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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.'"
"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 will the principled slashdotters put their money with their mouths are and not buy a PS3?
Or a PS2, as there's been Rambus tech in there from day 1.
Can be found here.
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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."
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.
Rambus patent bitching is soooo 2001. All the cool Slashdotters are now bitching about In Soviet Russia jokes.
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.
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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!
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.
Sony is my Dark Master. I bow to the whim of Sony. Rambus is good. You will use Rambus or you will be destroyed! Sony has spoken.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I'll just wait until the PlayStation 9 comes out.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
"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
...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
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.
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.
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.
"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
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).
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.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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
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).
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Instead, the USB is used only for the force feedback wheel, keyboard, mouse, and maybe ethernet IIRC? The 1394 is even worse, it's used only for the little-used networking function in the PS2 (At least GT3:A-Spec uses it.) Sony missed the boat entirely. Obviously microsoft gets it, XP Media Center edition don't ya know. The next xbox will be running that, I'm sure, at least it will multiboot to it if nothing else. Why doesn't Sony get it?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"