Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the stuff-to-poke-at dept.
Yousef writes "GameSpy has an interesting article about a presentation given by Sony's head of R&D for Entertainment. It appears that there are some very interesting things in store for the PS3, plus a complete Red Hat Linux installation for the PS2 and many other toys too. An interesting read."
It mentions RedHat. It doesn't mention the PS3.
It mentions the GSCube, a cluster of PS2 machines set up as a technology demo. That was shown a year ago; it's not a future product.
The PS3 is PowerPC-based, and won't have the wierd vector units of the PS2. Those are generally conceded to have been a mistake. They're hard to program, and required considerable tool development. The competitive effect was that for the first year, PS2 games sucked. (The Xbox is more vanilla; it's basically a PC running Win2K with a GeForce 3, which simplifies development. I know people who had to port a physics engine to the PS2 vector units. Not fun.)
Sony IBM & Toshiba Cell Chip Technology Info
by
HanzoSan
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Sony Cell technology NEWS IBM, Sony, and Toshiba announced a partnership today in Tokyo to develop new, faster, smaller chips code-named Cell. Over the next 5 years the companies will spend US$400 million to break the 0.10 micron barrier. Cell chips will be targeted for use in high-speed Internet access and network-based computing.
Sony Computer Entertainment (the gaming folks) is the Sony division involved in the partnership, and it already has working arrangements with Toshiba--the two companies formed a joint venture to design and produce the PlayStation 2's chip. Adding IBM to the mix helps all three companies reduce development costs... and Sony also gets to license IBM's 0.10 micron processing technology, which will probably be used in the PlayStation 3 (PS2 chips are currently at 0.18 and 0.25 microns, though Sony has announced a move to 0.13 micron technology) and other upcoming devices from Sony Computer Entertainment. Development work on the new Cell chips will take place in an Austin, Texas IBM facility and will eventually be produced at a new IBM fab in East Fishkill, New York, slated for completion next year.
IBM will also announce today that it is joining the Extreme Ultra Violet Consortium, another group working to shrink micron processes. Industry watchers think IBM's move may help boost the EUV technology's chances of success.
-- If you use Linux, please help development ofAutopac
Re:Distributed PS* computing
by
silkySlim
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I got to play with the GSCube first hand last year. It is essentially 16 PS2's in a single box. The workload is distributed by dividing the screen up into tiles and having a PS2 dedicated to rendering 1/16th of the screen. Distributing this workload over a network sounds a little far fetched to me.
FWIW, the Dreamcast used this "tile based" rendering as well.
Re:PS2 and PS3 processors
by
Decimal
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Today we have Linux distros running from a single CD, without HD install at all. And the processors used in these PS are very fast.
The PS2 uses a CPU that runs at 300 MHz. Would you scoff at an ad in the paper that is selling a "very fast" x86 machine at 300 HMz these days? I would.
Console CPUs at lower speeds than PCs used to have higher performance because they were customised for gaming. That's becoming less and less true as newer consoles come out that are closer relatives to PCs.
Now the hardware to handle graphics runs quite a bit faster. And we can expect the PS3 CPU to be "very fast". But is a 300 MHz PS2 processor really all that amazing as compared to a 200 MHz Dreamcast processor?
Re:PS2 and PS3 processors
by
Bloody+Bastard
·
· Score: 3, Informative
MHz is not everything. The number of instructions executed by cycle (IPC) and the number of pipeline stages are very important. For example, if a processor can delivery 10 IPC with a 200 MHz clock and another processor delivery 1 IPC with a 1 GHz, which one is the fastest? (a) The first one (right answer) (b) The second one (c) The CowboyNeal one
Of course it is not so simple, but just to think about: how do you compare an Athlon 1.6 GHz to a Pentium 4 at 2 GHz?
Re:Sony, Toshiba & IBM are creating an OS
by
newbiescum
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The irony is that the PS2 does have firewire/usb ports, expansion slots for a hard drive, network addons, and the ability to hook up to CRT monitors (don't know about LCDs). The PS2 Linux Kit available for preorder will basically be a desktop computer. It's already out in Japan, and you can do quite a few things with it if you are dedicated. Want to play MP3s, type up documents, use external CD burners/hard disks (via USB), use it as a NFS server/client, program games for it, or browse the web? It's pretty much all there.
As for buying a computer, the majority of people hardly upgrade anything more than RAM and maybe a hard disk, so a console could conceivably be the next wave of computers. It sure would make programming "easier" with a non-moving hardware platform much like how Apple's computers are.
