to only perform simple tasks that only requires brutal force, like a GPU.

What I find funny is that all the experience that IBM gained by developing the Cell was used to make the Xenos(x360's processor). There are even rumours about some secrets of Cell being revealed for the development of Xenos, like while Sony IBM Toshiba were developing the Cell, some workers from IBM worked in both projects. Xenos have 3 PPUs almost identical of the Cell one. Both have 3.2GHz. I think that Microsoft wanted to make a console easy to make ports from. By releasing X360 early, MS pretty much assured that would have a very good support for their plataform. For the very loyal developers, there is nothing that money can't buy...

 

Actually, I think that if the PS3 didn't have a Blu-Ray, but instead a 8800GTX as GPU, they could have outsold Xbox360by a larger margin at today.

You have one thing in reverse, The 360 Xeno came before the Cell in the experimental cycle, it's just a Tri-Core PowerPC, it's no different than any multicore CPUs we see today in it's basic design form. The current Cell and Power PC CPUs are on a completely different level in the computing world of course. Cell is really a different design and I can't say it was the best option as a dev friendly gaming only CPU but it's really efficient at pretty much everything if you can code for it correctly, fortunately, we are already there after years of criticism. HD consoels suffer the same problems, not enough memory, and outdated video chipsets, though PS3 is not suffering as badly if you make games exclusively for it in an overall sense.

The Cell was in the works for over a year before Microsoft went to IBM requesting their chip design.  In the end the core they decided upon for their CPU was the top secret one being designed for Sony.  Microsoft then started working alongside IBM on the quiet as IBM knew Sony wouldn't be happy finding their technology in the enemies hands (although IBM as partners over the rights had every right to use it).

The 360 is indeed similar to a Power PC CPU but it still isn't "just a Tri-Core PowerPC", in performance terms it buried every PowerPC CPU made up to that point in terms of performance and power consumption. 

Both chips were finished around the same time ultimately and both could have been even faster if some small contraints weren't made in the core that occasionally benefitted one design more than the other.

wait wait, it's a tri core Power PC with 2 threads on each core so how's it not "just a tri-core PowerPC?" o_O;; I'm not saying it's a bad chip since PowerPC CPUs are very effective, but it wasn't anything crazy new as far as the actual tech went by the time it came out. Anyhow, I suppose the Xenos is more based on the design of the main core from the Cell in a tri core setup with some mods, they did beat Sony on the actual manufacturing part, as far as research goes, Cell was about 1 year ahead though the end product had a more time difference. Cell really was a pain in the ass if you think about it, it was a good idea, but it's more a workstation or milti-purpose CPU, using it purely for gaming was just not a smart idea since it upped the cost of the PS3 too much at the start, shitty business decision if you ask me.



ChristianTheAtheist on 04 February 2011

so my ps3 is as powerful as a sandia (watermelon in spanish), well at least I'm sure that it weighs as much as a sandia.



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huaxiong90 on 04 February 2011

Yawn...we can argue theoretical shit forever. Problem is, this means nothing unless it's utilized. Until then, it's all a waste.



Rockstar: Announce Bully 2 already and make gamers proud!

Kojima: Come out with Project S already!

slowmo on 04 February 2011
dahuman said:
slowmo said:
dahuman said:
Onibaka said:

Cell is not THAT good in GPU. They went from the 2xCell PS3 in 2004/2005 to the  Cell RSX in 2006. They realized that Cell doesn't surpass even a cheap GPU in some tasks. Its a waste for a CPU, with can process complex codes, to only perform simple tasks that only requires brutal force, like a GPU.

What I find funny is that all the experience that IBM gained by developing the Cell was used to make the Xenos(x360's processor). There are even rumours about some secrets of Cell being revealed for the development of Xenos, like while Sony IBM Toshiba were developing the Cell, some workers from IBM worked in both projects. Xenos have 3 PPUs almost identical of the Cell one. Both have 3.2GHz. I think that Microsoft wanted to make a console easy to make ports from. By releasing X360 early, MS pretty much assured that would have a very good support for their plataform. For the very loyal developers, there is nothing that money can't buy...

 

Actually, I think that if the PS3 didn't have a Blu-Ray, but instead a 8800GTX as GPU, they could have outsold Xbox360by a larger margin at today.

