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SCE just spanked me silly: S3TC licensed
- Thread starter Panajev2001a
- Start date
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
DarienA said:
That you should read at least some more technical threads and web sites and less sport.
.Basically this means... HUGH RES TEXTURAZILLLAAAAAA.... in early GCN fans spiel.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
GIR said:
The entire PSP chipset seems a portable GCN
.It is amazing how they felxed their evolved PlayStation 2 technology (you will find roots for the VFPU and the Rendering core in the PlayStation 2 technology which was evolving before the IBM deal about CELL took priority).
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Fafalada said:That's what you get for acting like DM Pana
Oh come on, if that were Deadmeat and the console was a non Sony console he would have criticized Sony's offering.
Show me where I criticized the GBA, GBA SP, NDS or the future GBA 2 ?
.Also, I was rushing to post this info, I wanted to be the first posting it here
.Fafalada:
> It means that when PSP games don't have higher resolution textures then PS2, people
> will blame it on PSP VRam (because they can't use the compression excuse anymore).
Or the disc drive? Streaming eats power so the more you can fit into the main RAM the better. Could that be why PSP games don't exactly live up to fancy specs visually?
> It means that when PSP games don't have higher resolution textures then PS2, people
> will blame it on PSP VRam (because they can't use the compression excuse anymore).
Or the disc drive? Streaming eats power so the more you can fit into the main RAM the better. Could that be why PSP games don't exactly live up to fancy specs visually?
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Cybamerc: that would matter maybe for streaming games like J&D still having S3TC will allow you to stream less data from the disc drive hence giving you a nice power saving for those games as well.
deadhorse32
Bad Art
Gamecube : we had the tech but not the games
* the prototype is not playable.
Negativity and PSP doesn't belong to the same sentence. I heard the PSP is born from the head of Kuturagi. Kuturagi had a headache which was growing worse and worse until he finally had the engineer at SCE split his head open with an axe, and out sprang the PSP prototype*.Fafalada said:
* the prototype is not playable.
That requires complex logical reasoning, which most people that criticised VRam on PS2 don't seem to be very fond of.Cybamerc said:
Anyway, out of the PS2 titles I know to have really high res texture art (relative to the rest of games on the platform), none of them really stream graphics.
So I don't think that excuse really has much ground anyway.
I actually disagree with that.Panajev said:
4bit textures(which is what J&D uses predominantly, if not exclusively) stored as raw, will be essentially the same amount of data to stream.
But most disc data is additionally compressed with your LZW derivates and the like - and that will actually compress better with repeat patterns. I think Clut maps will actually compress better then S3TC in that regard, so in realworld, chances are S3TC could mean More data to stream.
Of course, if you don't need the added quality of S3TC, you can always stick with Clut.
Panajev2001a:
> that would matter maybe for streaming games like J&D still having S3TC will allow you
> to stream less data from the disc drive hence giving you a nice power saving for those
> games as well.
I'm just speculating. I don't know what Sony is telling developers with regards to power consumption.
> that would matter maybe for streaming games like J&D still having S3TC will allow you
> to stream less data from the disc drive hence giving you a nice power saving for those
> games as well.
I'm just speculating. I don't know what Sony is telling developers with regards to power consumption.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Fafalada said:
Luckily PSP GPU will support CLUT too, we have a choice now and I do not think asnyone can spin licensing S3TC in a negative way.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Haha, yes. Because Nintendo Handhelds are known to use texture compression for how long now...
Oh you'd be surprised at the endless possibilities of spinning that can be donePanajev said:
One could for instance start going into how much silicon S3TC uses that could be used by "name a random feature" that PSP may not have. And don't even get me started on the "humble" 2MB VRam.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Fafalada said:Aside for both running GPUs on roughly same clock speed, what other confirmed chipset similarities are there?
Low main RAM latency: we go from Direct RAMBUS with embedded memory controller to mobile DDR RAM with embedded memory controller.
Simplified system to maximize real-world performance: single user-programamble CPU with easy to access co-processors (no need to handle DMA chains for VIFs and write and upload micro-code, handle double-buffering of inputs and outputs). The DMAC is also partially abstracted IIRC through the PSP System API and has a simplified job to do (with a nice new feature added like display list culling: improoves efficiency).
