everyone keeps saying the 360 gpu is faster and better due to its flexibility but the truth is, it has it downsides too and no one has talked about them.

At the end of the day the ps3 and 360 both have 512ram but the ps3 has divided it equally between the cpu and gpu whilst the 360 has given it flexible memory allocation. This means if the gpu requires more then it will shift towards the gpu and vice versa. However, this itself requires calculations. Something somewhere has to figure out what should be made priority and then re calculate it once the job is done. Although the ps3 hasnt got the advantage of making use of its unused ram by sharing between cpu and gpu, it hasn't got to make extra calculations and it has spe's to help it process things far more quicker then the 360 (simply because it has more of them and they haven't been restricted like the ones on the 360 have).

Deneidez said: HappySqurriel said: Which would make the Cell an ideal processor if you're decoding multimedia streams or running a web application, but the majority of what your CPU is responsible for in games is not that parallelizable or asyncronous which will limit how close you can get to approaching theoritical performance. If developers can only ever achieve 80% of the Xenon's theoritical peak and 40% of the Cells theoritical peak in game then the processors are as powerful (for gaming) as eachother. Well, they can use it with simple tasks like physics and stuff(as those are usually embarrassingly parallel), but not really that much graphically as you know today "power = graphics". And when it comes to advanced AI. Making it work on CELL is well... hell, if you can even make it at all. So imo best way how you could enchance games with CELL would be more lively world(moving geometry and calculate for example effect of wind for every object, liquid calculations & so on).

 

What you say is so evident ...

Fact is Mike is so occupied dealing with numbers regarding Cell we all know that he forgets real world contingency regarding development process :

1) Not all algorithms are parallelizable.

2) Those are not all the time efficient enough (the gap to mono- core may be not big enough).

3) Legacy of coding : developers already have a very hard time (Look for example J. Carmack's interviews) dealing with multicore CPUs. Imagine the piece of work needed to efficiently work with a paralleled designed one...

4) to build such a CPU, many low level hardware capabilities have been brought back to software. Mike never consider the huge over work that implies. Ints : budget and time to code a game is limited ...

5) You talked about physics on which Cell is particuraly efficient : one of the main point of these calculations is precision. With Cell, you will be able to go further in precision. Will it be noticable in game ? I mean for example is taking account of "exponent 6" argument of the formula really THAT usefull ?

olibou21 said: Deneidez said: HappySqurriel said: Which would make the Cell an ideal processor if you're decoding multimedia streams or running a web application, but the majority of what your CPU is responsible for in games is not that parallelizable or asyncronous which will limit how close you can get to approaching theoritical performance. If developers can only ever achieve 80% of the Xenon's theoritical peak and 40% of the Cells theoritical peak in game then the processors are as powerful (for gaming) as eachother. Well, they can use it with simple tasks like physics and stuff(as those are usually embarrassingly parallel), but not really that much graphically as you know today "power = graphics". And when it comes to advanced AI. Making it work on CELL is well... hell, if you can even make it at all. So imo best way how you could enchance games with CELL would be more lively world(moving geometry and calculate for example effect of wind for every object, liquid calculations & so on).   What you say is so evident ... Fact is Mike is so occupied dealing with numbers regarding Cell we all know that he forgets real world contingency regarding development process : 1) Not all algorithms are parallelizable. 2) Those are not all the time efficient enough (the gap to mono- core may be not big enough). 3) Legacy of coding : developers already have a very hard time (Look for example J. Carmack's interviews) dealing with multicore CPUs. Imagine the piece of work needed to efficiently work with a paralleled designed one... 4) to build such a CPU, many low level hardware capabilities have been brought back to software. Mike never consider the huge over work that implies. Ints : budget and time to code a game is limited ... 5) You talked about physics on which Cell is particuraly efficient : one of the main point of these calculations is precision. With Cell, you will be able to go further in precision. Will it be noticable in game ? I mean for example is taking account of "exponent 6" argument of the formula really THAT usefull ?

i agree to some extent but:

 

1) Some developers have a hard time coding, not all. Some prefer it some don't. Its matter of opinion and at the end of the day you have to take into account that the cell is a new breed not a evolved breed. Its like saying no one will buy cars since they are far more complicated to use in transport then a horse and carriage. Yes its true but if you know what you are doing and you can harness the good it offers then it is worth it. More and more people are finding better ways to use and harness what the cell offers. 

2) For many gamers the cell isn't much more but a console war, but if you look at what the cell is being used for on a global scale, you will realise that is far more successful then you would think. If it was as useless or as hyped as put by many opinions within forums, then other large national and global organizations would not be taking advantage of the cells processing power.

3) the cell works on various different levels without limitations as to what each SPE can do unlike the xenon. 

4) There are more SPE's allowing not only more calculations to be done and more work to be processed but if you were to translate this into what it can do for video games, you will see from various different games designers that the cell is capable of allowing more things to be shown and done in game then the xenon. The more people are playing about with the cell, the more they are enjoying its benefits. 

