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Distributed Playstation
withinavoid writes "News.com has a story up about the next generation Playstation 3. Apparently the game developers are asking for a 1000 times performance increase and that's just not possible, so they are looking at distributed computing as a possibility. "
Does this mean it will take Tekken 4 even longer to come out?
"Goodness, how did you people live long enough to invent tools?" -Hobbes (the tiger, not the philosopher)
See here, if you don't believe me: http://www.misinformer.com/archive/01-01/15.html
The speed of time is one second per second.
"Sorry, a 1000x increase in a $300 console just isn't possible. Best we can do is 100x. So... just buy 10 of them and link them together with our officially licensed Beu-station cables..."
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
Here come exploits for PlayStation.
:o)
Can I run telnet on it?
is obviously the way forward. They can link them through the new Wireless networks that are propagating all over the US - won't that be an exciting prospect!
a Beowulf cluster of those ... uhhh... darn...
If they put some thought into it they could get what they want... Modularity.. Make it possible for me to buy video-ram, system ram, make add-on's available, granted that makes the "all systems are the same" for the programmers go out the window... but if I had the ability to switch from standard video chipset to the ultra-insane-fast $399.95 video upgrade option that adds the physics module for jiggley breats to the fighters in virtua fighter 73, then dammit I'll buy it!
By the time they even get the spec done the technology will be there... (SMP for the playstation 3... that would be a no-brainer to really jack the performance in there.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
so what does this mean for someone who lives in the middle of nowhere, or doesn't have broadband?
parappa the rappa 4! now available only to at&t oc3 customers!
your jesus is another mans xebu. chew on that hypocrites.
Distributed console computing... interesting! Does anybody have a link on how I can hook up my Atari 2600 consoles for something like this?
Just think how much faster PONG will run!
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Does this mean we can look forward to playing "CORBA Command"?
I am a Karma Library.
does that mean that if no one else happens to be playing their playstation 3 at the same time you are you can't play at all or the game will look and play terrible?
i'm not so sure this is a great idea.
"I just want to thank my coach Eric a.k.a. Disco for shattering my reality..."
Developers: We want a 1000 times speed increase
Sony: Would you settle for a press release containing a bunch of buzzwords
Developers: Which ones?
Sony: Let me think: "distributed computing", "biotechnology", "linux", "grid computing" and "Moore's Law"
Developers: OK, if you throw in some hookers at the next Comdex in Vegas
Sony: Deal
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
This sounds great ... ermmm but how are they goning to implement that ?
;)
... i think they're over zealous with the news of seti over performing hehe ...
...
... but as we all know, sony was never known for being a "cheap" brand ;(
Previous experience with 8xP3 cluster rendering PVM via 100bt already shows some signs of information passing problems, i guess they won't be using it for rendering then
But its still interesting at what the internet could offer for them
Maybe the distrbuted net might be in the "neighbourhood" area rather then internet based hehe
I really hope they'll lower their prices no matter what they come up with
Hmm, the last time Sony announced their "Next Generation Console" (aka PS2), it was still over a year away, while the PS1 was still selling well. The real kicker (aka purpose) though was that it was enough to keep a large number of gamers away from the DreamCast, which was a great system.
It would appear to me that hyping a PS3 while the PS2 is still selling strong would be an attempt at keeping people from getting an Xbox or GameCube.
Forgive me if my math is off, but if Moore's law states that processing power roughly doubles every 18 months, wouldn't a 1000-fold increase occur in about 15 years?
Maybe they're designing the next generation Playstation on a Pentium machine. Did they ever fix that bug?
-Jeff
So when i'll want to play i'll have to wait for another 999 to join in?
For those who forgot, Sony is already using PS2 cpu's in workstation and actively researching ways to use multiple CPU's to improve performance. If it means better environments and game AI, it's all good. If it means developers will crank out crappy games that look great, but suck in game play then forget it.
From the article (on the X-Box): "because nobody realized that the German 'einstellungen' wouldn't fit in the same text space as 'settings'." We all make mistakes (and that's probably not exactly how things happened), but I still think that quote is funny :)
Its always good to see technology being pushed, but I really can't see the need for '1000' times the power for games. There is so much untapped power in the current generation consoles at the minute - compare early playstation games with the most recent, tekken 1 comparred to tekken 3 for example. In a year or so time when developers have much more experience with the hardware, I expect to see the same sort of leap. developers wanted the hardware sped up so much just sounds to me like laziness.
My other concern is how would they achieve the distribute network. The thing I like about my consoles is that I stick in the disk/catridge and play, no pissing around. I hack on my PC, I play on my console, and thats the way I like it. If I have to start into configuraing and debugging (which as it gets more complex is bound to happen) then the whole reasn for the console goes out the window.
I've heard way too much talk about consumer applications of distributed computing lately. The trick is they are not really consumer apps at all, but merely a front. If you have a distributed network with an installed base of 10 Million machines, that's a lot of idle time you can sell off to other companies. And you can bet that that's exactly what Sony has in mind.
Think about it: the memory bandwidth on the PS2 is at least twice as fast as the FASTEST network connections available. That's nothing to say for the pitiful 2-3Mb cable pipe that is available to most people.
The graphics are what the developers want to see the improvement in. I don't think you are going to see any improvement in performance in this area brought about by distributed computing. If it's possible, I'm really curious as to how.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
Well, this is a good step in the right direction! Sony has quite the job to do if they're ever going to get to the mind interface of the Playstation 9!
Unless I'm misunderstanding something about the article, this makes no sense at all. Rendering a video game isn't nearly the same kind of workload as rendering a movie. The former requires low-latency, whereas the latter can be farmed out and done in batches.
There's no way you're going to get a 1000x performance boost by distributing a video game over the Internet.
I would bet that the real idea is to build in support for distributed multi-player games, and somewhere between the engineers and the marketroids things got horribly twisted.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Why don't they just dip their nuts in the PC parts bin like MS? I don't see how they can compete when they have to put so into R&D. If they used Linux, it would be *that* much better. Talk about the killer app.
Remeber, OpenGL only exists with the support that it has at this point because of a video game.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Distrubuted computing would be impossible unless everyone had Fibre optics, theres just too much latency.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Wasn't the original intent of TAO to create an OS that ran in a distributed hetrogenous(=running on any mixture of processors) environment? This is now being used as the basis of the new Amiga OS, and by various mobile phone companies as it allows them to use any chip (Motorola, ARM, etc) without having to re-port their software (with the plus of having a very compact JVM on top of it). Did they continue the multi-processing aspect of their OS or was it lost over the past few years in 'refocussing'? If Sony do go the Linux route and pour a lot of money into creating a parallel processing set of libraries, it will be amusingly ironic to then use them to DiVX one of their DVDs ultra-fast...
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Distributed Consoles? no. I can believe we'd have a distributed OS, a distrubuted computer, but these computers could never be used for games.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I got as far as "maybe the Playstation 6 or 7 will be based on biotechnology", or some such garbage.
Please. This story is nothing more than a trumped up press release targetted towards the Xbox and GameCube in an attempt to either 1) slow their sales or 2) engender positive mindshare for the Playstation.
Distributed computing? In other words, "imagine a Beowulf cluster of these..."
