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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. "
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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?
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?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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!!!! ; )
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
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.
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. ????
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.
"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.
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
... 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.
Use pictograms. They are much more intuitive.
No, they're not. Icons (with VERY few exceptions) are only obvious after they've been explained. If the icons are good, and there aren't too many of them, you need to explain them only once. Try to replace everything with icons (which you're going to have to do if you want no localization problems), you end up with way too many icons for anyone to remember. Do you know (without looking at the tooltip) what every single icon in say, Word is for? Didn't think so.
Also, icons don't completely solve the localization problem. Images (especially the abstract drawings used in icons) can have different meanings in different cultures.
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 don't think they are talking about distributed computing like Seti@Home. The article said they have been working with IBM. That leads me to believe they are going to put mulitple "systems" in one case and do distributed computing in that fashion.
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
No, no, no. What they're doing is linking your system to a thousand other Playstation 3's over the Internet. Unfortunately, in the test runs conducted so far, researchers keep ending up with hundreds of beautifully rendered frames five minutes later and in no particular order.
On the downside, the EULA for the PS3 now requires you to keep the machine on 24/7, and requires you to change disks occasionally so that it can crunch numbers for other games. If you do not have the game requested, you're required to go buy it.
Sorry, but this sounds like either a truly horrible idea, an attempt at cashing in on a hot buzzword, or (most likely) both.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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.
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.
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.
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.
The phrase 'not bother optimising anything' springs to mind.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
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.
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
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.
Why 1000x? Is this anything other than an a number they just pulled out of their ass?
Q
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.
So, what is all the extra performance for?
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Thanks, that was a very interresting article. It will be interresting to see how the blue gene project turns out... 1 petaflop... *drool*.. And I have to do with a puny 0.5 teraflop at work... :(
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
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.
Did you read the article.
Moore's law says double in approximately 18 months, and they are after a 1000 times increase, but I highly doubt exactly 1000.