 

Fei-Hung said: everyone keeps saying the 360 gpu is faster and better due to its flexibility but the truth is, it has it downsides too and no one has talked about them. At the end of the day the ps3 and 360 both have 512ram but the ps3 has divided it equally between the cpu and gpu whilst the 360 has given it flexible memory allocation. This means if the gpu requires more then it will shift towards the gpu and vice versa. However, this itself requires calculations. Something somewhere has to figure out what should be made priority and then re calculate it once the job is done. Although the ps3 hasnt got the advantage of making use of its unused ram by sharing between cpu and gpu, it hasn't got to make extra calculations and it has spe's to help it process things far more quicker then the 360 (simply because it has more of them and they haven't been restricted like the ones on the 360 have).

The 360 GPU and CPU share the same bus to the main Ram, this means only the GPU or CPU can access the Ram at any time.

If needed the RSX can use the Cell's XDR Ram, this would involve latency, but isn't a big issue for GPUs and the RSX had more than an usual amount of cache, with this approach you would gain significant bandwidth for the GPU, being fed data from XDR and GDDR simultaneously. Such an approach requires more effort though, but can be done if so desired.

The Ram situation is technically far better on the PS3, especially considering the availability of a default harddrive to rely on and constant predictable streaming speed of Blu-Ray disc. Developers can and IMO will use this to design wonderfully streaming gaming engines, a la Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (Naughty Dog) and Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction (Insomniac) already made their first efforts at.

@ olibou21

If that would be the case I wouldn't have written the following statements with regard to the PS3 and Cell processor years before the PS3 actually launched:

"I understand that games developers may not be too fond of the idea of having to learn new ways to write their software."

"Today single CPU solutions are dominant, thus multithreading isn't really that much of a benefit. Software developers who mainly write for single processor solutions don't like doing extra (time=money) work to get the most out of multithreading for other platforms."

"It will probably take some time before developers manage to get the most out of this platform, as has for example also been the case with the classic Amiga chipsets. The early Amiga games don't compare well to the complex graphics used by for instance game like Elfmania or Lion Heart."

So if your allegation would be correct, I would probably have written totally different statements. Such as, superiority will become immediately apparent and all PC developers will be jumping from joy to get their hands on the Cell.

@Fei-Hung

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_Myth

+

CELLs SPUs aren't anything like xenon cores are like.

 

@olibou21

I am quite sure that you can notice if everything moves around your character all the time vs static stuff. :)

 

& special lol @MikeB

Btw, have you ever even programmed anything?

Do you know what kind of projects games are today?

Tell me what can you do with your programming knowledge with cell after ps3 leaves the market? (I think Gabe Newell has a nice answer for that one. :) )

Staude said: The Cell. It has UNLIMITED powaz ! No seriously. It's all about opinion anyways, but the cell was designed with super computers in mind and is between 8-40 times better than a pc cpu.

Oh no you didnt. LOL. Before the PS3 came out Intel had CPUS with better performance. OT: It actually doesnt matter how fast the cell is, It still has to take it's data from the Memory. Check the figures yourself(they are all over the net), the cell and RSX can simultaniously access the memory together. But the 360's CPU and GPU access it one at a time. However look at the speed that the 2 consoles read and write from the memory. In the same time it takes the PS3 to read and write once from the memory, the 360 can either have the cpu read and write twice with the GPU 3 times or GPU twice and the CPU 3 times. So for Ps3 to do 2 read and writes from the memory (thats 1 cpu and GPU) in the same time the 360 has done 5(2 cpu and 3 GPU). Although people say that the cell is powerful it is held back by it's bandwidth. Sony would have been better having similar bandwidth speeds to the 360 because then they could have done 10 read and writes. 5 cpu and 5 GPU in the time the 360 takes to do it's 5. M$ were smart on this. I guess thats what being in the PC market helps you with. Knowledge.

 

 

@ Deneidez

Yes.



Yes.



Be more efficient on other CPUs as well, extensive knowledge of multi-threading, better understanding of how the underlying hardware operates, etc. I strongly believe by extensively working with the Cell, it will do wonders for people's resume as a coder in the future.

However the Cell will see new versions and more products based on this technology, most likely including the PS4.

Deneidez said: @Fei-Hung http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_Myth + CELLs SPUs aren't anything like xenon cores are like.

 

i didnt say cells spu's are anything like the xenon's. all i said was that they work differently and make different use of their architectural design.

what i did say was that the spu's in the cell help out the gpu and cpu with their processing power where as the xenon only has its flexi gpu and cpu shared memory for quicker processing.

@MikeB

On heterogeneous platforms, yes, but there isn't many of those when it comes to games. :)

 

What you believe isn't really always true. If theres only homogeneous gaming platforms in the future, all time you have wasted on PS3 won't be that good on resume.

 

And if PS4 is homogeneous platform... All time with PS3 is wasted time. I am quite sure that PS4 will be homogeneous one. It would be like a suicide to make it heterogeneous. Because of current design sony has lost more money it might never get back during the lifetime of PS3.