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
If you wish to run Gran Turismo 4 in full resolution with highest graphics settings, 4 Playstation 3's are recommended.
Well, I guess if they're rack-mountable, I'm game. Bring it on.
Can anybody explain me how one could use distributed computing for realtime stuff?
I mean, I can imagine(being NO expert), that distributing all the data, waiting for it to be processed and sent back, takes more time then actually doing it yourself...in such a case.
or am I wrong...?
----------------------------------
it aint all _that_ bad,.... right?
Theres no way to share memory busses at high speed.
Most useful enterntainment problems, including simulation or animation will not work unless memory can be quickly shared.
802.11 networking just does not cut it for many solutions.
Ugh.
What fools.
www.top500.org lists the top 500 clusters on earth running linpack benchmark (nothing to do with linux, in fact almost none of the fastest run linux).
Maybe sony thinks they can cluster because www.top500.org has an overrepresentation of cluster nodes that user PowerPC and Power chips and x86 and cray do not dominate. But all these sites run a benchmark that does not need to share memory at high speeds.
Without sharing memory at high speeds this idea is just an idiotic press release.
Try simulating electron or photon propogation (nanophotonics), it is a huge market but crippled by lack of high speed memory sharing between cheap cpu boxes.
I like Sega Dreamcasts at 49.95 (US$) right now coupled with Lik-Sang ethernet adapters for my cluster ideas.... cheaper bang per buck than PS2 and way more programming libraries, tools, and OSes (BSD , Linux).
Making a playstation3 with 1000x teh performance of the playstation 2, or making a distributed network of playstations when there are still a lot of people who don't have the broadband connection to use it?
:)
More importantly, will my SETI client run on this network.
"Microsoft has this stigma about not getting it right until version three"
Hmm, Windows and the entire Office suite are still not what I (any many others) would describe as "right"...
That sounds like a practical solution. I'll just buy a beowulf cluster of PS3's and ...
(Do these guys think I can offload the processing for my games to someone else's PS3? Won't that PS3 be busy trying to run someone else's game?)
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Is that 1000x performace increase going to improve gameplay? Probably not. When I first got Secret of Mana and Mario Kart for the SNES, I was gripped. Absolutely amazing games. Although MGS2, GT3 and State of Emergency on my PS/2 are cool games, I don't get the same feeling of "gameplay" now with those titles than I did on my SNES. Shadowrun and Metal Marines were cool too.
As previous people have pointed out this power is unlikely to be usefull for graphics. It's also unlikely to be useful for any real time physics style calulations.
Could all that processing be used for highly complicated AI's? With thousands of "actors" all individually motivated?
(I know very little about distributed computing) Would the storage also be distributed? Or would the distributed machines transmit their results back to your ps3?
(maybe this story was supposed to be posted on april 1?)
I'm spent.
The developers likely have some well thought out reasons for applying more processing to the workload. Render each gnarly hair on the wrist of the attacker, etc.
However, there is a performance/response time budget that would mean for *most* games, that the distributed processing would have to be pretty dense and local. Otherwise network latency (speed of light and bandwidth) for the crunching gets in the way. So... a coprocessing environment in a household (wireless) LAN might apply the CPU in the microwave oven console to the heronie's sweat rendering etc. Coprocessing might even raid cycles out of the next door neighbor's machines.
But the SETI analogy is not appropriate for the workload in gaming. Going onto the network adds too much to response time.
I don't believe the concept of *wide area* distributed computing gets to the problem. Tightly coupled local cluster, yes. Neutral processing objects partitioned across the cluster on "best efforts" yah that too. OTOH, cache multiplayer backgrounds into a networked shared honking large memory, hmm....
Verizon: Latin for "poor rural service".
Linux support just like the PS2? It would be one hell of an cheap beowolf cluster.
(And you can run GT3 when you're bored!)
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
There are several problems with this. Memory bandwith, power consumption, etc... but the main one is that most normal applications are written for a single thread.
Imagine how many MIPS 4K cores you can fit in 300mm^2 in 4-5 years. That's a lot of power. Sure, they might only run at 1-2Ghz, but there will be 64 of them on a die. If you can harness that power, it might give your game developers much of that huge performance boost they want.
Think beowulf-cluster-on-a-chip. As with multiple-workstation distributed computing clusters, the trick is not in setting the thing up, but in figuring out how to distribute your work.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
did you catch the "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a , start" code that was in one of the pictures? Remember what game that is from? Contra on the NES. that seems to pop up every now and then.
Which of the following processes do you want to run in the background?
(a) A search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
(b) A search for Mersenne Primes.
(c) A rendering engine allowing the geek next door to play Tekken with really, really good graphics.
Take your time.
Give it enough umph to play a single player or maybe 2-person game, and whenever any more buddies than that come over to play, I'll tell them to bring their PS3 with them. I don't see that as being too unreasonable. Of course it would also mean more sales for Sony.
The interesting part is that it appears that the foundation for much of its research its the linux kit for the playstation 2. Can this be because they are apperently working with IBM on it.
More power would be cool in the PS3. Something like having the GS as powerfull as a GeForce3 (Get we get a "real" stencil in the PS3 ?!)
Ignoring power for the moment, less complexity would be even better. It's a real b!tch having to manage ** 6 ** CPUs in parallel !! (EE, VU0, VU1, GS, IOP, and SPU) Throw in DMA transfers on top of that and it's enough to make a person pull their hair out.
For those of you who don't wanna click the link, the relevant quote is:
More intriguing however, when asked about the status of development on PlayStation 3, Kutaragi-san responded, "Nothing has been started yet."
Yet another wonderful CNet SNAFU.
Whatever happened to the GSCube and its successors?
I remember reading of Sony's grand plans to make EmotionEngine based workstations with 100x 1000x the power of the PS2.
"Microsoft has this stigma about not getting it right until version three"
This is the same for everyone in almost all areas of design, art, and technology. The problem is, Microsoft obviously didn't get it right first time, no-one does, no matter how well you test something, you always find a problem you missed. I can't wait for the PS3, it will be the first of the 3rd gen consoles - Sony, Nintendo, and MS, and its gonna rock. I think a good idea would be to create cheap modular processing units that you can just plug in to the machine. eg. "this game is designed for 3 cpu units" etc. You would need a main cpu to hand out jobs, and the games would have to take advantage of all the modules. That way, you can upgrade, but not run the risk of just turning the whole thing into a PC. (maybe that's what they were talking about in the article?)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that the hardware they manage to scrounge up (allowing Sony to keep the PS3 price inline with the initial retail price of the PS2) is 4x as powerful. So they still need to get 250x more power to satisfy the game developers. OK, fine. But distributed computing??
The way I see it, some Sony brainchild figures that most PlayStations are left "off" most of the time. So why not use that time to let other people around the world use *their* PS at a higher level? While Japan is sleeping, US PS3s could be using the spare Japanese processing power to improve the gaming experience.
Two problems:
- Bandwidth. How much, and how?? Are they assuming everyone has broadband and that the PS3s are always hooked into it?
- "Slow" times. I seriously doubt that PS3 use doesn't have spikes, even averaged worldwide. So some countries are going to be the losers, with limited or no boost from distributed computing.
