Tim Sweeney, chief executive of Epic Games in Raleigh, N.C., said that programming games for the PS 3 will be far more complicated than for the PS 2 because the programmer will have to keep track of all the tasks being performed by dozens of processors.
I can't imagine how you will actually program it,'' he said. You do all these tasks in parallel, but the results of one task may affect the results of another task.‘’
is this more of Sony trying to pull a ‘DC-killer move’ on MS and Nintendo?
How ludicrous a goal are the Playstation 3 specs though? I don’t think anyone reasonable would be anything but skeptical right now. If Sony pulls it off, wow! But till then expect hitches and missteps.
“With the PS 3, Sony will apparently put 72 processors on a single chip: eight PowerPC microprocessors, each of which controls eight auxiliary processors.”
Seventy-two processors? Eight PowerPC processors alone? Sony is either going to have to price this thing to high heaven, or take a massive loss for each hardware unit sold.
While the outcome is murky now, analyst Doherty said that a few things are clear: ``Games are the engine of the next big wave of computing. Kutaragi is the dance master, and Sony is calling the shots.‘’
I wish I could mix metaphors with that kind of inspiration. But I rarely get my creative juices out of first gear.
Tim Sweeney, chief executive of Epic Games in Raleigh, N.C., said that programming games for the PS 3 will be far more complicated than for the PS 2 because the programmer will have to keep track of all the tasks being performed by dozens of processors. I can't imagine how you will actually program it,'' he said. You do all these tasks in parallel, but the results of one task may affect the results of another task.‘’
Did he even read the white papers? The patent application? The whole point is the CPU manages all your threads for you. You tell it what you want done and when you need it and the lead CPU schedules everything dynamically. It sounds like the reporter tried to explain the achitecture to him and then asked for his reaction. It doesn’t sound like an informed opinion at all.
I believe it’s putting the intstruction sets and computing power of 72 processors on one chip, not literally doing it. It sounds like it was extremely dumbed down for the reporters though, so who knows what it actually means.
So basically, the PS3 will do for multithreaded programming what C&C Generals does for micromanagement - provide a lousy interface but insist it’s the greatest thing ever created?
So basically, the PS3 will do for multithreaded programming what C&C Generals does for micromanagement - provide a lousy interface but insist it’s the greatest thing ever created?[/quote]
Well, they may have come up with a really brilliant thread control system that’s transparent to the programmer. It’s possible.
Bear in mind, also, that this is a patent. If they make a chip with an onboard thread control system, and that chip works, and they get a patent on “multiprocessor chip with onboard thread control” then they have a BIG license in 10 years when it can be done much better.
Same thing with distributed processing across the net in real time. I’ve been thinking about something similar for an AI project that might turn into a game, the point being that even if it only works badly, making it work at all can get you a patent, so once it works well you get a license fee from everyone who wants to use it.
The “specs” of the PS2 are way out of alignment with the reality of what it can achive in an actual game environment. I’m sure they’ll create a system that, in theory, and in some sort of synthetic environment, can achieve what they say. Big whoop. One could easily design a processor that pushes a gagillion pixels a second and process umpteen zillion triangles a second, in the most ideal and impractical situation.
As little as I know of the PS3’s architecture, Tim’s comments seem valid. If Sony doesn’t provide the most amazing software development tools in the history of the world, it’s going to be a bitch to get performance anywhere near the potential.
Claims of “a trillion math operations per second” are usually bogus: they invovle adding up the peak potential of all the chips invovled, never considering that they have to actually communicate with each other at speeds orders of magnitudes slower, there’s latency involved, etc.
Sony is really good at hype. Dreamcast fans should be well aware of the claims made about the PS2 and how it was one factor that doomed Sega’s machine even before it launched.
Nintendo and Microsoft fans should expect similar treatment until Sony’s next console ships. Nothing will be as amazing as PS3 already is on paper, at least to the masses/analysts.
In 1996, I was outside Sony’s Culver City studio, early in the morning, waiting for Trader Joe’s to open. As I sat there, a group of really hot women in mini-skirts walked out of the gate, carrying night bags, and vanished on foot into the distance. Now that’s I call multithreading.
I concluded Sony really knows how to win people over. And video game people are even more vulnerable to such “treatment” IMO.
I’d say fool me once - shame on you, fool me twice -shame on me about the PS3 given what a bear the PS2, but I realize such a statement would mostly fall on deaf ears. There’s big money in the PS3 and big money buys the required sweat and blood to make the damned thing work. It’s just a shame most of it will go to executives.
Sony officials said that one key feature of the cell design is that if a device doesn’t have enough processing power itself to handle everything, it can reach out to unused processors across the Internet and tap them for help.
Straight Up Bullshit.
I’m always amazed at the kind of rhetoric Sony is able to get away with. What possible use could this be to a video game system? What chunk of processing could be bundled up, shipped across the net, come back whenever, and then be put back together at a CPU LEVEL that would be of any use to any game?
Maybe Final Fantasy 12’s combat system will revolve around finding digits of Pi. Of course, the Summon/Magic animations will need to be extended even longer in case the other PS3 running your AI is on a bad link.
Of course, according to the article, I’ll be able to surf the net !IN 3D! while I wait for Francois’ PS3 in France to decide whether the 13,233rd triangle in the current frame of my GTA scene should be backface culled.
Unfortunately, the friggin’ hype machine works. I had folks at my EB today just raving about the damn chip, cause they heard it on the radio. I and a few other experts took it upon ourselves to douse water on their enthusiasm.
If the unused PS3s of the world are just going to be sitting around with their bare CPU asses waving in the breeze, the worm authors of the world will finally have a juicier target than Microsoft.
This is where I’m supposed to come in and tell you all how great the PS3 dev tools are going to be. But all our marketing guys are at GDC, and I no longer have the authorization to say such things.
