proposition
Banned
Are you just adding every single quote that mentions Cell or SPUs rather than just the ones that have vaguely interesting information?
proposition said:Are you just adding every single quote that mentions Cell or SPUs rather than just the ones that have vaguely interesting information?
MikeB said:I try to add the most interesting quotes to the original post(s). The fact that the 1080p game FlOw didn't use the SPUs doens't come as a surprise to me as I noted in the OP (for a semi-high profile Sony published game like Genji 2 it was), it's not a very demanding game. But IMO it's nice they note that they like other developers are now starting to dig deeper into the PS3's architecture.
I add comments I think may be of interest to some, you are free to do the same. I value information on smaller projects by small dev teams as well.
proposition said:Are you just adding every single quote that mentions Cell or SPUs rather than just the ones that have vaguely interesting information?
FirewalkR said:Hmmm... Cell... texture resolutions much higher... fishy... PR computing?
Raist said:Indirectly ? Maybe they're just doing lots of graphical related stuff on the CPU, hence taking a lot of work off the RSX and allowing using it more for textures. That said, I realy haven't seen anything impressive in ME, texture wise.
MikeB said:The fact that the 1080p game FlOw didn't use the SPUs doens't come as a surprise to me as I noted in the OP (for a semi-high profile Sony published game like Genji 2 it was), it's not a very demanding game.
SAN JOSE, Calif. IBM Corp. officially announces today (May 13) a next-generation version of its Cell processor, the first specifically geared for computer servers.
The PowerXCell 8i will drive the Road Runner system now under test at Los Alamos National Labs to see if it can become the world's first supercomputer to deliver sustained petaflops performance. Besides cracking the petaflops barrier, IBM hopes hundreds of users will decide to plug into their IBM servers a two-socket board housing the new Cell chips to deliver what IBM calls "supercomputing for the masses."
The new design now supports mainstream DDR-2 memory rather than the Rambus XDR memories used in the original Cell. It has also expanded total memory capacity of the chip from 2 to 32 Gbytes to support large data sets required in many high-end technical computing applications.
IBM also expanded support for double precision floating point on the eight specialty cores used on Cell. The chip now delivers up to 190 TFlops of double precision floating point performance, five times its previous level, said Jim Comfort, vice president of workload optimized systems in IBM's Systems and Technology Group.
In the future, IBM plans to introduce versions of Cell with 16 and 32 vector processing cores, sticking with multiples of eight. The future chips will be able to run the same code geared for today's chips that have eight vector cores and one IBM Power core as an overall controller.
IBM has more than 50 customers working with servers that use the Cell chip. It also has more than 20 partners who have developed tools or software for Cell.
belvedere said:Insignificant but interesting comment from Terminal Reality.
http://www.n4g.com/ps3/NewsCom-140033.aspx?CT=2&Page=1&Page2=1#C1035730
Speaking to videogaming247 at the Sierra Spring Break 08 in Mallorca last week, Terminal Reality president Mark Randel admitted that Ghostbusters on PS3 has been held back by the fact will also release on 360, saying that the game would have double the amount of objects on screen if it had been PS3-only
We were fortunate enough enough to be seeded by Sony with PlayStation 3 hardware, probably six to nine months before launch. We had the big giant boxes that were alpha hardware, and we got the specs on the system, and realized they're doing parallel processing in a vastly different way than PCs and Xbox 360s were headed.
With the general-purpose processing, they had very specific helper units called SPUs, so when we were designing our engine, we designed it for PlayStation 3 in mind first. And that type of model, to design an engine for co-processing, was also a different way. It was different way, but we could also take that model, and take it back to the Xbox 360, take it back to the PC, and it also worked.
So if you're working on an engine, and you were using a general purpose computer model, you would not be able to make a PlayStation 3 game run very well. However, if you were working out using the SPU model from the PlayStation 3, you could make it work very fast, and you could make the other platforms work fast as well. So that's what we took advantage of in the Infernal Engine.
Yes, absolutely. Velocity - that's the name of our internal physics engine that we wrote - Velocity is very well suited to be run in parallel on PlayStation 3. We're one of the few physics engines that runs about 96 to 98 percent on the SPUs only, with very little intervention from the main processor, so physics is a very good algorithm that can be run in parallel; in this case we can run on five SPUs in parallel.
On the PlayStation 3 you get six SPUs, so we run one for the sound, to continually mix Dolby Digital 5.1 signal - and we have lots of sounds in the game, trust me - so we really beat that SPU hard.
And we have, also, a lot of physics in the game, too, so we beat the other processors pretty hard. Physics is definitely one thing we do that can be done massively in parallel. Collision detection can be done totally in parallel. And if you're very clever, you can also put your physics solver in parallel, on SPUs, so it's a perfect item for that.