It's all moot, anyways. I'd need a MUCH better television (and stereo) to be able to appreciate 1000x more gaming power.Mr. Ska
The idea is a nice one, but the way the article presents things is just silly. Here's a good example:
Looking further ahead, Okamoto saw even bigger changes for Sony's game business. "Maybe the PlayStation 6 or 7 will be based on biotechnology," he said.
Yeah, and maybe it will still suck compared to Ninetendo. Listen, by the time they're at PS6 or 7, they better be marketing a damn Holodeck.
~ now you know
Wow. pay 500$ for a console, only to have it spend half its time working on someone else's games...on the otherh hand, plug it into a 56k line and watch someone playing Quake 7 have a stroke as their FPS drops to 3
"Sir, looking at our usage staticstics it seems to be that your Sony(tm) Playstation(tm) 3(tm) has not been doing its fair share of our distributed computing"
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
This article definitely forgot to include Nintendo comments. So to be fair to them, I'll include my fav quote from Nintendo's president :
"It's not about the hardware you stupids, it's about the game."
BTW, as the end of the article reveals, M$ did an excellent job at localizing their HW and SW. Omitting to do international research on things like controller sizes and text size in dialogs: Wow, no need to have expensive offices in Tokyo and Europe to end up making such stupid mistakes. Not to mention that they could have simply copy the way Sony did it, as they had done for the rest.
PPA. the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
If Sony dont win the console war they'll certainly clear up in the Bullshit Bingo.
Apple coming a close second no doubt, with a special bonus prize for using all the words in the English language that are similar to "insanely".
Wankers.
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
distributed computing for video games?
processor and software sharing over a network?
so a city's worth of playstations working together to play a game?
It spreads nationwide! It goes global! It's a legitimate God Game!
Maybe after enough playstations get linked up, they will decide they don't want to play with us.
one two three four five ?!! That's the combination on my luggage!
1000x performance increase? I think somebody is smoking crack. An equivalent would be like setting a goal to put a supercomputer on everybody's desktop.
What in the world could they do with that much computing power? Holodeck?
I think 4x increase would be mind blowing. Although, Bill Gates was once quoted as saying that 640k should be more than anybody will never need.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Actually, not really. In Contra for the NES, the "select" was only in there if you wanted a two-player game. You had to push select to choose a two player game before pushing start. Technically, the code is UUDDLRLRBABA, the select and start are just there for choosing players and starting the game, respectively.
First of all, please excuse the English.
/.'s programmers could fill me in on this?
OK, I'll just be thinking out loud here.
Now, distributed PS3... Let's say that they actually do this. The machine would probably deal with every one else's games when I'm not playing, so it'll never be turned of or at least in some kind of semi-sleep mode. And then when I'm playing, there'll be other machines on the network that'll be used to render it. OK, fair enough. I mean, if my machine is just standing there over night, why not let someone else use it to enhance their gaming experience?
But what if, by some strange twist of Fate, there would be few (or at least not enough) PS3's available on the network.
I suppose that Sony could then have huge "rendering farms" around the world, sort of how massive multiplayer online games work today: Some servers in Europe, some in Asia etc. If 'only' these were available, perhaps the games would "only" run in 30 fps, instead of 50 fps. Or perhaps the rendering distance in the game world would be a bit shorter, but never so short that it bothers gameplay.
Of course, I have no idea whatsoever how the actual data works in a console (or anything, for that matter) so I'm not so sure that it'd be able to send enough data to other clients and then recieve them back again. Perhaps one of
Again, please excuse the English.
You guys are forgetting something, if the CBDTPA (SSSCA) becomes law, latency won't be an issue.
I think these game companies are being idiots. They want a 1000x speed increase to make up for the fact that their code is slow! They should look back to the days when people wrote impressive sprite games with 8-bit processors. Yes, the field has changed greatly, but if THEY could write well-performing games with hardware like that, surely a modern company can do great things with a modern CPU and graphics chipset.
Get rid of those hideous jaggies. Damn, it pisses me off everyone wants to release games for the system that makes everything the most ugly.
Shorter load times couldn't hurt either...
Seriously, I wonder what the heck they would do with distributed computing. Obviously, it's not going to give you any better graphics at all. Maybe in multiplayer games you could split up collision detection/physics work. Maybe this means they want to make p2p massively multiplayer games. Maybe they want to make insanely cool new AI systems.
This could really kick ass...but it's probably just hype.
BUT FIX THE DAMN JAGGIES FIRST!!!! ; )
beowulf cluster of PS2 :-)
Speaking at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), an annual trade show for the creative and technological sides of the game industry, Shin'ichi Okamoto, chief technical officer for Sony Computer Entertainment, said research efforts for the PlayStation 8 are focusing on neurological implants, a method for allowing the game player to control game merely by thought.
Okamoto said the method also appears to hold the most promise for dramatically boosting the performance of the PlayStation. Instead of being reliant on a hardware "processor", all game computations would be performed in the user's own cerebrum. Unfortunately, this means that game developers can not work on a strictly "fixed platform" basis any more, considering performance will greatly improve with intelligence.
"I think we can easily overcome this barrier," Okamoto said, "Instead of hardware requirements as we see them now, we could instead have IQ requirements. Like, we would say that the minimum requirement for Gran Turismo XII is a high-school diploma, but we would recommend at least a college-level education to get any decent performance. But then for games like Resident Evil, well, any idiot could play that."
The gaming industry was reeling with excitement by this announcement, and Okamoto was further pressed for details on how this technology would actually be implemented. After a few minutes of uncomfortable shuffling and avoiding eye contact, he eventually admitted that he was merely "making shit up".
Paradigm Shift
Distributed != Over the internet.
Distributed in that the chips involved are linked to each other without any knowledge of the number or place.
Think "NUMA memory and cluster of processors in a box".
Rather than needing a large room for a Beowulf, they want to do it in a much smaller box.
They aren't stupid guys, and while they may be tight lipped about the OS in the article, look at the K42 project for an idea of one of the ones in the running.
"The K42 group is developing a new high performance, general-purpose operating system kernel for cache-coherent multiprocessors. We are targeting next generation servers ranging from small-scale multiprocessors that we expect will become ubiquitous, to very large-scale non-symmetric multiprocessors that are becoming increasingly important in both commercial and technical environments. "
A processor a couple of years from now that can give them 8 times the power of the current PS2. Now imagine 32 of them on one die. Now put four of them in one box. Sounds like a nightmare to me, but I just can't imagine how else they intend to accomplish this without having some REALLY strong cohesion between processors. And I truly have no idea how they intend to produce this box for $300, even ten years from now. This whole article just smells like BS.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
One of the few who seems to have read the article and understood what it meant.
Let's keep in mind that the PS3 is probably still some time away; 1000 times the performance is not as stupid as it sounds, only almost. There's also the question of what Mr. Okamoto (Sony's CTO in case you didn't read the article) really means by "performance" - CPU speed? HDD capacity? Screen resolution? Frames-per-sec? Or some mysterious combination of them all? Most likely, he was just trying to build up some hype - same as the fantasy that PS6/7 will be based on biotechnology. Yeah, right.
