We've all heard the technical babble on how the PlayStation 3 is such a powerful machine. But, we've also heard what a bitch it is to develop for. There's a lot of misinformation floating about and actually trying to nail down some truth seems harder to find than bigfoot. Next-Gen spoke with a developer, High Moon chief technical officer Clinton Keith, on just what the PS3 and Cell really have to offer. Here are the interesting tidbits:
Next-Gen: Now you describe [the PS3] as “radically different," but can you elaborate on that more? Just how radical is the PlayStation 3 compared to even its contemporaries like Xbox 360 [note: High Moon is also working on an Xbox 360 title] or other systems?
Keith: Well, in comparing it directly to the Xbox 360, you know the Xbox 360 has three general purpose processors in it. But they’re more like the typical processors that you might see in a PC or Macintosh… With the big general purpose processors, we can write the software traditionally the way we’ve done it in the past, so we don’t have to change things so much.
What Sony did was the Cell processor is it really embeds about seven processors, one of those being the general purpose core and the other six being these real dedicated specific-use type of processors that are extremely fast. But seeing that they’re not general purpose, they’re a little bit more challenging for programmers to get under control and to write software for.
With these Cell processors and these small processors called the SPEs, we really have to not only write software different but we have to think about how we’re solving problems in a completely different light.
More after the jump.
Once those complexities are unwound, how dramatically will the PS3 development environment change?
This is what we’re looking forward to that in eight years down the road, as Sony said they want this machine to be around for the remainder of the decade… Right now, the games you’re seeing come out are using engines that are more in the traditional way of creating games, which is that your engine architecture has access to all the other parts of the engine itself. With the PlayStation 3, we’re going to have to figure out how to divide up these things up so that they’re much more separate.
[We’ll have to] explore things such as "procedural synthesis," which really has exciting potential on the PS3. Rather than creating all these environments and all these behaviors by hand, now we’ve got a lot of this power, [so] we can come up with ways that the processor can create environments and create artificial intelligence rules that kind of emerge with gameplay and adjust to the gamers' input, so we can have a lot more variety. That could interest somebody with the concerns of the rising cost of development.
When will developers be able to fully realize the PlayStation 3’s power?
That’s something that we’re trying to discover right now. I think that there are games out there that no one’s ever seen before. I call them sandbox games where—take one of my favorite games, which is the Battlefield series—where you get to play with dozens of people online in a large environment with lots of explosives. The thought I have is that every time you play those levels, those levels are the same. They stay the same and they never change.
What I’d love to do is I’d love to play in an environment that changes over time, that if there’s a building where the snipers are hiding in, you can make a big hole in that building and it stays that way for awhile. To do that believably without creating a ton of assets, we’re going to have to mimic real life and real physics. I think that’s the potential for what the Cell processor can do. It can crunch a huge number of calculations if those environments are built correctly [and] if we figure out how these SPEs work. I think [we’re] in the generation to start figuring that stuff out, so we’re trying to bootstrap that and trying to experiment with those things and see what’s possible.
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Contest:
12:16 PM on 02.28.2007
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Or, instead of waiting 8 years to unlock the secrets of the mystical Cell processor, you could, you know, play red faction 2 and get the same effect for 400$ less.
Is there anyone who can really define why the cell is better. Based on the comments from the interview, the games will get better when they learn to program for it, not that it is inherently better.
Its not that much better. Unless you're using a function of the SPE, it sits dormant. The only way the CELL becomes the behemoth that Sony claims it is will be for a game to use every single SPE simultaneously...interestingly enough, the PS has 8 total cores. One is disabled for yield reasons...a 2nd is taken by the PS3's OS by default and the system has to relenquish any SPE's the OS requests...that leaves 6 SPE's that are technically usable...where-as the 360 has 3 dual core general purpose CPUs that can be used for anything.
This isn't a knock on the PS3, its merely fact. The battle will come down to developers who get creative with both systems and push the limits. THat said...its gonna be easier to use the 360 than the PS3. Take that as you will.
