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AMD CEO Lisa Su reminisces about designing the PS3's infamous Cell processor during her time at IBM
- Thread starter Thick Thighs Save Lives
- Start date
- Hardware
Cell was very advanced and way ahead of its time for the parallelism and SIMD capabilities.
The issue was learning how to use it to extract the full theoretical power out of it.
That was done in the second half of the PS3 generation by Sony's top studios and some top third party developers and the results were unmatched.
But other studios just didn't have the time or incentive to do that kind of research.
That generation proved that ease of development was way more important than peak power.
There was also the issue that Cell was used to cover some of the weaknesses of the RSX and do some graphical tasks in its place while with a more competent GPU it could have been used for physics, procedural content generation and other more interesting stuff.
I don't remember if the Cell based GPU that Sony wanted to use before going with nVidia had some if its specs leaked.
Certainly it would have been a nightmare with developers struggling to implement even the most basic graphical functions and zero standardization for multiplatform publishers
even if the RSX was not as powerful as expected it probably saved the console in terms of development tools and standardized development.
The issue was learning how to use it to extract the full theoretical power out of it.
That was done in the second half of the PS3 generation by Sony's top studios and some top third party developers and the results were unmatched.
But other studios just didn't have the time or incentive to do that kind of research.
That generation proved that ease of development was way more important than peak power.
There was also the issue that Cell was used to cover some of the weaknesses of the RSX and do some graphical tasks in its place while with a more competent GPU it could have been used for physics, procedural content generation and other more interesting stuff.
I don't remember if the Cell based GPU that Sony wanted to use before going with nVidia had some if its specs leaked.
Certainly it would have been a nightmare with developers struggling to implement even the most basic graphical functions and zero standardization for multiplatform publishers
even if the RSX was not as powerful as expected it probably saved the console in terms of development tools and standardized development.
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SonGoku
Member
I dont expect Sony to come up with something nvidia/amd have not thought of either.
They would have to add a exotic/custom enough accelerator that provides substantial speed up on a certain task like RT for example but requires custom tailored code which would explain why said hypothetical accelerator would not be practical to implement on off the shelf cards
Definitely the current systems are better than having a exotic arch that produced lemons the first half of the generation.
What i would add however is customs accelerator block(s) for those willing to put extra effort, so in essence some extra block to take advantage of the close nature of console development
Negotiator
Member
GAF machine
Rumor: Sony May Be Working on Native PS3 Backwards Compatibility
A new report claims that Sony could actively be working on making PlayStation 3 games natively playable on PlayStation 5 consoles.
gamerant.com
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Kind of, it was a Toshiba designed Pixel Shader + Rasterisation monster (vertex processing done on the existing CELL BE) with lots of eDRAM and it was not CELL based
. Unfortunately it was a bit too big and power hungry.
FF:Enhanced_Reality
Member
And if you liked that, you'll love this.
GreatnessRD
Member
As someone who has no interest in console gaming anymore, this might peak my interest in purchasing a PS5[Pro] if true.
Rumor: Sony May Be Working on Native PS3 Backwards Compatibility
A new report claims that Sony could actively be working on making PlayStation 3 games natively playable on PlayStation 5 consoles.
GAF machine
Member
Rumor: Sony May Be Working on Native PS3 Backwards Compatibility
A new report claims that Sony could actively be working on making PlayStation 3 games natively playable on PlayStation 5 consoles.
Not buying it, bro. I (and I'm sure you) have been hearing/reading similar rumors since before the gen started, yet here we are. No PS3 emulator, just a bunch of rumors.
GAF machine
Member
And if you liked that, you'll love this.
Here's a quicker read that gets to the crux of the matter.
Processing The Truth: An Interview With David Shippy
A new book claims that IBM's work on the PS3's Cell chip helped birth the Xbox 360's Xenon CPU -- and Gamasutra sits down with book co-author and chip architect David Shippy to uncover the facts.
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Lucifers Beard
Member
This would be incredible if true. I doubt it because Sony don't seem to be making decisions that resonate with me recently. I've got a PS3 and a stack of games I'd like to play upscaled properly.
Rumor: Sony May Be Working on Native PS3 Backwards Compatibility
A new report claims that Sony could actively be working on making PlayStation 3 games natively playable on PlayStation 5 consoles.