Also, I don't see distributed computing as something which will be very useful for playing games; sure, with a high-speed link between several PS3's you might be able to fake SMP, but the games would have to be optimized for it, or the performance increase would be abysmal compared to the extra cost of having to buy two PS3's. You might as well just get yourself a PC and have a gaming rig that's easier to upgrade, runs a wider variety of apps, has a decent-resolution monitor and gives you a choice of what OS you want to run. Of course, the PS3 might have all this, but don't bet on it.
Btw, I wonder what Pete Isensee (the Xbox developer guy) means by saying that Microsoft can't get stuff right until version three. Windows is WAY beyond 3.0, and there's still plenty of room for improvement (note the careful wording there).
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
With that thought in mind, maybe the idea is to have the consumers buy more than one PS3, and install them in a rack. Or maybe have in-box rack space to add in extra mother-boards for multiple PS3s. With a custom bus/interconnect they could have fairly high bandwidth for distribution.
Then you have distributed right in your own home. Just add more PS3s until your performance reaches tolerable levels, different for each game. Sony sells many more PS3s, multiple to each customer. What a marketing plan!
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
"Sure, kid, you can play Final Fantasy 17 on our system...but ya gotta have five PS3's all clustered to do it! Mwah ha ha ha!"
What a great motto: Playstation 3 -- Because one console just isn't enough!
Distribute != distributed.
It's not between boxes, it's multiple CPUs inside the same box.
ahhh the famous "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a , start" what wonderful memories this brings back of skipping school in junior high to waste a day on the NES. Funny, my best friend down the block always managed to get sick on the same day.
So, do any hard core NES'ers out there remember 007-373-5963 ?
Does anyone remember the story about Saddam Hussein attempting to buy several hundred PS2's? Some even speculated that he was attempting to cluster them to make a super-computer.. and I don't think thats was to edit films of the hussein family picnics.
I suppose now, Sony has helped make that possible. Will the PS3 help design a "mass weapon of destruction" someday? Seems likely.
This is just terrible. I buy console systems because I want a console system. A stand-alone, game machine. It works great as a game machine because that's all it does... it plays games. Its not trying to be everything. Throwing a game console into a huge distributed processing network is a bad idea in my mind. All the problems that will be introduced with this strategy are enough for me to not want one. Game consoles owe part of their success to the fact that they work 99.9% of the time. I put in a game, I turn it on, and it works; and it works the same every time. I don't see this being the case with a distributed network of PlayStations.
I liked the comment near the end about being forced to get it right in v1. Kinda implies that 'cos M$ has not had serious competition in the desktop market they can afford to screw up
"up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a , start" aka KONAMI Command,
this code is from GRADIUS(Nemesis) on the Famicom(NES).
Come on... PS9 was already released, with the telepathic interface. Surely it's 1000x faster than PS2
Don't any of you watch T.V. ????
If i'm not mistaken then the PS2 currently runs at 200MHz which is no where near current silcon threshholds! The apple G4 is now up to 1Ghz of 128bit power, by the time they come to makeing the PS3 haveing 2Ghz Risk processors should be easly possible build a system with 2 ro 4 of these controlling different aspectes of the console, and ok you might not get a 1000 fold increase on power, but you will have something very substantial. The distibuted idea will just destroy the part of the point of haveing a console, which in my mind is to have something stand alone that you can just take home insert a game and stat playing...
Distributed playstation based super computer? Didn't Saddam Hussein already come up with that one? Me thinks Sony is trying to take over the world.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
"Microsoft has this stigma about not getting it right until version three," he said. "We didn't have a choice with Xbox. If we didn't get it right with version one, Sony and Nintendo would eat us alive."
See children, this is why competition is good.
Basicaly, we all know that it was hard for PS2 developers to make games for it initialy.
:)
The reason was the Emotion engine in PS2, that it explicitly multithreaded, i.e. you have to make your program use all threads (unlike PPRO for example, where CPU does it for you).
It's really a whole new way to program.
Now it seems that Sony convinced some developers to lean it there's nothing stopping them from making more threads (there are 16 in Emotion if I am not mistaken).
Oh, and it has nothing to do with distiributed computing over the Internet. The application architecture is similar, but that's it. And yeah, no batches here
As for IBM involvement, here is the article in Wired Magasine about their cell computer
Oh, and ahother one about PS2 and PS3, that one is quite old, but explains where Sony is going.
Plug it into a high tension line.
"Looking further ahead, Okamoto saw even bigger changes for Sony's game business. "Maybe the PlayStation 6 or 7 will be based on biotechnology," he said."
When they come to install Crash Bandicoot in my sternum, I am running the other way.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Here , sorry, too much protein stuff going on :)
Saddam is behind this push for distributed computing, he bought 4000 PS2's and realized that he couldn't cluster them together.
This is a ridiculous hype-fest for even The very fact that the guy followed up the distributed comment by some random buzzwordism about biological computing should tip you off.
Here are some problems with a distributed gaming console that I can think of off the top of my head:
- Latency: The main reason you'd want a lot of processor power in gaming is to calculate physics and graphics. This needs to be done on a damn-near-real time basis. No distributed computing network can provide this. High end clustering, maybe, but nobody is going to pay for multiple PlayStatia to play one game.
- Availability: Sony KNOWS that they are making a device akin to a toaster. When you turn on the console you should be able to play your game. Without worrying about your network connection, whether your neighbor's microwave is disrupting the Super National Ultra Wireless Grid, etc.
- Infrastructure: Don't even get me started. Sony would have to build millions of wireless POPs in a grid across the entire country. Or wire everyone's house when they buy a PlayStation.
- System Load: Say the PS3 is 10x more powerful than it is now. That means you still need 100 of them to reach the "1000x" figure they are blathering about. This means that if America has a million networked, always-on PS3s, only 1% of them cam be in use at any given time. During peak hours this is probably not possible.
In other words, this is dumb. Tell me if I'm wrong.
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
Hmmm, let's see now:
18 months --> 2x performance
36 --> 4
54 --> 8
72 --> 16
90 --> 32
108 --> 64
126 --> 128
144 --> 256
162 --> 512
180 --> 1024
180/12 = 15 years to achieve more than 1000x times the performance gain. If he's innumerate about this, I'd bet the 1000 threshold is a bit overinflated as well. They're probably only looking for 100x the performance - best case!
Besides, that rule is only midly bound to cutting edge, and games stations have a lot of immediate room to grow, if price point isn't an issue. Sounds like the guys looking for some press time with little significant substance.
... As far as I can tell from the article, they're talking about *internally* making the PS3 a multi-processor system.
They are looking into basing the architecture on some of IBMs research into distributed computing (specifically, something called grid computing).
They are *not* talking about *actual* distributed computing using the PS3 - this is purely about the internal design being based on a distributed model to get more performance.
The developers say they can't wait 20 years for a 1000 fold increase. But if Moore's Law holds, there are about 13 18-month periods in 20 years so they could get a 8,192 fold increase in that period. (Or a 1,024 fold increase in about 15 years).
We know have 800MHz machines -- about 20 years ago the standard was the 4.77Mz 8088 -- that's a 167 fold increase.
But the architectures are so different now -- any idea what the real performance (not just clock rates) increase is?
