Both Macs and PCs are fully capable of using 8 cores, 4 cores, 2 cores, or 1 core.  I am typing on a quad core PC as we speak.

!

(@ Deneidez) Sorry @ Selnor

I still can hardly imagine this email came straight from Microsoft, it's so incredibly misinformative it's mind boggling...

If it wasn't obvious from my post, I agree with MikeB on pretty much all counts.  

That "email" is downright outrageous.. to the point of being laughable.  I am shocked that another engineer might not think so.  I will dissect it, if you guys *really* believe it it has some truth to it, but I really feel as though I shouldn't have to -- step back and think about the letter's approach a bit, and see if the picture becomes clearer.

Its a great example of exactly how this kind of misinformation causes those who know "just enough" to get really confused, and then to propagate their confused concepts with the same confusing propaganda.  MikeB does know what he's talking about.

Wah? I haven't said anything about that email. Some of it is obvious bull and other part I am not sure.

Yeah, SPUs are like cores...

and yes they are not co-processors.

That ultimate goal will never happen unless you have very simple program(I am sure Groucho can agree this one too).

And for the last one, show me game that uses SPUs for AI(Not scripted of course).

Anyway very interesting slides even though I don't have OpenOffice right now I was able to check it with google. And maybe your msg was for selnor? :)

Except Killzone 2 is only using 4 SPEs, and even then its not using them at their full potential

double post

No offense, Deneidez, but in another thread, you claimed you didn't know what "skinning" was... you thought it might have something to do with texturing, in a response to one of my posts.

Skinning is the process of weighing the vertices of a skinned mesh to its animated skeletal bones, in computer animation.  You could consider each vertex in an animated character to be "attached" to one (or more) elements of its animated skeleton (a set of transforms, each of which represents a "bone" of the character's body, although its an oriented "point", not a "line segment").  Each vertex in the mesh has "bone weights" associated with it, so that, when the skeletal structure moves, the vertex moves along with them, with an initial reference offset to each bone, and a value to determine how "attached" that vertex is to each bone's transform.

Skinning, is something that a SPU would be exceptionally good at (or 6 of them).  Its also something that is usually available as a GPU operation, although your GPU will be happier if it doesn't have to do this (large) chunk of work.

That may seem off topic to some.  I think that its not, so much.  I hope you can understand that... I'm trying to educate, but wading through spin posts and dissecting them is a little... tiresome.  Perhaps you learned a little something about the SPU, and computer animation from this post... and perhaps you have another reason to step back and take a closer look at the article that MikeB find so laughable.

@Groucho

None taken. I am always open for more information and I can say I didn't know what skinning was(If I understanded correctly what you wrote. Skinning helps with 'texture stretching' and acts like skin when animating by applying texture correctly according to bones. My engine can't even handle animation yet properly so I am not yet there. :/ Anyway skinning makes perfectly sense. Thanks...). And why would I want to check that article again? Didn't I say that some of it is bull and some I am not sure(As I am not sure how it is at all.).

Well, and I would love play around with CELL(programming that is), but its way too pricey atm.

READ THIS. IT'S OBJECTIVE, HAS PROOF FROM IBM THEMSELVES AND WELL ACTUAL PROOF RATHER THAN SPECULATION. I PUT THIS TOGETHER FOR YOU ALL WHO ARE LOST IN SONY LAND.

Here's further proof of the 360's superiority to the ps3:

According to IBM’s white pages, the cell processor being used in the ps3 is considerably less powerful than what it has been hyped up to be.
Sony officially revealed the PS3 and for the first time at E3 2005, and claimed that their Cell processor would be capable of 200 GFLOPS.
One may wonder how they got that figure?  IBM's own white pages:

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-cellperf/?ca=drs-#table4

As seen from the link (in Figure 5) the Cell has a theoretical peak of 201 GFLOP’s– running 8 SPE’s at 25.12 GFLOP’s apiece (Table 2). This is where Sony gets their 200 GFLOP figure from.

When physically tested however, only 155.5 GFLOP’s were actually achieved (see Table 4) with a total efficiency rate of 75.9%.
Because of manufacturing yield issues, the PS3 only uses 7 SPE’s with the theoretical peak for the PS3’s Cell processor being reduced to 176 GFLOP’s, each running at 25.12 GFLOP’s. Utilizing the same 75.9% efficiency, it is easily interpolated that the PS3’s Cell CPU will only be capable of 133.6 GFLOP’s.

The Xbox 360 has 3 general-purpose 2-threaded CPU's, which generates a proven 115.2 GFLOP’s which is dramatically easier for developers to utilize. By now it should be pathetically obvious that sony is no where near as far ahead as they try to lead you to think (keep in mind they claimed that the ps2 was more powerful than the original xbox, but were proven wrong publicly, since the xbox was indeed twice as powerful). The ps3 will, once you have taken into account thetotal amount of resources that will be used by their respective operating systems, end up with less CPU power available for graphical and physics processing than the 360.


http://ps3.qj.net/Inside-the-PS3-s-Operating-System-/pg/49/aid/21047

According to the (unbiased) site above, the PS3 will also constantly reserve 1 SPE** for running its operating system. Now that there is actually one less SPE reserved for gaming purposes, it is definite that the ps3’s cell will only be capable of 114.4 GFLOP’s for the purpose of game processing.

