Slashdot Mirror
Playstation 3 Gathering Components
briancnorton writes "Cnet has a story about how Sony has licensed some Rambus connection technology for the playstation 3. One technology is for chip-to-chip communications and the other for chip-to-RAM at over 100 Gbps. These are all parts of the 'Cell' processor system that is supposed to do over '1 trillion mathematical calculations per second.'"
I wonder if I should buy some rambus stock, it's at like 7 now.
So will the principled slashdotters put their money with their mouths are and not buy a PS3?
Just curious.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
"This new game console will do one million cagillion ... billion calculations per second!"
Obviously Sony was sold on the technology after seeing how much benefit intel got from it.
... so cue the comments about how great a Beo-bloody-wulf cluster this would make and how it'll be able to solve world peace despite the fact this is a carefully orchestrated scare tactic to keep ps2 owners from buying XBoxes (sp?)
Thing is it sounds impressive, but will that still be the case when it ships? If it was available now then of course things would be more interesting.
And Rambus: maybe this is their real market, PCs are too much of a commodity to employ their expensive memory. The only 'expensive' discrete component in a PC nowadays is Windows, and even that seems on the way out.
seany
Can be found here.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
Anyone know if they are considering a Linux kit fpr PS3?
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
I suppose this is the beginning of all the hype about the next gen consoles as the current gen sales have started to dry up (post x-mas). There are only visible bumps in sales as various online applications and "killer app" titles emerge (vice city, etc etc). The reality is that the next generation platform is going to be much more dependent on networking and in-home broadband capabilities than on highly touted chip stats. At present there are approximately 12 million PS2's in the US market and about 5 million Xboxs. Assuming no overlap (and we know there is some), that 17 million represents approximately 17% of US households having a latest generation console. My theory is this number is strictly capped by the broadband capabilities of homes. If the telco's/cableco's/wirelessco's don't get the ball rolling all the chip stats on earth aren't going to bust this market open. Even more interestingly, we once again find ourselves in a position where the latest technology innovations are going to be hindered by the binge/purge internet infrastructure roll-out of the late nineties...
I think it's more likely that Mini-Me took over Sony, as the PS3 will be a smaller, "toiter" version of the PS2.
"Anyone for a shmoke and a pancake?"
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
With product sales and licensing fees in jeopardy, Rambus launched into its second life, as a litigant. Starting in 2000, the company began to seek patent royalties and pursue lawsuits against Micron, Infineon and other memory companies. The company said that patents it filed in 1990 entitled it to royalty payments on all of the SDRAM and DDR DRAM ever sold.
Lovely. Let's all go out and throw support to this wonderful company!
Seriously, though, I'm in the market for a new computer right now. I'm looking for a high end machine, but I refuse to buy one with RDRAM. It's just too expensive and not effective enough. Thankfully, you can now buy high-end DDR based Pentiums at Dell.
Rambus sucks.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
what about the steady increase of HDTVs that are showing up on the market?? we are then talking about 1080x768 (ish) and at 60fps... still nothing radical in today's CPU and graphics power, but would you be suprised to see a VGA port on the back of the box??
Maybe if they chose a tile based graphics architecture, they wouldn't need to buy ludicriously expensive 100 gb/s RAM.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
There's just no market for a more powerful system. Game companies are going to stick to the current consoles rather than investing in new platforms whose advantages won't even be noticed. In fifteen years, we'll all still be playing our PlayStation 2 systems.
And who needs a 2400 Baud Modem? After all, text files transfer fast enough as it is? All that bandwidth is going to go to waste.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Will it have enough processing power to crack the XBox key? :P
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Don't you think that it will actually be optimized for HDTV? Come on think a little (yawn) Xbox already has an HDTV version, got to play it at a friends house an a 64 inch plasma...my 27" conventional Tv just makes me wanna cry
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1845
Its great that these rumors of the PS3 are leaking out to get people excited, but we certainly won't be seeing the unit for a good while yet.
Console development is damn expensive (and getting worse each time around), and there is a *lot* of life left in the PS2. Hell, they're still selling PSOnes at a good clip!
I would expect Sony to milk the PS2 for all its worth before updating the hardware (and forcing updates from those developing for it, always a hassle). The only thing that would make them move more quickly is to one-up an opponent. And even then, they may wait; its the games that make money, and there are some pretty damn good games for the PS2.
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
In addition, all this power isn't used just for resolution. The power will be used to render more polygons, process more complex AI, and shift around bigger and more detailed textures.
I won't be happy until GTA is rendered on the fly with graphics on par with the Final Fantasy movie!
The power of the PS3 if properly used won't go to making a more impressive FPS count, or even the more important polygon per second count. What it will do is enable game developers to use movie-quality CGI rendering techniques (or very nearly) in real time.
If used properly, and I'm not saying that it will be, then we could have games in which realistic-looking people (or very nearly) were the main characters *and* could be controled by the player rather than moving through pre-determined, pre-filmed action sequences rendered in compressed video.
With the kind of hardware Sony is putting into the PS3, it puts the burden on software developers to make games than can use it to acheive levels of realism indistinquishable from a hollywood movie or a TV sitcom.
Wether or not anyone will do that remains to be seen. The fact that people will gladly pay sony for this piece of hardware despite being one of the pillars of the **AA's is almost a given.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
While having super fast graphics/processors/etc is a very good thing (after all, it has to last at least 5 years before the PS4 comes out ;) ), here's my own wish list for the PS3:
1. Backwards compatible with the PSOne and PS2. Plenty of great games for those systems still out there, and I still like to play them.
2. Hard drive. This will be needed for the online games (which I don't care about) and add-ons (which I do). While there are games like RPG Maker 2 coming out which use the memory card, I'm more interested in seeing a PC like mod-community surround the PS3 - something we don't have now.