You can always throw more hardware at a bubble-sort to speed it up -- but a better algorithm makes more sense. Discussing distributed computing, etc. sounds like looking for better algorithms, not just more cycles.
For most purposes, 355/113 is close enough.
(+1, Awesome Idea)
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
That's the Konami code, and was in half the games they made for the NES. Off the top of my head it was in contra and gradius, I know there are like 15 more, but I can't think of them.
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
I have seen some pretty stupid things on slashdot, but this is got to be one of the most incredible. Distributed computing is used to do heavy scientific computation,or to load balance massive corporate applications. Those applications don't require the kind of throughput which a real time game requires. I would doubt anybody would seriously consider using the technology for a game console.
Contra owns j00!
Ahh, the spread gun.
Sweet, sweet, memories.
We dance to all the wrong songs.
--Refused.
"We didn't have a choice with Xbox. If we didn't get it right with version one, Sony and Nintendo would eat us alive."
Now there's an interesting comment from Microsoft. Basically, he's saying that MS thinks it's ok to not get Windows right till the second or third version since there is no competition that will eat them alive in the OS market. Great.
Did you read what you wrote? Do you know that there is a difference between 1000-times (article) and 1000-fold (you, skippy)?
First lets see if the article is correct... 1000 times increase in 15 years is the claim:
Assumptions:
-processing speed doubles every 18 months
-1000 times increase approximately equals 1024 = 2^10 (a TEN FOLD increase, for the record...)
-12 months in a year
Results:
(18 months) * (10 doublings) / (12 months/year) = 15 years
Hmmm, it is right on. So what prompted your lame referrence to the old FDIV bug in the original Pentium?
As for the -fold versus -times increase, lets look at what 1000-fold really means. Imagine you have a piece of paper (or just get some...) and fold it in half. After one fold you have twice the thickness of the original. If you fold it again (2-fold) you get four times the thickness of the original. Generalizing this shows that n folds produce a 2^n times increase.
According to our calculation above your 1000-fold increase (2^1000 times!!) will occur in 1500 years (assuming that thermodynamic laws aren't a limiting factor, etc, etc).
Well I was excited about all the Cell development and this PlayStation 2 stuff, but Ken Kutargai (the guy behind playstation and SCEI president) recently made some very grim statements at the South Korean PlayStation 2 launch. On the topic of PS3 Kutaragi-san said "Nothing has been started yet." He made some very grim statements about online gaming too saying; "If broadband connections capable of delivering 10Mb/s are affixed to game consoles, the industry as we know it will be over. By that time, perhaps 2005 or later, games would be available for download rather than sold in stores." This news came right after many analyst's came out saying how skeptical they were about Sony's online plans. This comes right after the Nintendo-Square and Nintendo-Capcom deals, which by the way Kutaragi mad, summoning top Square officials to the SCE headquarters to explain the deal, as he was out of town when the deal was made (the Square one) and had no prior knowledge about it. The memory card shortage doesnt help much either.
Spilled.net
Actually, that's not right either. It's UUDDLRLRBA, although if you include your last BA it will still work. :)
I'd "like" a trillion times increase, the hell with this 1000-fold stuff. That's chump change!
Maybe what they really meant to say was they're investigating parallel processing, not distributed computing. If they wait long enough that they can get a 10 times increase in graphics processing power and design the system such that it can run 100 of those processors in parallel, well then there's a 1000 times increase (of sorts, it's not really that easy, nor would that likely turn out to be a reasonable proposition for consoles that are meant to cost <$300!). But otherwise I think this is just marketing being out of touch with reality.
Lara Croft will only look so good ...
Taken from the Playstation site.
PlayStation 2 Basic Specifications and Features
CPU 128 Bit ...
System Clock Frequency 294.912 MHz
Main Memory Direct RDRAM
Memory Size 32MB
Graphics "Graphics Synthesizer"
Clock Frequency 147.456MHz
etc
Ok ... since we all know that Mhz != Performance ... we do need to agree that to get to 1000x performance, we need to increase the clock of the CPU ... so lets assume that through the miracle of discussion that we only need to increase the CPU clock 500x ...
So ... 300Mhz * 500 = 150000Mhz ... or 150Ghz ...
Where is the stash of crack that these developers are on?
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
one year after ps2 shipped there were only 120 non japanese games for it.
one year after dreamcast shipped ther were over 200 non japanese games for it
today in 2002 there are over 445 dreamcast titles and a paltry amount of ps2. In fact over a third less.
you are wrong
Crazy XBox fans already have done this. They take a PS2, put in GTA3, and smash it to bits with a hammer. Distributed all over!
Isn't it the case that Sony/MS/Nintendo sell the hardware at what amounts to a net loss? Don't they only begin to make money once the user buys 'X' number of games, revenue derived from licencing deals, etc?
If their plan is to have the user buy multiple platforms to be used in unison, then they had better figure out a way to manufacture these boxes at a dramitcally lower cost per unit.
From the consumer perspective, I can justify spending $300 to get the latest and greatest console platform, but having to shell out an additional $300 to get decent performance for my $60 Game Title? Or having to buy 4 $300 units?
This is a business plan that is doomed to failure.
Sony and Nintendo would indeed be wise to borrow Microsoft's idea, and assemble platforms based on mostly commodity hardware. Farm out the R&D to people like NVidia or ATI for graphics accellerators, and bus architectures.
This would allow the title developers to create games that could concievably run on 3 platforms, PLUS PCs, with only minor differences.
Seems to me that would have a lot of appeal, for consumers and developers.
Increasing performance by a multiple of 1000 is ridiculous in the span of a single generation. Doubling, tripling, or quadrupling? Maybe.
NVidia now owns all of the 3dfx SLI patents... They could do some "distrubutive processing" inside the single chassis if they thought this was the way to go. Effectively doubling the number of Graphics chips needed/used may allow them to gain some economics of scale to keep prices within reason, while boosting performance by factors of 2 or 4.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
I find this to be quite amusing. Distributed computing? Biotechnology? Developers demanding 1,000 times more computing power? All of the developers I know that have touched the PS2 have demanded fewer processors and an architecture that makes a semblance of sense. You can't distribute the computing on a game system when .05 seconds is a nauseating lag. Maybe if you were running a MMPORG, you could use each console to compute the region of space that they were in. Even then the most computationally costly part of gaming, the rendering, needs to be done locally in real time.
The only way this could even make sense is if Sony was focusing on massively multiprocessor systems, an idea that seems unlikely considering A: the relative costs and B: sony's claim of shared memory.
Did the Blue Meanies spike the water supply?
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
Sony is working with IBM to apply Big Blue's research in "grid computing" .. the inventor of the PC. And then they will help us make something even faster than an PC. We have lots of money and we know ppl."
SONY is saying "WE can see you have lost faith in SONY making the best console system, so we will talk to IBM
research efforts for the PlayStation 3 are focusing on distributed computing
SONY is saying "Its impossible to make something faster than the playstation 2, however if we have lots of ppl sticking to the SONY brand we might make something good. Please buy SONY else there wont be enough systems to play games."
"Moore's Law is too slow for us,"
SONY is saying "The reason our ps2 is so slow is because of physical limits of nature.. it dosent matter about what cpu things run they all go about the same speed because of Moore's Law."