You have one thing in reverse, The 360 Xeno came before the Cell in the experimental cycle, it's just a Tri-Core PowerPC, it's no different than any multicore CPUs we see today in it's basic design form. The current Cell and Power PC CPUs are on a completely different level in the computing world of course. Cell is really a different design and I can't say it was the best option as a dev friendly gaming only CPU but it's really efficient at pretty much everything if you can code for it correctly, fortunately, we are already there after years of criticism. HD consoels suffer the same problems, not enough memory, and outdated video chipsets, though PS3 is not suffering as badly if you make games exclusively for it in an overall sense.

The Cell was in the works for over a year before Microsoft went to IBM requesting their chip design.  In the end the core they decided upon for their CPU was the top secret one being designed for Sony.  Microsoft then started working alongside IBM on the quiet as IBM knew Sony wouldn't be happy finding their technology in the enemies hands (although IBM as partners over the rights had every right to use it).

The 360 is indeed similar to a Power PC CPU but it still isn't "just a Tri-Core PowerPC", in performance terms it buried every PowerPC CPU made up to that point in terms of performance and power consumption. 

Both chips were finished around the same time ultimately and both could have been even faster if some small contraints weren't made in the core that occasionally benefitted one design more than the other.

wait wait, it's a tri core Power PC with 2 threads on each core so how's it not "just a tri-core PowerPC?" o_O;; I'm not saying it's a bad chip since PowerPC CPUs are very effective, but it wasn't anything crazy new as far as the actual tech went by the time it came out. Anyhow, I suppose the Xenos is more based on the design of the main core from the Cell in a tri core setup with some mods, they did beat Sony on the actual manufacturing part, as far as research goes, Cell was about 1 year ahead though the end product had a more time difference. Cell really was a pain in the ass if you think about it, it was a good idea, but it's more a workstation or milti-purpose CPU, using it purely for gaming was just not a smart idea since it upped the cost of the PS3 too much at the start, shitty business decision if you ask me.


No that is factually wrong, the chip was miles ahead of any other Power PC core at the time including the best cores IBM had in the server market.  When Microsoft approached IBM in the summer of 2003 for a CPU they looked over all IBM's prospects and the Cell's core was years ahead in every category, performance and consumption.  The chip had been in development between Toshiba, Sony and IBM for 2 1/2 years at that stage too I might add. 

I suggest you read The Race For A New Game Machine by David Shippy and Mickie Phipps, it comprehensively covers the production of both the Cell and Xenon from 2003 onwards.

By the way in terms of having the core finished and running code in the lab, they were a couple of weeks apart.  Sure manufacturing onto a board there was a gap but the development ended on the actual processors themselves around the same time.

 

*It is of course technically a Power PC processor, my point was that it wasn't JUST a power PC processor.  It was quite unique at the time.



dahuman on 04 February 2011
slowmo said:
dahuman said:
slowmo said:
dahuman said:
Onibaka said:

Cell is not THAT good in GPU. They went from the 2xCell PS3 in 2004/2005 to the  Cell RSX in 2006. They realized that Cell doesn't surpass even a cheap GPU in some tasks. Its a waste for a CPU, with can process complex codes, to only perform simple tasks that only requires brutal force, like a GPU.

What I find funny is that all the experience that IBM gained by developing the Cell was used to make the Xenos(x360's processor). There are even rumours about some secrets of Cell being revealed for the development of Xenos, like while Sony IBM Toshiba were developing the Cell, some workers from IBM worked in both projects. Xenos have 3 PPUs almost identical of the Cell one. Both have 3.2GHz. I think that Microsoft wanted to make a console easy to make ports from. By releasing X360 early, MS pretty much assured that would have a very good support for their plataform. For the very loyal developers, there is nothing that money can't buy...

 

Actually, I think that if the PS3 didn't have a Blu-Ray, but instead a 8800GTX as GPU, they could have outsold Xbox360by a larger margin at today.

You have one thing in reverse, The 360 Xeno came before the Cell in the experimental cycle, it's just a Tri-Core PowerPC, it's no different than any multicore CPUs we see today in it's basic design form. The current Cell and Power PC CPUs are on a completely different level in the computing world of course. Cell is really a different design and I can't say it was the best option as a dev friendly gaming only CPU but it's really efficient at pretty much everything if you can code for it correctly, fortunately, we are already there after years of criticism. HD consoels suffer the same problems, not enough memory, and outdated video chipsets, though PS3 is not suffering as badly if you make games exclusively for it in an overall sense.