Thanks, that is pretty much what I have figured from the start, but I was thinking that maybe there was something I was missing. Guess not.
Until I see something different, both platforms will probably be pretty close to each other, with, as always, the games defining the system.
Thats the first time someone has actually explained the cell processor without just saying "PS3 processor is teh best, 360 is weak!" Thanks. But I have another question, for anyone, why is the 360's gpu better and what difference (if any) doest that make.
The GPU's are totally different animals. The 360's Xenon processor (I hope I got the name right) from ATi is designed from the ground up for the 360. It used a new architecture that allowed for "flexible" shaders that can pull multiple roles instead of being fixed shaders. It allows the GPU on the 360 to handle FSAA and multiple shaders and other graphical effects with minimal to no impact on framerate. Its a very new method of handling graphics that no other processor does as of yet. ATi is implementing this feature into their new GPU's for computers, BTW.
The PS3 GPU is based on the 7800/7900 GeForce architecture. When Sony was looking for a graphics provider, nVidia went to Sony with their newest GPU architecture (at the time) and Sony used it. However, by the time the PS3 was released, it was already behind the curve with the GPU since the 360's was using newer tech.
Basically, it boils down to the 360's GPU is more flexible and better and multitasking graphical effects than the PS3's.
According to this guy, he's really looking forward to what's comign up /8/ years down the pipe. I'm sure in eight years there'll be come cool shit on the playstation 3.
It's just that my Xbox 1440 will be able to fold proteins and play "Halo Zero: Combat Evolvingest" by then.
but could the SPE's be used to handle the graphic processing, eliminating the need for any hardware solution...
is this how they are handling backwards compatibility with ps1/ps2 titles? is it all just emulated, or do they have dedicated hardware under the hood for that?
and your xbox1440 is probably gonna ost you like $600-$700 (latest tech + hddvd/blue-ray (since they will be popular enough by then).... it will also cost more if it really can fold proteins =p) on top of the $400 360 you bought years eailier; while the PS3 will have price cuts down to like $300-400 and have an existiing library of games... ofcourse, in 2 years sony will probably be relaeasing the PS4 for like $700, sporting tech that's 2-3years more advanced.... though ofcourse, that means 10 years from now, the PS4 will released facing an xbox1440 which, though it's behind in tech, will have prices marked down to like $500-600 and an existing library of games... and ofcourse nintendo will be there too, with the Nintendo Evolution which will hold back on certain tech and thus be released at a much more pleasent sounding price of $400... ah the never ending cycle of cosole wars....
ah, random future speculation is fun
i'm just glad to here some information about the PS3 that doesn't sound like it's random shit coming from Sony... who usually can't admit their faults and thus just delude themselves and say only good things, stretching the truth/lying
The SPE's can't be used to handle video processing. They have no visual output. They handle functions like AI, Sound, and other general functions.
Also, on the backwards compatibility, the PS3 actually integrated the processors from both the PS1 and the PS2 to acheive BC. However, as recently announced in Europe, the PS3 is removing these dedicated chips and will rely on software emulation (ala 360) to acheive backwards compatibility for a limited # of games.
This meens for grapics the PS3 "should" win. But for things like AI it will (Havent looked at much lit recently) not be as good.
As an asside, if you want to get into which has the best procesor, take into account the OS for each system (look it up) and you will probbaly be surprised (and if your a sony-lover go into denial)
I think that bit about the OS helps MS since they're "a software company" as defined by Sony. They've got experience in that field that Sony's still learning. The interface alone proves this (sorry...I'm partial to the blade system that the 360 uses over the CrossMedia Bar that Sony uses).
so if the hardware has been removed, but they are looking for emulation as a solution...
my knowledge of emulation, in respects to PC, is that the processing is all handled by the CPU, and does not utilize the peripheral hardware. does this mean the cell is capable/powerful enough to render ps1/ps2 games using its own muscle? can the cell be programmed to handle visual output?
could future VIAO's basically just be a couple of cells threaded together somehow to handle central processing, audio output, etc with traditional storage but no concept of peripherals like video cards?