"We can't wait 20 years" to achieve a 1,000-fold increase in PlayStation performance, he said.
SONY is saying "We know u can see the xbox and gamecube have better graphics and are faster systems but one day we might have something much faster than they are now."
Okamoto added that the recently released kit that allows PlayStation 2 users to run Linux software on the console is the foundation for much of the research.
SONY is saying "Linx is cool and we know it, we would like you to think PS2 is some type of open source system that u can reprogram. We are cool like linux, dont buy an xbox its from microsoft. We would like to reinfoce any beliefs u have that linux can do things other operating systems cant.IF you like Linux you better buy SONY"
Maybe the PlayStation 6 or 7 will be based on biotechnology
SONY is saying "We dont know if the ps3 will beat the competitors but trust us sometime we will do something better, we are at the leading edge of technology because we have heard of "biotechnology"."
Think Blue tooth or any other builtin wireless stuff.
Now, your entire neighborhood can play against each other. All this without broadband! Of course, this does mean that your neighbors laptop will surf slower while you're on a deathmatch, but so?
-the B0fh
Or of course they could also be talking of having more than one CPU like on a SMP box. A bit like the GPU is taking load of the CPU...
Who knowns, it might even just be a marketing ploy.
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
Hardware guys: *kick the developers in the nerts* Give us games 1000 times better and we'll think about it, you pathetic freaks.
"Moore's Law is too slow for us," Okamoto said, referring to the long-held truism that semiconductor power doubles roughly every 18 months. "We can't wait 20 years" to achieve a 1,000-fold increase in PlayStation performance, he said.
:)
"Our project managers are too inept for us," Okamoto said, referring to the long-held truism that forcing software out the door results in slow, buggy performance. "We can't wait 6 or 8 weeks to optimize. We have to hijack the processor to make up for our own management deficiencies."
Okamoto said Sony is working with IBM to apply Big Blue's research in "grid computing," a variation of distributed computing, to the next PlayStation. While he didn't share details, the plan presumably would involve networked game machines sharing software, processing power and data.
So now they're going to expect their developers to write distributed applications? Isn't managing the resources of 1,000 machines a million times harder than managing the resources of one?
Not to mention, IIRC, the major advance in this round of game consoles was memory bandwidth. How is my dinky broadband connection going to help?
Oh yeah, and if everyone is using their playstation 3's simultaneously, where's the extra computing power?
I could go on.
Okamoto added that the recently released kit that allows PlayStation 2 users to run Linux software on the console is the foundation for much of the research.
Yay. Check the GPL. Ask Stallman to set the retail price
Looking further ahead, Okamoto saw even bigger changes for Sony's game business. "Maybe the PlayStation 6 or 7 will be based on biotechnology," he said.
Awesome. "Mommy, playstation is hurting me!" "Bad playstation! Hold on, I'll give it the injection."
Xbox glitches Isensee touched on mainly centered on international issues. The game console's bulky controller repelled Japanese consumers, for instance, forcing Xbox to design a slimmed-down version
Japanese people are smaller than us! LOL!!
That includes the Xbox start-up screen, which had to be redesigned for the Xbox's European launch because nobody realized that the German "einstellungen" wouldn't fit in the same text space as "settings."
And when Napoleon marched on Moscow, he didn't realize that it was much further and colder than Spain. Ah, the intricacies of the world....
Why would a developer need 1000 times the performance?! Are they going to port the Java Runtime Environment over to the PS3?
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Here
It's pretty large, but explains everything.
I can most assuredly state that what developers want isn't even 10x more power. It's better libraries. The PS2 is a royal stiffy to use because the interfaces are archaic and in some cases, simply lacking. Compared to the XBox (just a windows PC in fancy wrapping) or even the GameCube (which is proprietary, but relatively easy to work with), the PS2 is somewhat underpowered and difficult to develop on. This role reversal from N64 vs. PS1 days makes it much more challenging to produce quality titles.
:-)
The interesting thing to note is that artists don't have the tools capable of managing nor time in the schedule to spend making billions of polygons for each model. Increased content means longer development time. As it is, the graphics chips on the current consoles take away so much of the real work that games have little to worry about when fitting in gameplay CPU requirements. Even memory constraints are fairly relaxed these days. I mean, I never thought I'd see the day when the STL is used for console games.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
I can't tell that much difference between the ps2 and xbox or game cube. neither looks that great on the current televisions. so unless hdtv's become really cheap soon, that will be unnecessary power.
-If distributed computing can unravel the building blocks of life, it can probably help make a better version of "Crash Bandicoot."
Um, pardon my ignorance here, but gee, how about interesting gameplay? If I were a game developer, I'd be comepletely embarrased to ask for a performance upgrade, becuase it would mean that my game relies more on technology than gameplay to make it interesting, and therefore, sucks. I mean, Pong still beats 99% of games out today, and you can play that with punch cards.
c-hack.com |
Are you stupid? That's a PSOne with a bunch of crap taped to it. What a fucking idiot.
Technically, the code is UUDDLRLRBABA, the select and start are just there for choosing players and starting the game, respectively.
:)
YES. Thank you. "Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, SELECT, START." Such idiots.
These people probably played about 3 games of Contra and never any other Konami games because they were always too busy working out, playing lacrosse, getting laid...oh wait, this is Slashdot...well then what's the excuse?
Incidentally, the weirdest codes were for the shooter Zanac. One is to press reset 13 times for level select, the other involves lifting the cartridge halfway out of the slot. The latter one was probably unintentional, but it's entirely reproducible. You get all the weapons, and the game still runs fine.
All of the developers I know would much rather have developer libraries that don't suck.
Careers should combine three things: what you can do, what you want to do, and what you can get paid for.
Stop the brainwash
Microsoft, unlike Sega, could afford to keep the XBox on the market even if they took 100% loss on each unit.
Basically for Microsoft, they can pretty much put prices as far down as they like, and then it's a game of who can keep bleeding money longer.
DNA just wants to be free...
"Moore's Law is too slow for us," Okamoto said, referring to the long-held truism that semiconductor power doubles roughly every 18 months. "We can't wait 20 years" to achieve a 1,000-fold increase in PlayStation performance, he said.
Hey, Sony! How getting your head out of the tech closet and think about making games today that don't play like ass?
How much do you want to bet that even with a playstation three hojillion the Resident Evil series still won't have "custom features" like the friggin' ability to sidestep or save your games anywhere but the God forsaken typewriter?
Honestly, can we get some late 80's gameplay dynamics up in this thing?
With that kind of power, I can only imagine that it is just that much more easy to make a game series like Resident Evil or Syphon Filter look and play like total doo-doo.
Wow with the PS? going 1000x faster that would reduce the actual interactive playing time of a Final Fantasy game for it to only a few seconds! Great!
See, this is the kind of bullshit you get from a company that "piggybacks" their way to the top. Q: Why was the ps1 so successful? A: Because nintendo designed it and knows how to engineer a game system. The only reason why it did not come out with a nintendo name was because of contractual differences so nintendo went to sgi. Q: Why is the sony ps2 such a pain in the ass to develope for? A: Because sony had to do their homework for the first time and failed. The result is a poorly engineered ps2 that could have been really kick ass with more ram, The ram issue and other engineering short commings probably would have led for it to have its intended shelf life. The bottom line is the ps3 is going to fail and if it has distributed computing. Their will be no standard for the platform and developers will be lost when trying to figure out what to do. also i am not saying that it wil fail b/c i am a hardcore nintendo fan or xbox fan, it will fail because sony is developing it. as far as fan of a particular console, i like anything with good games.