That, and I just don't like memory cards. I must have 20 PSOne memory cards (and most of those backed up to the PC through some third party units). I'd like to be able to swap save games with my friends just by connecting to them online.
3. Built in Ethernet/Modem: I'm assuming that come 2005 we'll still mostly be connecting via 56K modems in some areas, so let's assume that's going to be the case. I don't need a "$10 a month for a central line" - I don't play online that often, and I'd rather just have a few good friends who aren't assholes connect to my PS3 over the 'Net to play.
4. With the Ethernet/Modem, I want a CDDB system for my CD's to store them on the HDD.
5. And, of course, I want a Linux disk to be orderable with the system - just for those of us who like to tinker.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Remember the cinematic effects rendering and the 'groundbreaking emotion engine' in the PS2 up till its launch? And then it barely leapfrogged the Dreamcast in terms of performance.
It was actually *much* better than the Dreamcast, but it required a different mindset in order to work with the hardware. The graphics hardware in the Dreamcast was very similar to that of the PC, whereas that of the PS2 was much stranger to the uninitiated.
Here's hoping that Sony funnels a reasonable percentage of the PS3's power toward making thing headache-free for developers, instead of even more complex.
>> I suppose one day there will be a console which can actually run HDTV
Yes, and that console will be called XBox or GameCube. Both support HDTV 720p and 1080i. Rogue Leader, IIRC, was the first game to be wholly rendered in HDTV resolution, but it of course plays just fine on my ancient TV.
NTSC TV, btw is a pseudo-512x384 resolution - analog, dont ya know. A hi-res image actually looks better than a resolution matching image because it constantly rescans and kind of achieves a 'built-in' antialiasing effect.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Microsoft announced the up and coming YBOX. Based on the intel platform, and manufactured by Dell, it will perform 2 trillion calculations per second, and will be marketed by Steve.....Dude..yer gettin a dell.
I'll just wait until the PlayStation 9 comes out.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
You're from N. America aren't you? I remember visiting the UK 3 or 4 years ago and seeing the plethora of wide screen TVs available. I'm sure more than half of the TVs sold there today are letterbox shaped, which is of course higher resolution. PAL is higher resolution than NTSC anyway, by about 100 lines. Europe is very Playstation friendly.
On top of that, this is aimed at several years from now and suspect it is expected to have a probable lifetime of at least 5 years. By then HDTV might be more commonplace. My XBox is HD capable, although I don't think any games are currently doing more than 480p, although they could go for 1080i.
"Cell, which is expected to come out in late 2004 or early 2005"..."will have the ability to do north of 1 trillion mathematical calculations per second, roughly 100 times more than a single Pentium 4 chip running at 2.5GHz."
- First off I don't know if I like the fact that the word "north" was put in there - IMHO I think the wording could have been better.
Anyway my initial impression was "Cool in 1 -2 years there will be a new PS console as long as it stays backwards compatible like the PS2 I should be alright" but then I started thinking - with the Linux Kit for the PS2 and the ethernet adapter etc... the PS2 is really starting to get close to just becoming another "choice" as far as a pc (personal computer).
Example: John Doe doesn't own a computer. John Doe buys a PS2 with all the accessories - and can now surf the web, send email, code, run nix apps, and play video games - exactly what the average computer home user does (with the linux exception of course)
So if the PS3 is really going to be this "crazy fast machine of death to all other consoles" then would it surprise anyone if Sony started it's own line of Computers/Console crossovers? Where do you draw the line on what difines Computer and what defines Console with the wall beginning to crumble?
Ave Molech Setting
Someone doing something worthwhile in the multi-processor field.
Maybe now people will start to write propper multi-threaded apps.
More seriously, this should be great for AI's, streams of N dimensional data e.g. video
, synthsised sound and DSP (think reason), etc.....
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The PS3 is slated to come out in a hazy period when everyone in the US is *supposed* to switch to HDTV, but obviously the majority of people aren't going to. If the PS2 is HDTV-only, then that's great in a lot of ways, but it's also going to limit market. Heck, I have a 12 year old TV that suits me just fine, and I still buy new consoles. That same TV has lasted me through the Genesis, PS1 and PS2 (and probably a Game Cube one of these days).
I could see Sony delaying the PS3 until HDTV has taken over a majority of the market.
No lets hope that developers pop there minds out of the linear programming concept for a while.
A good bit of prolog and Lisp should help in the training, then drop what they've learnt back into more predictable languages like C.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I heard a rumour from a couple folk who seem to think that sometime in February there will be a price drop on the PS2. I can't seem to find any evidence to go along with this, but I've heard it from more than one person, although they didn't point me to any sort of proof. Anybody know if this is true or if I'm being lied to?
do not read this line twice.
Some good games? The past 5 games I bought for the Ps2 at $50 a pop, I returned 3 of them because they were very disappointing. Great Hardware and Fantastic graphics are insignificant if the game sucks. Better yet, how about a new game genre?
Better yet, we could have sufficiently advanced AI that could behave as a person does. A rough estimate of the processing power of a human brain: 100 billion (1e11) neurons, each with 1000 synapses, and capable of firing 100 times/second. That translates to 1e16 flops, or 10000 CPUs at the mentioned trillion flops capacity.
Something tells me we're going to have a console that's really good at counting to 1 trillion. They don't exactly say *what* mathematical calculations it's so good at... or if it gets the calculations right. 1 + 1 = -37, anyone?
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
It is not 24 fps. Period. 24 fps is what is used in movie theaters. Analog TV is also not 640x480 resolution. The guy who posted this comment does not have a clue about the specifications of analog TV and so his comment should have been shot down.
Also, I do not believe "fucktard" is a word you moron.