**SPE’s are floating point processors, they are also called DSP’s, and SPU’s. These floating point processors are NOT to be confused with cores, cores have far more prediction and calculation braches than floating point processors. As stated earlier, the 360 has 3 cores, each running at 3.2GHz, with 2 threads each. The cell also runs at 3.2GHz, but is the one and only core that the ps3 has.

Back to subject:
The 360’s OS on the other hand uses only 3% of its CPU time on Cores 1 and 2, while Core 0 is free altogether, and 6.25% (32mb) of its 512mb RAM, this means that the 360 has more processing power available for in-game graphics and physics. Meanwhile, the ps3’s OS…
“In the case of the PS3 this equates to 12.5% of the available Cores on the CPU always reserved, an additional 12.5% sometimes taken by the OS, 12.5% of the available RSX memory and 25% of XDR Cell memory. Balancing these out, one could argue that Sony has removed up to 25% of the available CPU power and 18.75% of RAM for these features as well as others that are not mentioned here or will be added in future updates to the PS3 Operation System.”
Wow, 18.75% (96mb) of the ps3’s 512mb of total RAM, vs. 6.25% (32mb) of the 360’s 512mb RAM, say, that means the ps3 has 416mb RAM left vs. the 360’s leftover 490mb RAM for graphics…
I could be wrong, but isn’t 490mb greater than 416mb???

Sources:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060413-6600.html

http://ps3.qj.net/Inside-the-PS3-s-Operating-System-/pg/49/aid/21047

Now, the GPU (Graphics Processing unit). The 360’s Xenos GPU is also slightly more powerful for running current graphics engines and, in terms of complying with Windows Graphic Foundation 2.0 (compatible with future versions of Direct X, shader models, etc.) is a full-generation ahead of the RSX. "One of the key ideas behind a unified architecture is to move the GPU from a rendering only processor to a complete compute processor. Right now all the GPU does is render 3D and displays it on your screen (yes it does more like 2D, video etc... but for the point of this article we are talking about 3D). With a unified architecture the GPU becomes more. It becomes a processor that can do almost anything that needs code processed. This means the GPU can take on more functions like physics, AI, animation and many other processes that can benefit the gaming experience. DirectX 10 and a unified GPU architecture helps a video card become an all-in-one Swiss army knife of game processing. Those are the ideas at least, how it all works out is up to the game content developers"
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA0NSwzLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA. According to this article, the unified memory of the 360 and the unified shaders, developers have the ability to use the vector processing power of the GPU, which is a big plus as it allows the developer to use the shaders when they need extra processing power.

Sony could be in a lot of trouble considering the ps3 is much more expensive than its superior rival that is using long proven technology, while the ps3 is using technology that still has yet to be proven, and has been giving sony one problem after another, causing game delays.

The 360’s Xenos GPU is slightly more powerful for running current graphics engines and, in terms of complying with Windows Graphic Foundation 2.0 (compatible with future versions of Direct X, shader models, etc.) is a full-generation ahead of the RSX. "One of the key ideas behind a unified architecture is to move the GPU from a rendering only processor to a complete compute processor. Right now all the GPU does is render 3D and displays it on your screen (yes it does more like 2D, video etc... but for the point of this article we are talking about 3D). With a unified architecture the GPU becomes more. It becomes a processor that can do almost anything that needs code processed. This means the GPU can take on more functions like physics, AI, animation and many other processes that can benefit the gaming experience. DirectX 10 and a unified GPU architecture helps a video card become an all-in-one Swiss army knife of game processing. Those are the ideas at least, how it all works out is up to the game content developers"

"However, using Sony's claim <***>, 7 dot products per cycle * 3.2 GHz = 22.4 billion dot products per second for the CPU. That leaves 51 - 22.4 = 28.6 billion dot products per second that are left over for the GPU. That leaves 28.6 billion dot products per second / 550 MHz = 52 GPU ALU ops per clock.

*** Using sony's own claim against it. If sony really didnt make this claim, they most certainly would have taken legal action against MS, that is only fact.

It is important to note that if the RSX ALUs are similar to the GeForce 6800 ALUs then they work on vector4s, while the Xbox 360 GPU ALUs work on vector5s. The total programmable GPU floating point performance for the PS3 would be 52 ALU ops * 4 floats per op *2 (madd) * 550 MHz = 228.8GFLOPS which is less than the Xbox 360's 48 ALU ops * 5 floats per op * 2 (madd) * 500 MHz= 240 GFLOPS."


ps3 GPU stands at 228.8 GFLOPS
360 GPU stands at 240.0 GFLOPS

I could be wrong, but isn't 240.0 GFLOPS higher than 228.8 GFLOPS???

I have shown actual evidence and provided easy to follow logic. I'm sorry MikeB and co but you cant argue with fact.