An excerpt:
If each of the PS3’s 6 SPE used for games are working on a specific task such as collision, cloth physics, animation, water surface simulation or particles, they wouldn’t need to worry about processing power being taken away from another part of the game because the SPE don’t share processing power.
The only cause for concern would be the 512KB L2 cache being shared by 7 simultaneous running SPE and a PPE, but that’s what developers are for; they work around things like this. In practice, this should allow PS3 games to potentially have more things going on at once than 360 games. Ignoring the difficulties of programming for the PS3 CPU, it should be known that the PS3’s CPU is very good when it comes to vertex-related operations because the PS3’s CPU handles graphics code better than the 360’s CPU. It is also possible that through good parallelism of physics code on the SPE that physics code could also run better on the PS3 CPU due to the concurrency advantage.
The 360 CPU however, due to its 3 symmetric General Purpose Cores, is not only much easier to program for than the cell, but having 3 PPE capable of handling things such as AI also means the 360’s CPU will be the better of the 2 CPUs when it comes to AI code. Either way we can look forward to great things from both CPUs in the future.
Before I end off, I’d like to point out a game that in my opinion, from a technical standpoint, is one the most brilliant uses of the PS3’s CPU. All things considered, such as in-order execution and the other complications of the architecture, Heavenly Sword is quite the standout in nearly every regard: incredible combat animations, awesome group enemy AI, and great physics.
He bashed the PS3 througout the piece but comes up with this little chesnut. Basically stating that you can have the SPE's doing alot of the work ie. collision, cloth physics, animation, water surface simulation or particles which means that you don't need to use the main processing power.
Then goes on to say that because of the SPE's, you could theorectically have more things going at once than 360 games (Lair anyone).
Then...physics code could also run better on the PS3 than 360.
Then says the 360 would have better AI code and then goes on to talk about Heavenly Sword having awesome group enemy AI.
Mmmm...I think the proof with be in the pudding. We will see when the games start coming. The only way to properly compare each system would be for a developer proficient in coding for both the 360 and PS3 to create a game or a demo for each system.
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