-sirket
...is if the PS3 will be easier to program than the PS2? My impression of the PSX history was that it did well because it was the 3dfx of consoles. That is, like Glide on PCs, the PSX development tools made tossing 3D games together fairly easy, relative to the Saturn and possibly even the N64. Naturally, those that wanted to squeeze the very most out of the system found the tricks (by getting "down to the metal", so to speak) that would pull off things that weren't necessarily possible through the standard dev tools. This satisfied a great number of developers, as they could get be as deep or as shallow with the graphics as they wanted.
:^) Possibly off-topic, but this is a story about the PS3 tech...
Now, the PS2 comes out and everyone talks about how difficult it is to program for. Sure, we may be past that, but some devs definitely gave the impression of being turned off by Sony's new system and thought Sony had done a poor job the second time around in providing good dev tools. Naturally, the ability to get down and dirty with the hardware is still there, but perhaps those that didn't want to get too deep into the programming couldn't toss off games quite as easily as they had with the PSX. (Aside: Less shovelware might be a good thing for a console, come to think of it. But I digress...) I'd be interested to know if people still consider the PS2 to be a difficult system to work with.
Now, the PS3 is in the works and has this nebulous "cell" technology. If two processors were hard to work with in the PS2 (and Saturn and Jaguar) then how the hell can adding more be better, right? What I'd like to be hearing, if I were a game dev, is not that the system is going to be the most powerful thing to hit the industry but rather that it's powerful and easy to start programming for as soon as the dev kit arrives. If there is a high level system that allows you to just toss jobs as this group of cells and get them to do lots of dirty work for you without a lot of hand-holding, then that might very well be cool. But if every game programmer has to learn to corral a horde or CPUs into doing things in parallel, then it sounds like a losing prospect.
Ok, that's enough. Just wanted to get that out there.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
No lets hope that developers pop there minds out of the linear programming concept for a while.
That would be great, but that's not what I meant. If amazing parallel performance comes at the expense of having to write games entirely in hand-pipelined code for RISC vector processors with 256 registers, then that's not a win.
That sounds like an interesting business model. Buy two PS3's for twice the performance! Firewire them together. I'm sure I know some people who would link up 10 or more for those extra 20 points in the benchmarks... Kinda like what Voodoo 2 SLI did.
You've got it backwards actually. Servers tend to have lots of random access, so they need low latency. Modern games tend to stream a lot of data, so bandwidth becomes more important. There is a reason why the P4/RDRAM combo excelled at Quake 3 Arena; oodles of bandwidth.
Streaming applications: bandwidth is the most important
Apps with lots of random memory access: latency is far more important.
Yeh, it isn't 640x480. It's less than that, once you take into account overscan and such.. 5** x 3*** or so, I think. His point was valid, and it was clear to people who cared to listen.
Maybe he deserved to be shot down, but not by an even bigger idiot. As a matter of fact, the reply was so much more extremely stupid, I felt moved to invent a "new word"... fucktard. English is a living language, you cretin, that means that there is no such thing as a non-word, especially when meaning is implied and a context exists that allows other people (stretching the definition I know, including you in "people") to understand that meaning. You sir, are what is meant when people use the word "fucktard". I only wish I could honestly claim I invented that beautiful, lovely word... how else would I tell my friends about quasi-persons like yourself?
Gamecube does NOT support 720p or 1080i. It supports 480p, which takes no more processing power than 480i since 480i is really rendered in 480p with half the pixels being thrown out.
Xbox, in theory, supports 720p and 1080i, but most games don't support it. Unless it's rendering simple geometry, 720p and certainly 1080i is just way beyond what the Xbox can handle.
I own both the Dreamcast and Playstation 2, and in all honesty the Playstation 2 is a lot more advanced (at least as far as what was written for it)
:)
Ever since I had the Dreamcast the games were slightly better than those of my old PS1 with occassional voice over "blurbs" (like in Skies of Arcadia) - Now take a PS2 game like FFX (whether you like it or not) the graphics are amazing and the entire game is voiced over for ALL the dialogue and the "makeout" seen looks really well done IMHO
Granted the Xbox is more advanced than the PS2 but it also came out 2 to 3 years AFTER the PS2 so I should hope it would be.
Ave Molech Setting
Unfortunately, we've got at least 73 years to wait for the PS9.
By then, I'll be 103. Maybe by then they'll have figured out a way to extend our lives while keeping our faculties.
And maybe by then, I'll be able to afford a nice 1000HP V16 Cadillac.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
1)Limited amounts of color can be loaded at one time...every notice how bland the color is in most PS2 games? Many look like Quake 1, studded in brown, green, and grey.
2)Not too many textures can be loaded at once. Most PS2 games have chunky, flat textures.
Also, the PS2 can't do antialiasing without a huge performance hit, so lots of games "cheat" by blurring. And boy, does that ever get annoying when playing redeyed into the wee hours...
The PS2 in general is more powerful than the Dreamcast, I won't debate that. It seems to have be designed to act as a node for a huge parallel computer (why this was done for a game console is anyone's guess).
But in terms of texture quality, color depth, etc, the Dreamcast wins out. Take a look at Phantasy Star Online; the graphics there beat any PS2 game out there. PS2 graphics are chunky, dull, and blurry, with few exceptions.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Few people know it, but the PS2 is only backward-compatible with the PS1 due to a happy accident. As I understand it, the PS2 uses a PS1 CPU for its I/O and sound processing. When you pop a PS1 game into the system, the PS2 BIOS switches control of all the peripherals over to the PS1 CPU and busies itself emulating the PS1 graphics subsystem.
With the radical changes inherent in a cell design (as nebulously defined as the term is right now), I can't see how they could pull off the same trick twice. In theory, if they managed to do a full software emulation of PS2, they'd get free PS1 support.
maybe someone can expand on this, but I believe for import and export purposes, the definition of game console and personal computer becomes a financial issue.
that may play into the decision to market it one way or another.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I don't agree the PS2 is such a big improvement over the DC in real world applications. You know the real world? programming ease counts there.