Origin of the PowerPC
by
Fnord
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Actually the PowerPC is a processor designed by IBM for their RS/6000 class of machines. When apple decided to base macs off of them IBM gave motorola a licence to manufacture them for apple. Until the G4 the mac/motorola versions were direct copies of the IBMs (603 and 604 were models of RS/6000 and the G3 was actually a direct copy of the IBM Power 750). The G4 however was the first branch that motorola made (altivec was completely their creation). At the same time IBM was developing the Power4 which is completely different. The whole infamous screwup didn't lead ibm to make the g4s, it prompted apple to consider the Power4 to be the G5 (nothing has come of it yet).
Slashdot Mirror
The PS3 is PowerPC-based, and won't have the wierd vector units of the PS2. Those are generally conceded to have been a mistake. They're hard to program, and required considerable tool development. The competitive effect was that for the first year, PS2 games sucked. (The Xbox is more vanilla; it's basically a PC running Win2K with a GeForce 3, which simplifies development. I know people who had to port a physics engine to the PS2 vector units. Not fun.)
Sony Cell technology
... and Sony also gets to license IBM's 0.10 micron processing technology, which will probably be used in the PlayStation 3 (PS2 chips are currently at 0.18 and 0.25 microns, though Sony has announced a move to 0.13 micron technology) and other upcoming devices from Sony Computer Entertainment. Development work on the new Cell chips will take place in an Austin, Texas IBM facility and will eventually be produced at a new IBM fab in East Fishkill, New York, slated for completion next year.
NEWS
IBM, Sony, and Toshiba announced a partnership today in Tokyo to develop new, faster, smaller chips code-named Cell. Over the next 5 years the companies will spend US$400 million to break the 0.10 micron barrier. Cell chips will be targeted for use in high-speed Internet access and network-based computing.
Sony Computer Entertainment (the gaming folks) is the Sony division involved in the partnership, and it already has working arrangements with Toshiba--the two companies formed a joint venture to design and produce the PlayStation 2's chip. Adding IBM to the mix helps all three companies reduce development costs
IBM will also announce today that it is joining the Extreme Ultra Violet Consortium, another group working to shrink micron processes. Industry watchers think IBM's move may help boost the EUV technology's chances of success.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I got to play with the GSCube first hand last year. It is essentially 16 PS2's in a single box. The workload is distributed by dividing the screen up into tiles and having a PS2 dedicated to rendering 1/16th of the screen. Distributing this workload over a network sounds a little far fetched to me.
FWIW, the Dreamcast used this "tile based" rendering as well.
Today we have Linux distros running from a single CD, without HD install at all. And the processors used in these PS are very fast.
The PS2 uses a CPU that runs at 300 MHz. Would you scoff at an ad in the paper that is selling a "very fast" x86 machine at 300 HMz these days? I would.
Console CPUs at lower speeds than PCs used to have higher performance because they were customised for gaming. That's becoming less and less true as newer consoles come out that are closer relatives to PCs.
Now the hardware to handle graphics runs quite a bit faster. And we can expect the PS3 CPU to be "very fast". But is a 300 MHz PS2 processor really all that amazing as compared to a 200 MHz Dreamcast processor?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
MHz is not everything. The number of instructions executed by cycle (IPC) and the number of pipeline stages are very important. For example, if a processor can delivery 10 IPC with a 200 MHz clock and another processor delivery 1 IPC with a 1 GHz, which one is the fastest?
(a) The first one (right answer)
(b) The second one
(c) The CowboyNeal one
Of course it is not so simple, but just to think about: how do you compare an Athlon 1.6 GHz to a Pentium 4 at 2 GHz?
The irony is that the PS2 does have firewire/usb ports, expansion slots for a hard drive, network addons, and the ability to hook up to CRT monitors (don't know about LCDs). The PS2 Linux Kit available for preorder will basically be a desktop computer. It's already out in Japan, and you can do quite a few things with it if you are dedicated. Want to play MP3s, type up documents, use external CD burners/hard disks (via USB), use it as a NFS server/client, program games for it, or browse the web? It's pretty much all there.
As for buying a computer, the majority of people hardly upgrade anything more than RAM and maybe a hard disk, so a console could conceivably be the next wave of computers. It sure would make programming "easier" with a non-moving hardware platform much like how Apple's computers are.
Actually the PowerPC is a processor designed by IBM for their RS/6000 class of machines. When apple decided to base macs off of them IBM gave motorola a licence to manufacture them for apple. Until the G4 the mac/motorola versions were direct copies of the IBMs (603 and 604 were models of RS/6000 and the G3 was actually a direct copy of the IBM Power 750). The G4 however was the first branch that motorola made (altivec was completely their creation). At the same time IBM was developing the Power4 which is completely different. The whole infamous screwup didn't lead ibm to make the g4s, it prompted apple to consider the Power4 to be the G5 (nothing has come of it yet).