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PS3 Cell Processor 'Broken'?
D-Fly writes "Charlie Demerijian at the Inquirer got a look at some insider specs on the PS3, and says, Sony screwed up big time with the Cell processor; the memory read speed on the current Devkits is something like 3 orders of magnitude slower than the write speed; and is unlikely to improve much before the ship date. The slide from Sony pictured in the article is priceless: 'Local Memory Read Speed ~16Mbps, No this isn't a Typo.' Demerjian says when the PS3 comes out a full year after the XBox360, it's still going to be inferior: 'Someone screwed up so badly it looks like it will relegate the console to second place behind the 360.'" This is the Inquirer, so take with a grain of salt. Just the same, doesn't sound too good for Sony or IBM.
there is no point in judgin a dev kit. x360 kits were shitty too.
[chinese democracy starts now
I'm aware that, in the past, The Inquirer has published questionable articles. However, they've certainly got a revealing picture to back it up here...unless they're outright lying and they photoshopped something, why should we take this story with a grain of salt?
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
So what is the difference between the local memory 16MB/s and the main memory 25GB/s 'reading'?
I assume the local memory is not going to be used much for 'reading' and only main memory is going to be used.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Ah well, it's nothing a complete recall and price increase can't fix...
No it means the Inquirer is the digital equlivant of a rag.
The subject says it all. It's getting really tedious. Why just not wait for the release and then make comments?
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The "Local Memory" is the memory attached to the RSX.
That the read performance for the Cell from this memory is dreadful is no surprise. This is exactly the same architecture that has been traditionally used in PCs. Reading graphics memory from the main processor is usually really really slow.
This memory is where you store textures and other graphics data. The main processor will usually have little need to read from this memory. If it does, then, as apparently Sony says, you just get the RSX to write to main memory instead.
This is a non-story. People have dealt with this for PC games for a long time.
I've been hearing a lot of chatter about how the PS3 is difficult to program for, developers don't like it, Sony isn't providing quality libraries, blah, blah, blah. These exact same things were said about the PS2 when it first came out six years ago and it still managed to dominate its generation of console gaming. And it certainly wasn't true that developers avoided the PS2 in favor of XBOX or GameCube. As always the winner and losers of the console wars will be decided by the buying public, in the US, Japan, and Europe.
I think being too connected to the online debates about this stuff can make you lose sight of what the more average public thinks and bases their purchase decisions on. That's why the only real argument for the PS3's failure so far is the high price, not questions about performance or developer issues.
"Local Memory" refers to the RSX memory. The Cell doesn't have direct access to this, which is why it's so slow at reading. This is also irrelevant as the Cell doesn't NEED to read this memory.
PC graphics cards have worked this way for years. Reading from graphics memory has always been slow as it isn't optimised for this.
That tends to happen when your basically the ONLY console. Not discounting Nintendo but its targeted a very different group of people than the PS3.
This isn't the online IT arm of the National Enquirer, you know.
The Inq isn't always right, but what the do tend to have is a lot of news-breaking stuff that they're (well, Mike) is willing to publish regardless of the consequences when the corporate heads find out there's a leak. Thats' why Mike got eased out of The Register when it went more corporate to form the Inq in the first place.
Those who have been following it for a while will remember all the appearances of leaked memos from Compaq (ex-DEC) insiders who were willing to leak happily to someone of the old school who was interested in seeing how the whole fiasco was turning out. Compaq/HP even started internal witchhunts looking for the leakers.
Regardless, the only real problem people might have with the Inq is they can't distinguish between an opinion piece and direct reporting, or can't accept that while the information as presented might be correct, it doesn't ensure that interpretive parts also follow.
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Sony has a handful of good first party IP, but nothing nearly good enough to make me buy a console just for their games (nothing like a Zelda). And from what I've been hearing about the second part, they don't have the a clear superiority in anything but market share at the moment. My hope is that MS or Nintendo (preferrably both--as a monopoly in the game industry is a bad thing) will eat up good chunks of Sony's market share and force the loyal 3rd parties to develop for somebody other than Sony--thus exposing Sony/PlayStation for the joke it is...
Read my blog posts on usability.
Yes, but on the other hand, the PS2 games don't look anywhere near as good as Sony claimed they would. Remember the claims that in PS2 games individual hairs on a persons head would be modelled? Both the GC and Xbox games generally have better graphics than PS2 games.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
After reading the article, I realize that these are numbers for Cell and RSX local memory. Of course, our stupid submitter wanted to make us think this was the SPE's local memory, and purposefully put a DIRECT LINK to the photo in addition to the article link when he knew it would be taken out of context.
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And occasionally whores for Karma.
First of all, it's "poring over."
Secondly, of the reasons the PS2 was successful, its graphical performance isn't relevant. It's successful because:
1) When it came out, it had (basically) no competition. The Nintendo 64 was way past its prime, and the Dreamcast was pretty much already dead by that point. PS2's coming out was a death-blow to Dreamcast, and everyone knew it.
2) Because of backwards-compatibility, it had a huge selection of games at release.
The PS2's graphics performance *is* disappointing. It barely beats out the Dreamcast, and it can't hold a candle to the Gamecube or Xbox. Has nothing to do with success.
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Yeah, but does it run linux...oh, nevermind
Actually it is a good question, Does it really run Linux?
Is it a REAL linux distro that Sony has made for the PS3 or is it a completly locked down worthless peice of crap that just happens to be running the linux kernal?
I haven't been able to find much of anything about the linux OS that will be used for the PS3, I've heard sony talk about their browser but will it be the only browser we can use? or can we install Firefox, Opera, Konquerer or any other number of Linux browsers?
The one interview a sony exec gave said they want the PS3 to replace the PC in the home (yeah, Microsoft said this about the 360 aswell before quickly changing their stance & Sony said the samething about the PS2) yet if the PS3 OS is locked down to the point you can't install ANYTHING at all then I don't see how that will work out to well for them.
Ahh, so this is the rate at which the Cell can read RSX's local memory? That I'll believe. And I will equally agree "BFD!" The Cell does its work and dumps everything to main memory or the RSX's memory. RSX does its work and if it needs to communicate anything major back to the Cell, it does so through main memory. Makes perfect sense then.
I thought something seemed awful fishy. I thought the slide was summarizing performance of the Cell SPE and RSX, not the Cell's and RSX's ability to communicate with the RSX's local memory. If your statement's true, then this paragraph in TFA is full of it: (Emphasis mine.)
It all begins to make a lot more sense, though, if this is about accesses from Cell or RSX to memory local to RSX. I admit ignorance on the RSX's architecture. I just know in my bones that those numbers aren't for a Cell SPE talking to its local memory.
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