:)
If the PS3 holds true to the hype, we could be bruteforcing XBOX private key using PS3!! Now that's fun
"When's the last time you upgraded the RAM in your console?"
Right after Majora's Mask came out and I got the 4 meg memory upgrade for my N64.
Oh, you meant that to be rhetorical...oops
The Sony PlayStation 5, a 2,048-bit console featuring a 45-Ghz trinary processor, CineReal graphics booster with 2-gig biotexturing, and an RSP connector for 360-degree online-immersion play. See the specs at Playstation 5
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
The PS2 has no dedicated VRAM
So by that you mean that the dedicated VRAM in the PS2 is somehow now, um, dedicated VRAM?
They have sold over 20 million PS2's, and it is totally dominating the next-gen console market (For now.). It has the largest sell-through base of any platform for developers.
Well I have always loved the Sony Playstation line since day one. There has always been a sense of dedication and ingenuity about them. The companies that they contract for games, and the games they make themselves. I only buy a few games here and there but they are the games the Sony puts on their Playstation,, like Tekken, Final Fantasy, Grand Tourismo, Mortalcombat 4 and Robotech. Sure some games come out on other platforms and I have played them on others-but it "feels" more or better ( you damn English majors;-P ) to play them on a Playstation. ...now if they would only pay me for this creaking post! ;-) X2
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft make all their money on software sales. The second people can run UNLICENSED software on the system (Ie. Linux, which in turn can run Linux games, or emulators) will make it so there is little to no need to buy legit software for that console. You may think "Sure, but the percentage of people who will do this is small. So it wont hurt." - WRONG, losing ANY legit game sales hurts the developers. If you look at the XBox with it's mod chips, people can put 200GB drives in their systems, stick a Linux installation on the drive, stuff it with a NES, SNES, Genesis, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, MAME, and god knows what else emulators on it, thats all people NEED for $200 bux! A lot of people are buying the XBox simply for that purpose, which Microsoft (And others) LOSE MONEY ON. You can blame this on bad console design, but Microsoft and Sony CAN NOT offer systems like this as cheap as we are seeing now if you want this. They will have to redo their entire marketing and we would see consoles for nearly $500 just so Sony / etc gets some sort of PROFIT by allowing people to opt out of buying their licensed software (Like the PS2 Dev kit).
This is neither easy nor fun. It's the main reason that PS2 games sucked for the first year.
The XBox is an Intel PC with a GEForce 3, so everybody knows how to program that. There was concern at Sony that developers might desert the PS2 for the XBox, since they could get product out the door faster that way. In response, Sony had been telling developers that, next time, their machine would be more standard.
But now that the PS2 is selling well, and developers have learned how to deal with the wierd engine, maybe Sony is more confident in proposing a nonstandard architecture for the next time.
In this context, "nonstandard architecture" means "doesn't run C". We're back in assembly language again. Probably a wierd assembly language. Post-superscalar assembly languages are painful, because they're used only for stuff you can't say in C. Try writing some MMX code to get a feel for this.
Another good use for a lot of math power in a game console would be computational fluid dynamics. Imagine a surfing game, for instance. Or a game where one could be caught by a flash flood.
This has been discussed several times. Sony is huge in home entertainment. They manufacture everything that you can plug into a television AND they make computers. They're big into Linux now that Microsoft has jumped in on their gaming profit shares.
... but I don't think they got very far.
... oh wait, nothing is missing. I'm going to go place my order for PS2 Linux now.
Panasonic was trying to do cool stuff with Nintendo's GameCube
I suspect the next generation of all gaming consoles will be more of an all around entertainment box with all the Internet connectivity of a home computer. The only thing missing from the XBox is a keyboard, mouse, and web browser. The only thing missing from the PS2 is
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Anybody who remembers the hype from the PS2's pre-release will remember exactly how much pure FUD they spread. There will no doubt be PS2 defenders who are going to reply to me and defend every claim that Sony has made, but the fact is (and I've seen the real world comparisons) that the PS2 isn't half of what Sony promised. They made outrageous polygon claims and bandwidth promises, all of which were in better than ideal, and horribly unrealistic conditions, and they were assuming you weren't actually doing anything in the first place (rendering single, untextured, unshaded, flat surfaced polygons).
There will be no doubt the next Playstation will be leaps and bounds beyond the PS2. It will probably be more powerful than either the Gamecube or the XBox combined. That happens. It's Moores Law (which is ending, or so they say).
But the fact is no matter how good the PS3 will or will not be, Sony is going to feed us as much hype and fud as they can generate until we all have a PS3 sitting in front of us (disappointing us).
And I'm not just trying to flame Sony, because I like many of the games I have for my PS2, as well as the fact that I can play all of my PS1 games on it. But the truth is, Sony as a gaming company really hasn't got any more of a clue than Microsoft. They only know how to market something, and it doesn't matter what it is. It can be anything from a featureless AM/FM radio the size of a quarter or it can be a really stupid mechanical Dog. If the engineers make it, Sony's marketing division can sell it to you.
I predict the PS3 will be either black again, or silverish like the Sony Vvega televisions. I predict the controller will change very little (or not at all) though perhaps it will gain a couple of new useful features. Really the PS2 controller has reached a height of evolution that, love or or hate it, is hard to fault (unless it doesn't fit your well in your hands...) It will be a big leap in technology blah blah blah but anymore that isn't mattering the way it used to. I predict that the first year of games will be rushed sequals to PS2 games and shoveled versions of PC games or XBox/Gamecube games that outshined the PS2 versions (this year will be the year the GCN and XBox really show their technical superiority as the developers have come to grips with the systems).