Another thing we use for parallel programming is skeletal blending. Typically, in previous generation games, you have just canned animation, you have one animation frame saved, and basically you play it back, because you don't have enough power to do animation blending.
With the PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 of course, in parallel programming you can let the other processors run your animation system, and you can do multiple layers of skeletal blending. So we're doing animated skeletal blending, facial animation, lip-syncing, everything in co-processor mode on PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 as well, so we can free up the main game thread to run the game logic and AI.
That's where most of our programmers work. It's on the main game thread, where not everybody may be experts in low-level SPU programming, but they're experts in AI, they're experts in graphics or what have you, or gameplay programming. So we give them something they're really familiar with, but give them a lot to use, a lot more resources than other platforms.
gofreak said:Strictly speaking it's not on topic, but could be interesting to keep an eye on things like this as to future plans.
IBM has officially announced the variant of Cell to be used in the Los Alamos Road Runner project, the double-precision enhanced PowerXCell 8i 8i.
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207602892
Mr. Wonderful said:Instead of simply increasing the number of SPEs, wouldn't it be a better idea for IBM to make a dual core CELL or two CELLs on one die, so that the basic architecture might be more compatible with normal computer programming?
Mr. Wonderful said:Instead of simply increasing the number of SPEs, wouldn't it be a better idea for IBM to make a dual core CELL or two CELLs on one die, so that the basic architecture might be more compatible with normal computer programming?
Doc Evils said:the SPE's would do the same thing as an extra core. Think of it as Santa and his little helpers. The more he has the more he can get done. He doesn't need another Santa to help.
"For really old Blu-Ray drives (like 3 years ago). The PS3 uses a fairly compact triple wavelength OPU.
From my own personal experience testing a Sony BD-RE drive (actually uses a Panasonic drive mechanism) and a Hitachi-LG drive of similar specs, for similar sized data sets the BD drive typically has almost the same if not significantly faster random seek times. That's generally because data sets between 4-8GB span the entire disc for for DVD-ROM while only covering a third of a BD-ROM, so on average a BD-ROM is going to have seek times in the range 50-100ms with a worst case scenario of around 200-230ms. The DVD-ROM drive will average between 110-150ms with a worst case scenario of around 170-230ms.
Of course once you start getting into larger data sets that that Blu-Ray can handle the average and worst case scenarios (which is an entire disc sweep which takes around 350-400ms) will eclipse the worst case conditions on a DVD-ROM. That being said, even with 23+GB of data with a 100 randomly generate seek sectors I still get around 100ms on average. Besides, if you find the need to randomly jump around to random sectors greater than 4GB in span, then your title has bigger issues than the capabilities of the drive."
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42157&highlight=speed&page=2
"2x Blu-ray Drive (72Mbps(9MB/s))
Single Layer (2http://www.neogaf.com/forum/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=10460097
NeoGAF - Reply to Topicx CLV) - Constant Linear Velocity (Same speed across entire disk)
Double Layer - Couldn't find any data but no games have been released on a double layer yet.
Entire Blu-ray Disk is read at 9MB/s.
12x DVD-Rom Drive SL (9.25MB/S-15.85MB/s(AVG ~8x(10.57MB/s) DL (4.36MB/s-10.57MB/s(AVG ~6x(7.93MB/s)
SL(DVD-5) 12x Max (5-12x Full CAV) - Constant Angular Velocity (Speed Varies from edge to edge)
DL(DVD-9) 8x Max (3.3-8x Full CAV) - Constant Angular Velocity (Speed Varies from edge to edge)
SL DVD is 1.57MB/s > SL Blu-ray
DL DVD is 1.07MB/s < SL Blu-ray
Majority of 360 games are on DVD-9."
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42157
MikeB said:Another comment from a multi-platform developing company, this time Team Ninja's boss, the company that brought us Ninja Gaiden Sigma on the PS3 and Ninja Gaiden II for the 360.
"For any developer that's been working on all of the platforms that are available today,I think they would agree that the PlayStation 3 is the most powerful system out there"
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3836/team_ninja_ready_for_more.php?
I hope we all can agree on that too. :lol
What I mean if you have a game cramming 25 GB of data on a single layer Blu-Ray disc and trying to span this data onto dual layer DVDs in equal quality, this will normally not result into 25/6.8 = 3.67 (of course meaning 4) DVDs. This is due to even for linear games developers are usually re-using graphics and audio data from earlier sections in later sections as well. To prevent constant disc swapping developers will then duplicate re-used data for each disc. So this could mean spanning the content could actually require 5 or even 6 discs depending on the game.
DCharlie said:woah, hold on a second there - how many games do we have on the PS3 that use 25gb of unique data?
surely reusing assets on a BR in the manner you suggest would incur horrible loadtimes, hence more likely the same data will be duplicated throughout the disk to improve load times?
Also - i'd suggest that games that truly use the BR are more likely to be first party efforts so it's probably all a bit moot anyways.
