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Distributed Playstation

Posted by Hemos on from the concatenate-two-buzzwords dept.

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. "

16 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Playstation 3? It's already out!! by Indras · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  2. Fantastic! by BoBaBrain · · Score: 4, Funny

    Does this mean we can look forward to playing "CORBA Command"?

    --
    I am a Karma Library.
  3. How the dialogue really went... by gowen · · Score: 5, Funny
    Apparently the game developers are asking for a 1000 times performance increase...

    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.
    1. Re:How the dialogue really went... by poemofatic · · Score: 5, Funny

      I think in this case, the phrase is "Moore Hookers".

      --

      When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.

  4. Sony Hype Machine by Spankophile · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Editorial math? by skippy5066 · · Score: 4, Funny

    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

  6. How would this work? by martinmcc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. it's not the net, dude. by s4m7 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
  8. Doesn't make sense... by Ami+Ganguli · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  9. Dumb by rho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  10. I can see it now.. by dimer0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  11. Chip MultiProcessors? by Erich · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Generating fast traditional processors is getting harder and harder to do. Look how fast a P4 is compared to a P3 or a P2, in terms of actual performance per transistor count. It sucks. In fact, per transistor count, smaller, simpler chips (386) do better. Since most of the performance improvement in chips comes from process migration instead of architecture (386s would run a lot faster in a .13 micron process...) one idea is to put a bunch of simple processors on a single chip.

    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

  12. Comes from current PS2 architecture by iamr00t · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Comes from current PS2 architecture by voronoi++ · · Score: 5, Informative

      Err, the reasons the PS2 is hard to work with is:

      1) Poor tools
      2) Arcane DMA alighnent issues
      3) Misguided selection of VU integer instructions
      (no imul, you have to jump through hoops to do xor, only 16bit, yet flags are in the upper 16bits)
      4) Hard to singlestep the VUs
      5) Very limited blending modes in the GS
      6) Very limited iterator precision in the GS
      7) No hardware clipping
      8) Wierd GS rules where rendering horizontal triangles is much slower than large vertical ones
      9) Non perspective correct iterated vertex colour
      10) Limited vram
      11) 1.0 * 1.0 == 0.999999999 in the VUs

      I.e. it's cheap and flawed (but hey that's a challenge and some people seem to like it)

      Then you go

      "It's really a whole new way to program."

      You are not a programmer are you? Didn't think so.

      "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)."

      What are you talking about? I can't possibly imagine why you would want 16 threads in PS2 game.
      Genrally CPU multi threadding is quite costly. Most games are written to run at a solid 60fps*, so you can often get away with out multithreadding
      stuff like the AI, the Renderer or some trickle loader.

      BTW The only console that really had seriously multi-thredded games was the N64.

      * Due to field rendering you have 2x the fillrate (and more vram) at 60fps than at 30fps. Dropping to 30fps is bad!

  13. Re:How the dialogue SHOULD HAVE gone... by RFC959 · · Score: 5, Funny
    Developers: We want a 1000 times speed increase
    Marketing guys: Yeah, and we want a 1000 times raise and an office 1000 times as big. Get bent.

    Hardware guys: *kick the developers in the nerts* Give us games 1000 times better and we'll think about it, you pathetic freaks.

  14. Very interesting Microsoft quote by Jeppe+Salvesen · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The lead developer for "Microsoft's Xbox Advanced Technology Group", Pete Isensee, said something interesting:
    "Microsoft has this stigma about not getting it right until version three. 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."
    What is the implicit message? I would say : "As long as we have direct, real competition, we will produce quality products on time"
    --

    Stop the brainwash