Most importantly, you can expect television commercials, signs, radio spots, magazine spots (even in no-gaming mag-rags), you can expect web-banners, signs in malls, signs in fast-food-joints, and basically all of the crap we've become used to, only pushed to a level only Sony has the stomach to do.
Share and enjoy.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I felt moved to invent a "new word"... fucktard.
Don't hurt your shoulder patting yourself on the back for that one, Chauncey - fucktard has been around for at least 25 years - I know, because it was used widely in my youthful vernacular. It's a compound word consisting of "fucking" and "retard".
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
The Sony-owes-Nintendo-10% story was a hoax.
Hardly an accident I would imagine. Considering that the other game consoles weren't, at the time, marketing backwards compatibility and considering that Sony's money comes not from the consoles, but from game sales. They would have been stupid to not continue to milk their existing base of games and of future games to be made for the PS1 platform.
The PS1 cpu was also a RISC processor. This makes it an efficient IO controller as well as being a programmable one to boot.
Hardly an accident. Most likely planned strategy to garner continued income from the current base of software for the PS1.
As for Cell computing, it is essentially like a PVM or MPI system. Except with the kind of technology they are talking about for interconnects, it would be like comparing a homebuilt Beowulf cluster with 10mpbs connections to one which uses gigabit connections.
With Cell computing, they are just taking the PS2 scheme of using a PS1 chip as IO to the next level. Only more generalized. With on-chip integration, they would save on circuit board real estate as well as power consumption. The system would also be blazingly fast.
The only problem with multiple processors on the same chip die is the cost. :|
But basically, with Cell computing, they would be able to easily emulate the PS2 with special enhancements. Heck, they would be able to emulate mulitple PS2s so multiple people can play on multiple screens, all from the same box.
From their press releases, you would also be able to link up the various PS3's into one large computing unit.
That in my mind makes buying the PS3 a very desirable proposition. Owning more than one might actually be rather cool. >:)
Winged Power Photography
Haha. Then take a look at the last line.. ever hear of sarcasm?
Thanks though, I needed a fresh example to show people what it meant.
Since you can have a different page open in each bank... should allow for some graphics intensive computation, and good multitasking. The fact that rambus can have different pages open in each back lends well to SMP, too, so maybe they're thinking of using more than one CPU?
Food for thought..
Looks fine to me! I've enjoyed many fine games on my PS2. Sure other things have eclipsed it, that is inevitable. But the PS2 does look impressive when compared to the previous PS1.
Thanks though, I needed a fresh example to show people what it meant.
Naw, I think you did an excellent job of that with your first post.
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
Tekken 4 did support one of the HD modes (480p?, sorry can't remember)- wasn't wide screen but it still cleans up the image nicely. Many games seem to do anamorphic or letterbox widescreen, too bad I haven't seen one that was anamorphic AND HD yet, as stretching out the game really pixelates it.
PS2 can do a lot of interesting things (Like software DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1), if only it had a bit more RAM to throw around!!
There was a hoax that Sony owed money to Nintendo over the name of the Playstation. It turned out to a hoax. Here's the full story:
...slashdot really is no source for news, the "editors" are a joke ;).
/. posted their news the story has disappeared completely from the Consoletalk site. Who knows...
S NES+Playstation" target="_blank">here's the query I used.
Sony, Nintendo Playstation story "a hoax"
The Inquirer
Letters Amy beware
By INQUIRER staff: Thursday 19 December 2002, 13:37
Subject: Nintendo enjoys a 10 per cent slice of Sony's Playstation profits
Hi Paul,
Just read your article titled "Nintendo enjoys a 10 per cent slice of Sony's Playstation profits", and noticed you mention don't remember the original story.
I remember back in the days of owning my SuperNES, reading of a plan (and seeing some "artists impressions" of what it would look like) to produce a CD drive add on for the system. The SNES console would site on top of the unit, connected by its expansion port. The idea being, I believe, was to upgrade the capabilities of the SNES, and allow larger games to be loaded from CD-ROMS. The article I read at the time specifically mentioned that the CD unit was going to be produced by Sony.
I don't remember it being called anything along the lines of Playstation, I think it was to be called the SuperCD, similar to the MegaCD add-on for the Sega Megadrive.
I suspect Nintendo saw the "success" of the Sega MegaCD and canned it accordingly!
10% of the Playstation profits seems a rather large amount to be paid to Nintendo just off the back of this project alone, however I do recall more recently reading a related article which mentioned that the Playstation evolved out of this project, and in fact every Playstation more or less contained a SNES... This of course may just be something else to toss onto the rumour mill!
Ben
Subject: Nintendo enjoys a 10 per cent slice of Sony's Playstation profits
Hiya,
Nintendo might well have an interest in the Playstation name. It is indeed true that the original, never to be released, Playstation was a CDROM for the SNES. My memory is rusty over whether it was a genuine joint venture, I seem to remember that Nintendo paid Sony to develop the gizmo (which included an updated graphics chip). Nintendo, for whatever reason, decided they didn't like the project and Sony decided that they did like it. Hence Sony went off and developed a full on Playstation. However, it would not surprise me if Nintendo originally financing/sponsoring the project gave them some right to the name.
Arron
Subject: Nintendo enjoys a 10 per cent slice of Sony's Playstation profits
Hi
Inquirer often reports rumours, but please, you should do _some_ filtering at least. One source in the whole world for a _MAJOR_ news item (consoletalk). News that, if true, would have to be told to stock owners first (press release etc.) and that would make headlines at CNN.