There is a lot of incorrect information floating around about this. The PS3 will clearly be a suppository. With its low cost yield one can purchase thousands of units at a fraction of the cost!
PS3 suppository: the future of distributed computing.
I thinks it funny that they can relese such informatin and even call it a story o much less a press release?.. I mean seriusly .what the hell are they talkig about. you can't use "distributed computing" to make game "look" better, maybe for online play. having more of a P2P setup rather the a centrilized sever but that has nothing to do with distributed comuting .. maybe reslein consles iddle prccesses but how much of that are you going o get .. if they are playing GAMES ... on them (which generaly take up 100% of CPU time, I think whatthey are really doing is using distributed computig to help in desgining the new playstation and the words have been confused.
This brings up two points.
Point one is that this guy is wrong; the Japanese xbox disk drive scratched up disks. While the US release went great, the same cannot be said for overseas.
The other point is that the software itself had to be changed for different regions in unpredicted ways.Not only were languages different, but That includes the Xbox start-up screen, which had to be redesigned for the Xbox's European launch because nobody realized that the German "einstellungen" wouldn't fit in the same text space as "settings."
So with all of these differences(using the xbox as an example) how is Sony going to make a distributed world-wide game? Everyone would have to be using basically the same software, right? Unforseen changes needed for different regions could cause problems.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Minimum system requirements: Playstation 3
Recommended system requirements: 12-Playstation 3 LAN
And you know you want it!
I am Sparticus
I like my PS2, but if they're even considering the possiblity of doing a distributed network of PS3's over the Internet, they need to make sure they've designed a more solid unit.
The PS2 is already notorious for having problems when the cooling fan gets clogged up and fails, and that's often with use by people who turn it off when they're done playing.
Ideally, you want a low power consumption unit that doesn't really ever power off completely. It should be designed to stay on all the time, so it can share CPU resources with other gamers whenever you're not actively playing on it.
Of course, this won't really go over so well unless/until broadband prices drop and it becomes more commonplace. Right now, I think even a lot of DSL customers would unplug a box designed this way because they only have 14K per second or so of upload bandwidth, and they might want to use it for other things besides an idle PS3.
I'll shit a brick if that's a Dick Tracey case code. Is it the one to the final case?
Why 1000x? Is this anything other than an a number they just pulled out of their ass?
Q
If they need a 1000 times speed increse
they really should talk to starbridge systems
So let me get this straight ... my Playstation 3 is going to benefit from cycles of somebody else's Playstation 3 that aren't being used. How many people leave their PS2's on all the time? Is this expected to change for the PS3? What network will this flow across? Why would somebody want to sacrafice performance on their own machine in order to give my Tekken game more pixels? What happens when users are all maxing out performance on their systems? Essentially we'd just be swapping cycles with one another and introducing latency due to network transit time. Then Johnny trips over his power cable, and my game freezes or slows to a crawl.
Sony, stop worrying about distributed cycles, and focus on the games. Or maybe come out with a 32X to plug into the top of your console.
Is there any harm in aspiring for these things to come true? What if Sony pulls off distributed computing for the PS3? Will the people here still be saying "that's stupid"? What if Sony has biotech running on the PS6 or PS7? If it wasn't for people coming up with crazy ideas would anything get invented? Innovation is important part of pushing things forward. If nobody tried to do the crazy things, then how would we know if it would be possible?
When Kenndy said let's go to the moon. What if eveyrbody had listened to the poeple shouting "It can't be done, it's stupid, it's a dumb idea." There are people out there working on fusion, anti-matter, FTL travel, grand unified theory, cures for cancer, etc... Are these people stupid and dumb? Hell, all Sony wants is a 1000 fold increase from the PS2. If they want to put biotechnology in their PS6, fine whats the problem with that?
You want to hear about something stupid and dumb? What about a "nextday delivery service?" or "being able to hear actors talk in movies?" or "going to the moon?" Frick! now these are stupid and dumb ideas.
Uhm.... so each machine becomes part of a massive collective of other Playstations? Does this sound like the Borg to anyone else?
Also, how long before this "collective" of PS3's becomes self-aware and decides to overthrow and criple it's human makers by giving them carpal tunnel?
So, what is all the extra performance for?
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I never fail to wonder why I still reade posts like yours from time to time. Making me wonder why oh why it is so hard to respect each other's opinions. Reading someone calling me a fucking idiot because I confused a PS one with flashy stuff with a PS3 is rather insulting. As if everybody could have *your* level of consciousness/intelligence/enlightenment. Because of course, you ARE above the rest aren't you? You've got to be, otherwise you would not give so little care to other people's thoughts. I know very well that answering won't give anything, but I guess that just as you take pleasure out of calling people "fucking idiots", I take pleasure out of saying out loud just how irrespectful (and young) you are. Now go see mommy, she probably got your bottle of milk ready by now.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
This could be a big gamble on Sony's part.
I don't think there will be a large enough base of broadband users in the US by the time PS3 comes out to support this sort of architecture. Unless we start to see a trend of DSL and cable modem access providers not going under every six months, I believe we are more than a few years away from having a large enough broadband network to support this. Seeing how the majority of home Internet users still connect via narrowband modems, we have a ways to go.
But say we do have a large enough broadband network in place (or maybe people start bringing in their consoles to work in order to use their corporate LAN) by the time PS3 hits the street. Then Sony is betting on those same broadband users are going to be buying a PS3. While there is (and probably will be) a large amount of broadband users that buy the latest consoles, will there be enough to effectively harness the unused CPU cycles? Even then, you have to rely on people leaving their PS3s attached to the network and powered on.
Is this the vision of the future that Sony has? I think minimal distributed computing could be done in the console space, but I don't think it is the way to dramatically increase the amount of computing power for developers. Especially when games are typically becoming more graphic intensive, developers aren't going to want to gamble if there will be enough processing power on the network to render their polys.
To me, it seems there are too many chances that would have to be taken for Sony to effectively use the distributed computing model.
So, do any hard core NES'ers out there remember 007-373-5963 ?
the code to Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson's punch out?
Even if it was 1000 times as powerful, we'd probably still end up watching crap pre-rendered movies during Final Fantasy games.
The only reason I can think of why developers would ask for a 1000 times faster system is if their programming abilities are getting so bad.
I remember a time when we had 4k competitions where you had to write code that was 4096 bytes or less (usually in the form of com files). Coders back then came up with full blown 3D eye candy with phong shading and whatnot. This was in the very early 90's when 486'es were the cream of the crop.
Now, game code is all bloated and getting slower and slower all the time. Why? Either game coders just aren't as good as they used to be, or they've just gotten lazy. Sony's solution? Make the CPUs faster to make up for the difference.
To compound the situation: Game design has just been sucking lately. The very best games I've ever played were all in the early 90's. Games like King's Quest (early ones), Ultima III, and so on, were chock full of content and you actually felt totally immersed into the story. Now? It's all quadruple textured environment bumped alpha blended shadow mapped pixel shaded eye candy. Junk.
