Slashdot Mirror
Sony Says Nobody Will Ever Use All the Power of a PS3
Tighthead Prop writes "Sony executive Phil Harrison has made some brash comments about the Cell processor and the PlayStation 3. Harrison says that the current PS3 game lineup is using less than half of the machines power, adding that 'nobody will ever use 100 percent of its capacity.' Is he right? 'The major reason Harrison wants to hype up the "unlimited" potential of the PS3's architecture is to downplay comparisons between games running on Sony's console and Microsoft's Xbox 360. The two systems are not completely dissimilar: they both contain a PowerPC core running at 3.2 GHz, both have similarly-clocked GPUs, and both come with 512 MB of RAM.'"
Something about 640k of RAM...
There's not going to be that many games coming out?
I'm not sure this is something I would want to brag about. If you made the system so complex that it was impossible to use to its fullest potential, then why did you make it so complex and/or powerful? Sounds like admitting to a lot of wasted effort.
Nice work Anonymous Coward, two small problems. You've obviously never heard of the "dual layer DVD", something which has been in common use for a very long time. It has 8.5GB storage capacity. You've also obviously managed to avoid every single article, of the hundreds out there, which all point out 1 thing. The cell does not have 8 cores. It has 1 core and 7 SPEs. The Xbox 360 on the other hand has 3 cores. I take it you're looking forward to your "real time rendered, Toy-story quality graphics" on your PS3 just like you were when the PS2 came out? Get off my internet.
I for one welcome our new, vastly inefficient, overpriced, Linux-running overlords.
(Sorry. I couldn't help it.)
The PS2-PS3 generation was six years (Oct 2000 - Nov 2006). If you count the Dreamcast, the last-gen started in Sept 99 and ended in Nov 05 with the 360 - still six years. The NES came out in October of 85, the SNES in August of 91 - less than six years. The N64 came out Sep 96, the Game Cube in Nov. 01 - a little over five years, and five years again until the Wii. The console generations are as long as they've ever been. There's more games available for the PS and PS2 than any other console. And if you're wary about buying crappy accessories, those have always been around. ROB the Robot, Super Scope Six, The SNES mouse, the N64 and Dreamcast Microphones (at least they came with the game), the Dreamcast's fishing controller, DDR mats, Guitar Hero, etc. Nothing is different, except now with the Wii game developers will move gimmick development over to the system that has all those capabilities built in so less money is wasted on 1-game peripherals.
How can a game be "in development" if the developer is still TBD?
From a modern hardware perspective you never use ALL of a systems power at the same time but that does not mean you can replace any one component without lowering overall performance. All systems have at least one bottleneck, but most games encounter more than one, so you may be limited by the CPU, System bus, and then GPU. Which means beefing up any one component would not be worth it without beefing up several.
Think of it this way replacing 4mb L2 cash with 4 GB L2 cache would speed up most games, however spending that money on several components would be a better use for that same cash. The PS3 is designed to be flexible so you can use the cell to speed up rendering or AI as needed But that flexibility comes at the price of complexity, thus first gen games are using ~50% of the systems capabilities. However games will probably never use more than 80-90% of the systems resources at the same time so the graphics will get better they will not become twice as good.
PS: 3 games may all use 90% of the systems capabilities, but they will probably not use the same 90%.