Jussi Lassila
I think the story that was posted on the Consoletalk site was a hoax. Someone sent the story to me yesterday, but decided not to post it after i didnt find anything backing the story up. News that big would have been reported on the Sony/Nintendo websites, or if there was an announcement, in some Japanese newspapers at least. It seems right before
Fred
Subject: Nintendo enjoys a 10 per cent slice of Sony's Playstation profits
As I recall, Sony and Nintendo were working on advanced CD-ROM attachment for the Super Nintendo (SNES) Entertainment System. The name of this device, if I understand the article correctly, was to be "Playstation". No whether or not Nintendo filed paperwork or somehow trademarked/copyrighted the name, I don't know, but if Sony is agreeing with and conceding to Nintendo, one can only assume that there was indeed a valid interest in that name.
Here's some interesting URLs on this device with some quotes (forgive any URL wrapping)--
"At one time, Nintendo had deals going with both Phillips and Sony, to develop a CD-ROM for use with the SNES." - See here.
"It's true. Years ago, Sony was designing a CD-ROM add-on called PlayStation for Nintendo's SNES. After many delays due to contract disagreements, Nintendo's deals with Philips to also make a CD-ROM system compatible with SNES, and Nintendo's change of heart for the slow-loading CD-ROM format, the original PlayStation project died." - That's here. And here.
Google also appears to have these pages cached in case any of them should happen to not load, a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Nintendo+CD+
Will
Subject: the console article thinger
Hi,
Just as some extra info, to supplement the article on Nintendo and the Playstation name⦠I remember reading a while back, that the Playstation was born, through Nintendoâ(TM)s ignorance.
Legend has it (or does it?) that Nintendo originally contracted Sony to design a "CD based console add-on" for the SNES. This, I surmise, was supposed to be the answer to Segaâ(TM)s add-on for the Genesis/Mega-Drive which was labeled the GenesisCD/Mega-CD. Nintendo then refused to have it made, bla bla, something or other â" and Sony ended up designing the console for itself, and the Playstation was born. I donâ(TM)t really know all the interim details (where I inserted bla bla) but I could do some Googling and give you anything I find.
Cheers
Christo van Gemert
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Probably the same people who said the X-box was going to drop in price after Thanksgiving. Here's a heads up, it didn't.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
I seem to recall something about Sony adding a BASIC interpreter to their console so that they could call it a computer.
Might just be in the UK though.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Not really. A good clip is how well the GameCube is selling in Japan, usually around 75,000 units a week. The PSOne moves a couple thousand a week. The only people who buy a PSOne are people who want to give the kids a PS for a TV in the rec room, without taking away the PS2 they use for DVD playback.
The PS2 is nearing the end of its life. For people who only own one console, the PS2 still has some stuff coming out for it that they'll like, but for most of the rest of us the only things interesting on it are titles like Wild Arms 3 and Suikoden 3, which won't be released elsewhere. Things like Medal of Honour: Frontline are out on GameCube and Xbox with extras like multiplayer modes and better graphics. A lot of the titles for the PS2 just aren't as compelling when you have multiple consoles. Onimusha, Metal Gear, etc, are all showing up elsewhere. Why own it on the PS2 when you can have it better on a different console?
As for the exclusives themselves, there aren't too many. Enough for me to justify buying the console, but not too many in general (Devil May Cry series, Onimusha 2, a few PS2 RPGs, Mr. Mosquito).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"Ever hear of HDTV? By the time the PS3 hits the street HDTV should have a major foothold in the market. I'm sure Microsoft and Nintendo's next gen systems will support the higher resolutions offered by HDTV"
Next-gen?
Today I can hook up my Xbox and GameCube to an HDTV. Today I can get 480p (Shenmue 2x, Metroid Prime), 1080i (Dragon's Lair), and 720p (the hardest to do, but in THPS4 for Xbox).
Today I can do these things. Today I can play all my Xbox games in DTS surround, and almost all of my GameCube games in PL2 surround.
Today the PS2 boasts about 10 titles which have some kind of surround sound support, mainly being DTS or DD cutscenes with the odd game (Socom) which actually uses PL2 surround sound in game (it can't do DD or DTS in game). In terms of support for better than stereo sound and 512x384 NTSC, the PS2 is a joke.
Right now, the only reason to have a PS2 is for titles you can't get on the GameCube or Xbox (Devil May Cry series, etc). And even that's not guaranteed (Crash Bandicoot anyone? Resident Evil?). Sony has no strong first-party brands, like Nintendo does. Nor do they have the best hardware, like Microsoft does.
This announcement is Sony rattling its sabre for its PS2 fanboys. Everyone who's serious about gaming has all the consoles, and plays the good games regardless of platform. The PS2 is the weakest, oldest console out there in terms of features and progamability. That's why Sony is sabre rattling. They did the same thing to kill the Dreamcast. I don't think it'll work out the same this time.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"My Xbox's hard-drive on the other hand is about fucking useless. Yes, it'll save my game on MY Xbox, but it doesn't do me any good when I go anywhere else.
A hard drive is a good thing. Big-Fat Memory cards are better. There is really no argument here."
You're revisiting the same arguments that applied to the N64 cartridges (similar to the HD in internal expandability) and N64 memory cards. Memory cards are great to keep all game saves in one centralized device. Memory cards aren't great for things like sports games which track hundreds of stats, games like Morrowind which cache things on the HD, Dead or Alive costume expansions, etc. These are all problems which lend themselves to a persistent storage method like a harddrive.
If you want to move games between a console, use a memory card. If you want to change how your games play, make the persistency of the world you play in much better, or like to expand entire new modes via online support (Mech Assault downloads, for example, of new levels, mechs, and map modes), you need something like a harddrive. A 64mb or 128mb memory card will not cut it the same way a 10 or 20gb drive will.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Yes, and that console will be called XBox or GameCube. Both support HDTV 720p and 1080i. Rogue Leader, IIRC, was the first game to be wholly rendered in HDTV resolution, but it of course plays just fine on my ancient TV.