How can the PS3 push better graphics when its GPU is inferior to the 360GPU. I have asked this question before but no one can answer it.
It seems to go against logic. A better GPU should be able to push Better graphics.
Now I have also heard that the PS3 shoul dbe able to push better physics, but the 360 will have the upper hand at AI.
What are your thoughts.
I actually enjoyed that for some reason. Is that gay? Wait...
i feel more confident in my X360
between yesterday's article saying
"PS3 has potential"
and
today's article saying
"if we figure out how these SPEs work"
is the CPU on the cell itself? i am imagining a chip with a CPU and several SPE's that can be populated and used by the CPU, kinda like an application calling class libraries. in which case, the SPE's can be called on to perform whatever processes the CPU delegates. kinda like object oriented hardware.
To simplify everything: the 360 still has a more powerful GPU, but the PS3 has a badass CPU setup with the 8 cores. Which one is more important? Probably neither. Having a more powerful system != a better console. the PS2 was less powerful, significantly even, than the xbox, but it still owned because of its solid titles. That's all that matters.
Oh and what this guy's dreaming about has already pretty much been done. It doesn't take 8 proccessors to do these things
sounds lovely.
In eight years we will have xbox 3 (maybe 720 :) ) with full sm4.0 (or 5.0 :D ) support, more cores, more memory and so on...
Sony originally intended Cell to do graphics, because the SPEs are similar (in theory) to the vector cores used in GPUs. However, real-world numbers were not encouraging. A dedicated GPU still does it better, and with a better price/performance ratio.
You should look at Cell as a "GPU assist." How much good that can be is questionable, since Cell has its own memory, and graphics operations would involve a lot of memory swapping, killing performance.
GPUs are perfectly capable of real math for physics and simulations. There's a fractal renderer out there for the PC that does everything on an ATI Radeon GPU. If Cell does this more effectively than a more generic chip, like the 360's CPU, that can take a load off the GPU, allowing it to do other things. But, again, real-world results are questionable. There's a lot for developers to think about.
*Fenris: "It seems to go against logic. A better GPU should be able to push Better graphics."
Well, the GPU on the PS3 is crippled by memory bottlenecks. The 360 has a very clever cache system that all but solves those problems for very bandwidth-intensive operations, like depth buffering and anti-aliasing. For quite some time, ATI's hardware has been far more versatile and unified than nVidia's designs.
*Canadian Geese: "I thought the 256MB of system RAM would be a bottleneck for the PS3, despite the potential for the PS3. Can anyone elaborate?"
Unified memory has to be split between CPU workspace and graphics. Take the 360's memory, split it up evenly, and you end up more or less with the same memory limits as the PS3. It's not a big deal. In the end, both systems have 512MB of memory.
In fact, the only way you'd see a difference between screenshots is if almost all the memory normally used by the 360's CPU was monopolized by graphics. In which case, you might be getting, say, only 50MB of "system" RAM. That's not a smart way to program a console.
I think my analogy (hehe, anal) came of wrong, the PS3 isn't as good as the 360 for all the billion reasons put forward. It can do more straight line processing using its cells, but this doesnt meen the CPU wil run faster when not running linear stuff.
My comment about the OS was to point out the difference, I was reading an article on it a while ago (sadly can't find it) which pointed out the 360s OS uses something like 4% of the total CPU power, the PS3 uses an entire cell.
I would use cell like this,
Spe dedicated to physics calculation
Spe to render objects,
Spe to render backgrounds
Spe render characters
Spe to draw info from the disk and hdd
the Gpu to shift graphics
in conjunction with the main core streaming the physics and render options to the gpu for output
that leaves me two spare spe to do whatever I want.
I'm not a programmer and don't claim any knowledge in processor technology but I'm sure this is how your supposed to use the cell,