T&L, clipping, multi-texturing (I think it is still multi-pass, but that would be more evident when SCE will start to talk about using the VFPU in parallel to the GPU's HW T&L engine) all on the GPU.
GPU's TANDL engine is a fixed-function hardware accellerated pipeline like Flipper's T&L engine (although with much better support for Skinning [more bones IIRC]) and for custom T&L and deformable non static meshes you fall back on the CPU's VFPU.
Well, everyone does it... I wanted to try DM(tm) logic too
.Seriously, one thing is to say that the GS is PSX GPU SLI (which is not true although I think they changed some things in the GS to ease backward-compatibility: somehow, I might be wrong of course, I do not think you would have to send verties in fixed-point format to the GS ) and one thing is to say that the PSP chipset can trace some of its root on the now abandoned GS2 track and on the EE.
In the GS2 SCE was already working on a refinement of the GS core with new features and performance improovements: it would still bear similarities, many, to the GS as the GS3 was supposed to be the brand-new GPU, not the GS2.
My speculation was that the PSP GPU rendering core was a cut-back (we know it has 4 pipes while the GS2 likely would have stayed with 16 pixel pipelines) GS2 or GS2 evolved (PSP devewlopment picked up where GS2 work ended in regard to the GPU rendering core maybe).
I was just getting the bad feeling that texturing would face the same problem as it did on the GS: single-cycle bi-linear required to use half of the Pixel Engines as TMUs basically halving the peak fill-rate (from 8x2 to 8x1 in regards to pixel-processing per cycle).
In the PSP case a textured fill-rate of 332 MPixels/s with plain bi-linear seemed a bit low (conidering the PSP is not a deferred renderer: I hope early-Z is hidden in there though) as if things were again the same as on the GS tri-linear wopuld have brought you down to 166 MPixels/s.
PlayStation 3 is where all the next-generation effort is: PSP was meant to be comparable to PlayStation 2 in terms of visuals, not to spank it silly.
PSP had to be about as powerful as PlayStation 2 in real-world scenarios and had to eb a low power design (in terms of power consumption and battery life).
Increased efficiency is one of the things you want to work on to meet both goals: it is what they did IMHO. Made the architecture more forgiving and with a less steep learning curve and a system that adapted better to a high level API similar to OpenGL.
With that said, why not leverage the R&D done for the GS 1.5 and GS2 (both had work started on them) and salvage and improove other things (such as the Macro Mode instruction set for the VUs [you know my theory on the VFPU]) ?
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Fafalada said:Oh you'd be surprised at the endless possibilities of spinning that can be done
And don't even get me started on the "humble" 2MB VRam.
*Panajev slaps Fafalada*, come to your senses
.Humble ?
Using 32 bits back-buffer, front-buffer and Z-buffer (or 24 bits Z-buffer and 8 bits stencil-buffer) there is about 0.5 MB left for textures which is close to the amount of VRAM you would be left on PlayStation 2 with a similar configuration (0.718 MB left for Textures with 32 bits back and front buffers with 24 bits Z-buffer [I used 32 bits for that as I did not count the special 8 bits texture format that sits on the top 8 bits of the Z-buffer]).
I think we can safely use a 16 bits front-buffer (prolly even a 16 bits back-buffer if we do not do too much multi-pass stuff): this would leave 0.745 MB left for textures on the PSP GPU (streaming is not counted and that is RAW space) and 1.25 MB if we used 16 bits back and front buffers and a 32 bits Z-buffer (or 24 bits + 8 bits used for stencil data).
Copnsidering that we have now both 4 bits CLUT, 8 bits CLUT and S3TC I think the situation is not goping to be too bad.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
wazoo said:
Maybe the announcement comes quite a bit after the feature in question was implemented.
Bluemercury
Member
Meh another feature to make PSP even more cheap.............
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Actually no. This is the first I've heard of it, and the announcement has been made today. The existence of some kind of texture compression in PSP has been known for a while, it was just never officially named until today. I'm pretty sure this was implemented long time ago, but just announced today, probably after the licensing deal was closed.
While I dunno the RAM numbers, I very much doubt latency could be as low as 1T-SRam on GC.Panajev said:
Either way, Rambus would be a PS2 system similarity more then anything, don't you think?