My message to Sony: I don't care if you can produce a system that's 1000 times faster. What I want to play are good solid games. Make your affiliated game designers 1000 times innovative. That's where I'd put my money.
All this talk of latency and bandwidth is assuming the distributed computing is across a WAN. This is not necessarily the case. Imagine if the PS3 looks like the PS2 but is "stackable"? Want to upgrade your PS3? Just buy another and stack it on top of your current ones.
As for the real-time arguments, a lot of pre-rendering can be done before it gets to the point of being displayed. The renderer could even learn some lessons from the micro-processor world with super-scalar architectures and branch prediction.
Finally, the old "how much power do you really need" and "what's the point if I just have a standard tv/monitor" arguments: imagine how much power rendering an interactive movie with life-like characters real-time would take. It's WAY beyond anything we can do in the home today.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Oh....wait...
"'Maybe the PlayStation 6 or 7 will be based on biotechnology,' he said." Meanwhile Playstation 3 - PS10 will also be based on memes.
I'm a game programmer and I don't remember asking nor ever hearing any of my fellow game developers asking anyone for "a thousand times the processing power of the PlayStation 2." Yes, we'd always like more cycles. Yes, we'd always like more polygons. Yes, we'd always like more time to make our games. Hell, we'd all like to drive to work in expensive cars and living in mansions. There is a difference between "we'd like" and "we need."
We need better tools to make games.
We need a platform that's easy to develop for.
We need better development processes.
We need to get rid of the publishers.
Sony, please start at the bottom of the list. Thank you.
AC
the PS2 is a console that wants to be a PC, and the XBox is a PC that wants to be a console. Go figure.
talk about irony
I think they got it wrong... 1000x better isn't plausible PlayStation 3. Perhaps PlayStation x10^3 would be more appropriate.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
the code to Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson's punch out?
Ding ! Ding ! Ding! That's the one !
I got it down to entering that code in like three seconds, and Iron Mike whooped my ass each and every time. I never did beat that rapist bastard.
does the second half of the article have nothing to do with the topic?
Microsoft's problems with marketing their product in other countries doenst seem to have much to do with Sony's future product.
You do know the PS2 internals much better than I am.
Can't argue here.
But I didn't say anywhere that PS2 is good.
Actualy, I know that programming for custom architecture is pain in the ass some times (and yes, I am a programmer, not low level though).
The subject is multithreading.
And I do know that there is explicit multithreading in PS2.
Going further, if you write a program that can use 16 threads you can port it to say 16384 threads pretty easy (as long as you have small enough chunks). That's what projects like distributed.net and SETI do, use chunks.
Plus you get knowlege of how to do it (as you said, people prefer to get away without multithreading).
And really, that's the only way to build very fast computer (hence my link to IBM research).
You're absolutely right that the distributed network thing is bogus, but about the 1000 fold increase in power, there is PLENTY that could be done with that, were it achieved.
Photo-realistic rendering - Yeah, the GeForce4 is pretty cool, the XBox looks great, and some of the movies out these days (FinalFantasy) are mighty impressive...but we're not there yet, and brute force would get us a lot closer.
Better AI - Much like the graphics problem, this one hasn't been completely figured out, but brute force would sure help, as was the case with the IBM machine that beat the world chess champion. Some say the team cheated, but the point remains.
Better Physics - There is no game in existance that I'm aware of where I can crash into a telephone poll and knock out power to a grid. Why would this be good in a game? Because it would increase immersion. With 1000 times the processing power (and requisite improvements in disk space, ram, etc), the world could become a FAR more immersive environment.
We humans play games to practice for life. We don't always want them to be realistic, but we do want them to be convincing, and it's going to take an IMMENSE ammount of power to convince us that we're in a world we're not really in, even if we want to be convinced.
I wish Sony the best of luck.
This is the biggest piece of bullshit press release ever. That or Sony's stock price is going to take a gigantic hit in a couple of years. I wouldn't be suprised if this was a big el fako. I mean give me a break.
God, you're even weirder than him.
The PS2 now wouldnt be so bad if it would just have more ram and better programming for titles.
Loading times are horrid when you have to "zone"
between areas alot.
Best title so far that I have encountered with good programming to avoid this is Jax&Daxter.
Kuddos to them. I would love to get my paws on the
software engine and development tools to make my own evil overlord island.
Sounds like nostalgic tech-boom optimism. Sigh, I miss those days...
Still limited by the average TV, cant they only do like 300x 400 or something? some low res. I think they gota release something with a high def res screen or something.....
no point in givin the unit 1000x the power - when your tv aint going to be able to do it.
"that seems to pop up every now and then."
I've got it on a t-shirt, under a picture of a PS1 controller.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
I said `Step pause turn pause pivot step step' not `Step pause turn pause pivot step pause'! Oh, shudder!
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
"True stupidity recognizes no superior."
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
Although, I figure that they're just planning on making one box with 16 processors on a single die.
Cryptnotic
My other first post is car post.
I'm going to hold off for the Nintendo GameMainFrame, their follow-up to the GameCube.
:-)
But you got to admit, the Microsoft X-Tablet is going to be pretty rad too. Using a game controller is not natural for games, so they will introduce a special pen to write with. But the coolest thing is that it will come with Microsoft TicTacToe-2003.
Actually, Sony's solution does sound the best now that I think about it
Amen to that. Outside of MTV Music Generator 2, ICO, Final Fantasy X, and Grand Theft Auto 3, there's NOTHING good on PS2, except for PS1 games.
I weep when I remember that there was almost nothing BAD on Dreamcast.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
well keep playing with your DC then. Sony didn't kill the DC, Sega did it by themselves. If someone can explain to me why they're now developing SW for other platforms, I'd love to hear it...
That was classic intercourse!
If MMORPG w/increased performace as the # of users increase is a possible goal, then I can see the sales pitch now:
(in stores)
"Buy the PS3 and you're buying the power of everyone's PS3."
(once you open the box)
"Get your friend to buy a PS3 or yours will suck."
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
That was not just on-topic, but a lot funnier than the other comments on this article which got modded 'Funny.'
to get 1000x the performance of the playstation, Sony would need to have a supercomputer per console. even assuming that 10% (a high-end figure i think) of the PS3s in the world are online at any given time, the computing power necessary to get the results they're talking about is incredible.
they're not going to spend $2e9 to end up losing money. this is all a hype.
Are some developers so lame that they code their games on harddrives, then run it on CD and find 80 second load times??? dickheads, the CD dont do 20megs/sec 9ms access times. Yes some games are good and do things during load or preload parts as you play....
How about put a few million in development of a dynmaic laser pointer HEAD thats not mechanical, but rather like a laser in a nightclub thats directional.... any way im sure $50m could do it. Then we can have 0ms access CD/DVDs.
First of all, AI is by nature hard. In games, you're lucky enough to be able to compensate by giving the computers a little extra knowledge, but we're still looking at a lot of problems that are NP-hard. There's no sort of computer that is going to be able to broach that one.
Remember, if AI was easy then we'd already have a computer with intelligence higher than a ockroadh's.