The Cell was in the works for over a year before Microsoft went to IBM requesting their chip design.  In the end the core they decided upon for their CPU was the top secret one being designed for Sony.  Microsoft then started working alongside IBM on the quiet as IBM knew Sony wouldn't be happy finding their technology in the enemies hands (although IBM as partners over the rights had every right to use it).

The 360 is indeed similar to a Power PC CPU but it still isn't "just a Tri-Core PowerPC", in performance terms it buried every PowerPC CPU made up to that point in terms of performance and power consumption. 

Both chips were finished around the same time ultimately and both could have been even faster if some small contraints weren't made in the core that occasionally benefitted one design more than the other.

wait wait, it's a tri core Power PC with 2 threads on each core so how's it not "just a tri-core PowerPC?" o_O;; I'm not saying it's a bad chip since PowerPC CPUs are very effective, but it wasn't anything crazy new as far as the actual tech went by the time it came out. Anyhow, I suppose the Xenos is more based on the design of the main core from the Cell in a tri core setup with some mods, they did beat Sony on the actual manufacturing part, as far as research goes, Cell was about 1 year ahead though the end product had a more time difference. Cell really was a pain in the ass if you think about it, it was a good idea, but it's more a workstation or milti-purpose CPU, using it purely for gaming was just not a smart idea since it upped the cost of the PS3 too much at the start, shitty business decision if you ask me.


No that is factually wrong, the chip was miles ahead of any other Power PC core at the time including the best cores IBM had in the server market.  When Microsoft approached IBM in the summer of 2003 for a CPU they looked over all IBM's prospects and the Cell's core was years ahead in every category, performance and consumption.  The chip had been in development between Toshiba, Sony and IBM for 2 1/2 years at that stage too I might add. 

I suggest you read The Race For A New Game Machine by David Shippy and Mickie Phipps, it comprehensively covers the production of both the Cell and Xenon from 2003 onwards.

By the way in terms of having the core finished and running code in the lab, they were a couple of weeks apart.  Sure manufacturing onto a board there was a gap but the development ended on the actual processors themselves around the same time.

 

*It is of course technically a Power PC processor, my point was that it wasn't JUST a power PC processor.  It was quite unique at the time.

Things in R&D are always that way, that's really nothing special (Talking multi-core CPUs) =P. R&D stuff are typically miles ahead already with bug fixing and efficiency goals. The Xeno and Xenos were very smart designs though, they were made for cheap cost and gaming purposes in mind which really was a smart business decision which is not someting I can say about Sony when it comes to current gen. We are of couse excluding Nintendo here when talking about business decisions lol. The problems remain the same though, no matter how powerful the CPU and GPU are, they didn't foresee the RAM requirements, and that's the graphical downfall on both of them, games could look much more amazing if that wasn't the case.



disolitude on 04 February 2011
ssj12 said:
 

Polyphony put two PS3s together and ran an early GT5 build in a 4k resolution at a perfect 60fps with full raytracing. That was stunning.

Yeah it was 4 PS3s actually, and 4 screens... 1 PS3 rendering each screen(720p each) so it really isn't anything too impressive but it was pretty cool for sure. Too bad they didn't include it in the final product of the game like forza 2 and 3, which supports 5 xbox 360s linked and 5 screens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96LKRtJvIQw



snakenobi on 04 February 2011
slowmo said:


Architecture means very little on a new system its the dev toolkit that will give you the best results, Microsoft's was outstanding which is expected for a primarily software development company, Sony's was truly woeful by comparison.

Being alien or different didn't cause problems back then it was Sony's poor devkit that caused the most issues.  Thankfully Sony have managed to get their devs to work in unison to improve the tools and knowledge they all have between them.

The 360 was quite different from normal computers too by the way, the difference is the tools Microsoft provided hid the difference to a greater degree.

how does achitecture doesn't matter?

if the devs don't know how to make games with the system which was because the PS3 was totally different to what developers were used to.

it matters big time

and we aren't here discussing MS and SONY's credentials.don't start the war or hate thing.

dev kits are based upon what PS3 was about and so problems were caused

360 was first based on a the existing architechture so devs knew how to work it and the devkits were helped by the Direct X like optimisation on computers which helps devs