I think you're a bit confused.
Out of the Xbox, Gamecube, and PlayStation 2, the only console that can support in-game 720p and 1080i is the Xbox. They all can support it theoretically with the component cable connections, and they all can support 480p just fine, but neither the Gamecube nor the PlayStation 2 have enough framebuffer memory to run at anything higher than 480p. It's actually impossible.
The Xbox can run at 720p and 1080i, but because very few people have TVs to run at the resolution and the performance hit it takes, very very few games use it. The only games I know of that use 720p are Tony Hawk 4 and NBA 2K3. Dragon's Lair 3D is the only game to use 1080i.
Zero games on the PS2 or Gamecube will ever use 720p or 1080i.
Rogue Leader runs in 480p. Which is an HDTV resolution to some, since it's progressive scan, but most people consider 720p and 1080i to be HDTV and 480p to just be "digital TV" rather than high definition.
Isn't that kind of what Sun, Silicon Graphics and a host of other companies who also make systems do?
Granted Sun systems do occassionally allow for Windows NT as i'm sure if Sony really wanted to merge home entertainment and a computer into one they would follow their same path and have both a Sony OS and allow for redhat based nix distro's as well.
Ave Molech Setting
Hopefully the PS3 will include an "Antialiasing Engine".
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Take a look at Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast. Now take a look at Tekken Tag Tournament. The difference? TTT has duller colours. Both were first-gen games, and Soul Calibur remains, to this day, one of the best-looking fighters on any system, ever.
Take a look at Metropolis Street Racer, and then at Gran Turismo 3. There is no graphical difference, no matter how much Sony-talk you throw at me.
Final Fantasy X was, admittedly, very graphics-intensive, but the makeout scene you refer to was a pre-rendered FMV.
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
Regarding Nintendo, my beef with them is their resistance of letting go the "game cartridge" mindset.
Nintendo let go of game cartridges for the tv console as soon as discs had a fast enough access time. When the N64 was designed, most CD games were either cart-style games with CD music or just plain weren't fun *cough*Night Trap*cough*, anything faster than 2x CD-ROM was cost prohibitive, and Mr. Miyamoto did not like to sit at a loading screen. But as disc technology became faster, Nintendo adopted it. Look at Super Smash Bros. Melee: when it freezes to load, it's done within two seconds.
So how do you think Nintendo's going to get rid of cartridges for a handheld system? First of all, carts for handhelds are usually handled much more roughly than carts for tv consoles ever were. Discs in such a handling environment would scratched to death real easily. A switch to discs would also ruin backward compatibility with software for the previous Game Boy systems. Finally, spinning a disc constantly would ruin battery life. Just look at the difference in battery life between a flash-based MP3 player and a portable CD player.
Will I retire or break 10K?
First off I don't know if I like the fact that the word "north" was put in there - IMHO I think the wording could have been better.
This is just another example of code-words that the Canadian Conspiracy is using to communicate. This particular reference informs me that the PS3 dev team has been infiltrated by our forces, and is preparing to corrupt the minds of your youth and turn them against you, rebelling with peace. All your kids are belong to us!
--Dan
"The Game Cube was released in 2001, it is no longer brand new."
The entire analogy was how in 1992, the SNES seemed slow and dead compared to the Sega Genesis (released in 1989). This very much applies to the GameCube 2002-end numbers as compared to the PS2 (released in January 2000 in Japan). Applicable? Very.
"The best thing that nintendo could do to reach any growth approaching that would be to focus on the connectivity with the GBA, which is by far the most popular device."
Someone wasn't paying attention to E^3, where Nintendo spoke about connectivity as a key part of their strategy. Zelda: Wind Waker will use GBA connectivity, as will FF: Crystal Chronicles. As do many current games (AX, Sonic Adventure 2, Metroid, etc). Nintendo feels that connectivity is easier for people to enjoy than online gaming (due to reach), more affordable to people (one time fees rather than constant fees), and more profitable (all connectivity games boost sales of GameCube and GBA titles).
Nintendo's very strong. They learned from their mistakes with N64, and they learned from GBA v1. They are the only company I know of which has perfected emulation as a feature (Pokemon Stadium series, AX, etc). Sega has done good work with their Smash Pack series/Phantasy Star collection, but Nintendo is the only game company to release an emulator than has a 2x speed up mode (Pokemon Stadium 2's GBC emulation layer).
I can't wait to see how Ruby and Saphire will connect to the announced Pokemon GameCube game.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Wasn't RDRAM villified on PCs for gaming because the serial nature of the bus made for high latency?
The first generation of RAMBUS had abysmal latency and was next-to-useless for graphics hardware. After being traumatised by trying to get a circa-1995 RAMBUS-based graphics design working I've not looked at it since for graphics apps, but from what I hear from other people in the field the latency has improved a lot since the early devices.
What would Lemmy do?
they could have done the same just as easily with the next step.
The saturn uses a 68000 (Megadrive cpu) as its sound chip.
> First of all missles don't go in a Arch.
Ballistic ones do, but also need minor corrections during flight. And the first cruise missiles were the German V-1s, and were mechanically simple devices (a pulsejet, a gyroscope and some electromechanical bits and pieces). Their control logic, such as it was, is well within the reach of a a good 2nd-year CSer.
GPS would improve both types immensely, as in the first they could provide feedback to maintain the proper ballistic (arc) trajectory, and in the second they could just say "stop flying...NOW!".
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
" and some games do support Dolby Digital"
you forgot "during cutscenes only" since the PS2 does not support real-time encoding of DD or DTS audio (nothing does, except the Xbox which has a special chipset exactly for that encoding). The PS2 can do in-game PL2 encoding, but few games use it. I think this might be what that site is saying when they say, "gameplay is 4.1 only" -- except PL2 is 5.0 (no specific LFE channel).