And API abstractions aren't system design though, and display lists in GC don't have gross culling, so that doesn't really help your case
Well - more of the same, they seem to be different design philosophies don't you think? One GPU with segmented VRam and fairly minimalistic T&L compared to the other.
We can definately agree that PSP seems aimed to be easy to work with, like GC, but is that enough to warrant calling it mini-GC?
Well if I said anything, it wouldn't really be theories, so I can just shut up about what I think.
Anyway, didn't mean to tease, but after you mentioned spanking it just felt like such a perfect thing to bring up DM logic.
Hey, I was just repeating what I read elsewhere. If it's on internet, it must true right?*Panajev slaps Fafalada*, come to your senses
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
I will admit I have no experience with licensing deals like this, but it doesn't seem impossible that they agreed that they will license it for sure, but have been negotiated about the price or whatever outstanding issues, until today. Then again, maybe it was just implemented, and developers will have to re-compress their textures from whatever they have been using so far.
Marconelly:
> I will admit I have no experience with licensing deals like this, but it doesn't seem
> impossible that they agreed that they will license it for sure, but have been negotiated
> about the price or whatever outstanding issues, until today.
Purely hypothetical, but what if they couldn't reach an agreement. Then Sony would be stuck with a feature it couldn't use.
> Then again, maybe it was just implemented, and developers will have to re-compress
> their textures from whatever they have been using so far.
If they're still implementing features there's no chance what so ever that it's coming out this year (which I doubt anyway).
> I will admit I have no experience with licensing deals like this, but it doesn't seem
> impossible that they agreed that they will license it for sure, but have been negotiated
> about the price or whatever outstanding issues, until today.
Purely hypothetical, but what if they couldn't reach an agreement. Then Sony would be stuck with a feature it couldn't use.
> Then again, maybe it was just implemented, and developers will have to re-compress
> their textures from whatever they have been using so far.
If they're still implementing features there's no chance what so ever that it's coming out this year (which I doubt anyway).
kpop100 said:I'm kinda partial to December, never happen though. My Bday + Xmas = PSP package from my gf if so..
Well, I won't be there until March...and I wouldn't mind checking out the launch. Though, who can deny the goodness of a PSP for their Birthday?
Bluemercury
Member
kpop100 said:
or a DS......
That's a danger faced at any time during the lifespan of an agreement between two separate companies. The timing of the announcement of the deal isn't going to prevent that possibility from occurring. See MS and Nvidia's difficulties over the Xbox deal, well after they had successfully collaborated to get the product out on the market.cybamerc said:
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
cybamerc said:
Maybe Sony was doing their own similar compression scheme and VIA's lawyers were like "HELLLLLLS NOOOOO" and they negotiated the agreement until now.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Fafalada said:
PSP is the one with Mobile DDR (which might not be as low latency as 1-T SRAM, but I'd think has lower latency than Direct RDRAM) and PlayStation 2 is the one with Direct RDRAM
.And API abstractions aren't system design though, and display lists in GC don't have gross culling, so that doesn't really help your case
PlayStation 2 was for example not designed to perform well under a fixed higher-level API like OpenGL, you have to get your hand dirty.
PSP seems more designed with the idea "we want an OpenGL like API to ease development on the part of developers, but we also want to make it fast".
Very different design philosophy from PlayStation 2.
Well - more of the same, they seem to be different design philosophies don't you think? One GPU with segmented VRam and fairly minimalistic T&L compared to the other.
We can definately agree that PSP seems aimed to be easy to work with, like GC, but is that enough to warrant calling it mini-GC?
Call it the love child of PlayStation 2 and GCN which took a bit more genes from the GCN side even though it is clearly also the off-spring of PlayStation 2 ?
The NDAs should expire shortly as tomorrow we have a new conference about Programming the PSP and two weeeks from now we have a huge and very detailed conference about PSP programming in Austin, TX and both are not behind the doors kind of deals.
Anyway, didn't mean to tease, but after you mentioned spanking it just felt like such a perfect thing to bring up DM logic.
.Hey, I was just repeating what I read elsewhere. If it's on internet, it must true right?
Of course
.