MikeB said:- Many 360 games ported to the PS3 are optimised for variable CD/DVD speeds which have been the standard for over a decade. To easily get around this, the part of the disc where a 360 Dual layer DVD is being read faster, the easy workaround (overkill in terms of what's needed) is to install this data onto the much faster harddrive. But starting from scratch it's much more easier to optimise for the far more easily predictable sustained reading speeds of Blu-Ray disc.
AranhaHunter said:This makes a lot of sense, but it still doesn't fully explain why some games like LBP and HSG OOB require a huge install.
MikeB said:LBP requires only 4 Megabytes...
I don't have Hot Shots Golf, so I can't comment.
AranhaHunter said:Warhawk is around 1GB
AranhaHunter said:does Resistance and Ratchet have installs?
MikeB said:Another comment from a multi-platform developing company, this time Team Ninja's boss, the company that brought us Ninja Gaiden Sigma on the PS3 and Ninja Gaiden II for the 360.
"For any developer that's been working on all of the platforms that are available today,I think they would agree that the PlayStation 3 is the most powerful system out there"
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3836/team_ninja_ready_for_more.php?
I hope we all can agree on that too. :lol
Orlics said:The PS3 is probably more powerful but trying to declare a concensus like that is pretty lame, man.
AranhaHunter said:I thought LBP was 4GB, I think HSG is 5GB and GT5P is 2GB if I'm not mistaken....does Resistance and Ratchet have installs?
MikeB said:LBP requires 4 MB, with the latest update it's 480 MB.
.
DeadGzuz said:Not true, the back of the box says it requires like ~400MB. The patches have all been <30MB.
That's because that's the entire game. Like many other dual PSN/retail releases, it installs the entire game to the hard drive just like an installer would, and only uses the disc for verification to start.AranhaHunter said:I thought LBP was 4GB, I think HSG is 5GB and GT5P is something like 2GB, Warhawk is around 1GB, MGS4 is what? 4GBs or something, Motorstorm is like 250MBs if I'm not mistaken....does Resistance and Ratchet have installs?
The world may never know what was cut to fit this on a dvd.An extremely linear game (like Blue Dragon) will usually lead to far fewer sacrifices, but by having a far more open world like GTA IV or other games where you will have to re-visit previously visited areas this poses far more a problem. Game designers in such cases will then usually make any kind of technical sacrifice to keep the game on no more than 1 disc.
MikeB said:LBP requires 4 MB, with the latest update it's 480 MB.
- Uncharted: Drake's Fortune 256KB minimum, 13 MB for the latest update.
- Resistance 2 with latest update is 333 MB (300 MB minimum)
- Resistance 1 with latest update is 311 MB (130 MB minimum).
- Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction with latest update 417 MB (137 KB minimum).
- Motorstorm: Pacific Rift currently uses 44 KB.
Even a 20 GB PS3 can easily manage dozens of such amazing games and of course they can always opt for a cheap 320 GB or more hard drive upgrade any time.
The world may never know what was cut to fit this on a dvd.
RavenFox said:The world may never know what was cut to fit this on a dvd.
DCharlie said:if anything
MikeB said:@ soco
QNX is a wonderful hard realtime OS and it's rumoured to be at the heart of Sony's CellOS. You are right filesystem performance matter a lot, but in this regard technology has changed for the better, I don't think it's an issue with Blu-Ray disc.
MikeB said:LBP requires 4 MB, with the latest update it's 480 MB.
- Uncharted: Drake's Fortune 256KB minimum, 13 MB for the latest update.
- Resistance 2 with latest update is 333 MB (300 MB minimum)
- Resistance 1 with latest update is 311 MB (130 MB minimum).
- Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction with latest update 417 MB (137 KB minimum).
- Motorstorm: Pacific Rift currently uses 44 KB.
Even a 20 GB PS3 can easily manage dozens of such amazing games and of course they can always opt for a cheap 320 GB or more hard drive upgrade any time.
Tntnnbltn said:That's because that's the entire game. Like many other dual PSN/retail releases, it installs the entire game to the hard drive just like an installer would, and only uses the disc for verification to start.
MikeB said:@ soco
QNX is a wonderful hard realtime OS and it's rumoured to be at the heart of Sony's CellOS. You are right filesystem performance matter a lot, but in this regard technology has changed for the better, I don't think it's an issue with Blu-Ray disc.
jonabbey said:I thought they were using the TRON operating system as a base, as many Japanese CE products do.
DeadGzuz said:Not true, the back of the box says it requires like ~400MB.
MikeB said:My PAL box says 4MB Minimum.
MikeB said:My PAL box says 4MB Minimum.
MikeB said:I hope we all can agree on that too. :lol
Yep , NTSC-U here , says 600MB at least ...Onix said:The hell?
Mine says required HDD space, at least 600MB.