I wasn't aware that there were any PS2 games that supported 480p. I don't see any that support above that, and there aren't many games which do 480p. I think that's probably the best you'll see from the PS2 ever.
Maybe you don't know what ProLogic 2 encoding is. It's a matrix encoding where 2 analog channels can contain 5 channels of surround information. That's why the GameCube has no optical cable -- because it doesn't use DD/DTS. It uses PL2. The component cables are easily available within Canada -- just call your nearest Nintendo store. I know there's one in Winnipeg which has the compnonent cables for ~$42 something with tax.
Check into it sometime.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"Jesus Christ people, I am not attacking the GameCube."
;))
..." you imply the GameCube is going to fail, and fairly soon at that.
(Note: I am not a "Jesus Christ people" -- I am very areligious.
When you say something like "The gamecube would have to sell much more than its entire userbase in one single year. The market is too saturated for that. The best thing that nintendo could do to reach any growth approaching that would be to
I simply gave you numbers to go with that statement. If you'd said what you said in this message there, we wouldn't be having this misunderstanding.
You say that the PS2 will have good games. I don't argue that (and didn't originally). I do argue that it's probably not worth having a PS2, since most of those good games for it will be out on other systems with better graphics and features. As I said originally, "For people who only own one console, the PS2 still has some stuff coming out for it that they'll like, but for most of the rest of us the only things interesting on it are titles like Wild Arms 3 and Suikoden 3, which won't be released elsewhere. Things like Medal of Honour: Frontline are out on GameCube and Xbox with extras like multiplayer modes and better graphics. A lot of the titles for the PS2 just aren't as compelling when you have multiple consoles. Onimusha, Metal Gear, etc, are all showing up elsewhere. Why own it on the PS2 when you can have it better on a different console?"
The PS2 has few exclusive games that make it worth it. So why buy it on PS2 if you have a GameCube/Xbox? You can go buy Splinter Cell on the PS2 when it comes out, or you could not get a crappy port by buying it on the Xbox. That is what I said: that there is no reason to buy those multi-platform games, because you can get it better elsewhere.
To summarize: Sony has practically no first-party and second-party titles that are famous and popular (unlike Nintendo, and Microsoft with Rare). If you are the weakest platform (PS2), and the best you can offer is third-party gaming which shows up elsewhere (with better graphics, sound, and features), you will eventually fail. Vice City does not an entire platform make (and I really question the logic of people who buy a console for one game).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Maybe I'm an idiot, but the biggest difference between a game console experience and a PC experience is that I don't need four PC's to play a game with three of my friends...I can just use my console which either has four plugs available, or I buy a component for less than fifty bucks to make it happen. Just saying...some of us have friends who DON'T want to spend half an hour to an hour getting everything set up so we can play a game.
I'd really enjoyed Splinter Cell, so I went looking into MGS2:S. When I noticed how choppy it was, I knew that the Xbox wasn't the place to buy it. Ditto for Genmu Onimusha. They changed the play mechanics so much that it's not the same game.
:)
I own the NES cart of Metal Gear, have Solid for PSX (but not VR missions... yet), and Sons of Liberty for the PS2. I totally agree that what Konami did with the port is a joke. That's probably why they've been aggresively dropping the price on it.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2x, though, that takes advantage of the Xbox
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
You just don't play that many games - if your playig a game like Blaze and Blade and have the Sidewinder game pad you can play with up to 4 people on the same computer - as well as if your using emulators like snes9x you can play almost every sports games with multiple people (except basebal for obvious reasons).
Ave Molech Setting
You're right. I don't play that many games, and I don't have a monitor that does better than my TV with games. Granted, my monitor has higher capability, but it's no 27" TV.
I would argue that I'm in the vast majority here, and the distinction can still be made for most people who play video games: computer games usually mean one person to a monitor, while console games equal multiple people to a TV.
It's not "way beyond" what the Xbox can handle. Two examples off-hand: Dragon's Lair 3D supports 1080i and Tony Hawk 4 supports 720p. You're welcome to argue that the games are just "simple geometry" but then again virtually all games are just geometry. Having picked up Tony Hawk 4 a couple weeks ago I can say that it is by no means "simple" with its huge areas and very nicely rendered graphics - while it isn't cinema quality it looks very good.
While it's unlikely that we'll be seeing something looking like Unreal Tournament 2003 (PC) rendered in 720p or 1080i in the current console generation (Unreal Championship looks good but it's not UT2003 with maxed out graphics options at 1600x1200), it's absolutely certain that we'll see something like it (and many others) in the next. The tech is there and it's only getting better.
To put the final nail in this particular coffin, there's really little reaosn all Xbox games couldn't be in 720p mode. While not all would have the full 1280x720 resolution, not all high-def televisions can display that full resolution anyway. With 1080i, even the broadcast HD signals aren't going out at the full 1920x1080 (interlaced) that is possible and virtually none of the "affordable" HD televisions can display that resolution anyway. It's pretty trivial to render a game at, say, 1024x768 (well within the capabilities of the Xbox) and then output it as a 720p signal, which I would imagine is what the games marked as 720p are doing, and you still get a huge quality bump compared to rendering internally at 640x480 and outputting NTSC or even 480p.
I think Slashdot needs to change its slogan to "News for 12 year old nerds."
:)
That said, I do appreciate the irony of being called a cretin by a child who has not begun to master the English language. Your grammar is atrocious. Your manners boorish.
In truth, the only "fucktard" in that entire thread was you. The poster who you so colorfully called a "Fucktard" stated a simple fact and did so quite politely. It was you who chose to drag the thread into the gutter by childishly calling another poster names. When you grow up I do hope you understand just how childish you were acting
-sirket