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. "

Comments

How would this work?

[martinmcc]

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.

it's not the net, dude.

[s4m7]

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.

Re:it's not the net, dude.

[Alsee]

I think the intent of the distributed network is to handle background events in a large shared world. I describe it in this post.

On the other hand when someone is playing a multiplayer card game for example, 99.9% of the cycles and network connection are going to complete waste. It would make sense to use the excess to sell distributed processing. It could eaily make the game network a free service rather than a pay-for-play service. Heck, they could potentially let you earn credit of some sort. Leave your PS3 hooked up to the network during your vacation and come home to a pre-release coupon. 10% off on a hot new game - and get to start playing it 2 weeks before it is even available in stores.

how are they going to sell these cycles to other companies? especially since these cycles would not be sony's to sell - but mine.

Whenever you play a game they have full control of your cycles. Whenever you connect to their netork they have full control over all the data you upload and download. They could do anything they like without telling you, but it would probably be safer for them to include some wording in the licence about it - "by connecting to our game network you agree to receive, process, and transmit distributed network data".

if the memory bandwidth is so great, yet the network bandwidth is so pitiful - how does that make it a suitable topology for distributed sellable bandwidth/cycles?

For graphics you are moving huge amounts of data, but you have to update the screen several times a second. A distibuted network is useless for this kind of data.

For some projects you only need to send/recieve a few hundred or a few thousand bytes, but they can take an hour to process. Seti signal analysis or molecular protine folding problems for example. Distributed networks are great for these kinds of problems.

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Re:distributed?

[HanzoSan]

Broadband? We would need fibre optic, gig per second kinda speeds.

Also even with these kinds of speeds, how would you keep a game in sync? what about errors? how would you save? distributed too? What would keep me from cheating by worse, using the PS3 to bypass the SSSCA law and use it as a computer to share my mp3s?

Re:Chip MultiProcessors?

[chrysrobyn]

Imagine how many MIPS 4K cores you can fit in 300mm^2 in 4-5 years.

AAAAAAAH! This is my livlihood. 300mm^2 makes me scream. If you think the average consumer will be able to afford a game console that has a CPU that's 17mm on a side, I want your credit rating. Are you related to the guy whose name appears to be "Object of Envy"?

Half that size isn't bad. If you had mentioned about cramming CPUs into 150mm^2 or even 100mm^2 (I think the Game Cube processor is below 50mm^2), that would have been more realistic.

Sony has some problems.

[Iron Chef Japan]

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.