I disagree. This is the first generation of consoles that offers something other than just better graphics. Multicore/threads and vector processing.
The result will be highly acurate physical modeling. People got exited about HalfLife 2 because you could stack boxes. Pshaw! I want to have the option of lobbing a shell into a hillside to dislodge a rock to knock a tank over, not because it was scripted, but because it was there.
That sounds just like what MS has been saying about it.
Skipping any technological argument, I don't think Sony is going to invest so much in designing a chip, only to discover "Hey! This thing's no good for games!"
"One Cell is pretty potent and will likely be able to handle the needs of a typical HDTV"
One cell could handle the needs of many HDTVs. Toshiba showed a demo they claimed was one cell, decoding 48 MPEG-2 streams using 6 of the SPE's. That leaves one left over in the PS3, or two left over in the full spec cell. Oh, and a 64 bit Power core with an altivec unit.
The cell is able to do those functions. It's been demoed decoding multiple HD video streams and displaying them, outputing a digital video siginal directly. The cell will also handle the 5.1 sound in the PS3.
Details are sketchy on the 360's cpu. "3 64 bit Power cores with altivecs and 2 threads each" pretty much captures it. The description sounds pretty mundane, and is probably just like it sounds.
The Cell, OTOH, seems quite novel, and does some very interesting things, even if it does share the Power core. The published benchmarks are very impressive, though admittedly in a narrower domain than what you might be useing your PC for.
ps2linux was somewhat crippled, in that there was no way to make full use of the platform to write your own games. I really hope Sony comes out with a full implementation of linux for the ps3.
I think a solution for Sony would be to allow booting off of flash cards, but still keep the BluRay protected with Magic Gate. Keep the cost of a game below the cost of a 50G flash card, and no one will distribute pirated games. And as long as there is a easy way to boot your own, there's less incentive to work on cracking the protection.
I don't belive only one person corrected you on this. Sony saw the need, lined up the partners, designed the thing, and guaranteed the sales for the other partners. That's not to say they now have full control over what happens to the chip, but I'm sure what will happen with the chip was worked out by Sony long ago.
The screenshots of the running games I saw looked like ass compared to the Unreal engine demo. That demo, BTW, was running on the actual hardware, not a dev kit. The rubber duckies demos and other tech demos were also extremely impressive.
Stills from the Gears of War demo have been up on the Unreal Technology site for at least 4 months. I don't know what's up with that, but it's a strong indicator that it was not running in realtime on the XBox 360.
FWIW, the last console I owned was the NES, and my PC has a Geforce4 MX.
The cell exists. The dev kits contain a cell, running linux. Sony stated the demos were running on the cell. IBM demoed the cell at E3, and even encouraged people to touch the thing to see how cool it was. IBM has a cell section at developerworks, and has set up an engineering service for potential clients. I think that argument is dead.
You're totally right about the hype machine though.
Sö mäny släshdöttërs ärë ünäwärë öf the pröpër üsë öf thë ümläüt.
Get over it. This isn't german, it's english, even if it came from the german. That's how english works. And english does not have an umlaut, Sie dumm fuhrt.
I was like, WTF?, until I saw "We decided to put this Microsoft-provided information up undigested." Now those numbers make sense. A quick critique;
The 360 might have more general purpose CPU power than the cell, but we don't want a PC, we want a games/media box, and the PS3 has oodles more ability there. Physics, graphics, AI, and sound all can be done highly effectively with the cell. MS is also spreading FUD when it calls the SPUs DSPs, they are a lot more flexible than that. In addition, the SPU's are much more integrated than the 360's 3 cores, with the ability to read and write each others memory.
The GPU is a tough call. Little hard info is known about either, but they are going to be in the same ballpark. I don't think a machine with dual 1080p output (the PS3) is going to lag too much.
Memory bandwidth is also a tough call. It used to be chip+cache+RAM+video RAM, but these designs are different. Again, a machine with the video output and storage of the PS3 is probably going to be able to make use of it.
I do agree with the quote at the bottom of that page, though; "However, hardware performance, while important, is only a third of the puzzle. Xbox 360 is a fusion of hardware, software and services. Without the software and services to power it, even the most powerful hardware becomes inconsequential."
It's not clear that 'neuron' is the end of the story, especially in the context of memory and memory retrieval. The question is, is it deterministic? There are theories of the brain that postulate quantum effects as being important, ie; in the folding of proteins and DNA in neurons. The romantic in me hopes this to be true, because I can't do the math.
It's correlated all right. What's more. it's been known for a long time. It's not the job, it's the IQ. People with higher IQs in a given ethnic group, tend to have males.
CPU power; Both platforms are going to deliver a huge leap in power, but the cell is going to deliver more, and it's looking like a lot more.
GPU;Tough call. The PS3's Nvidia claims "twice the performance of two 6800 Ultras", and doesn't talk pipelines, the 360 says 48 pipelines + USA, whatever that means for performance. Both will look amazing, and I think the killer games this generation will be more about pushing physics and simulation than graphics.
I/O; The PS3 is loaded compared to the XBox 360, built in wireless, bluetooth, gigabit ethernet X 3, BluRay, 6 X USB2.0. And don't forget the dual 1080p outputs.
I think the PS3 is the more desirable, at this point, but things can change. One area I see changing is clock speed. The IBM fab tapeouts of the Cell were running faster than that, the memory can handle it, and it's an easy way to one up the competition at the last moment. Other specs can change also. Price is a factor, but I think the market is different this time around. These are not just game machines, but super-slick-media-p2p-internetworking-entertainmen t-thingies, which bring me to my last point; software.
Both consoles have tons of power, and the software is going to mean a lot in how that is delivered. Can I stream HD video over the network to other boxes? Can I use video chat in games? Outside of games? Can I share media? Etc.
The next generation of consoles are going to play games very well. But they are also going to do a lot more than that. The best use of the built in networking, storage, and HD capabilities is going to come via software.
Although it's a stretch to say that they are written in assembler, many of the apps that Apple is famous for are highly dependent on the AltiVec, and well tweaked code for it. Porting might be reasonably easy (don't forget about the endianess, though!), but porting performance would be harder. Almost all of the code is in Obj-C, BTW.
IMHO, there is no way in hell that Apple will switch to Intel CPUs. Other components sure, but not CPU. Intel has nothing exiting in the roadmap compared to the AIM alliance.
My prediction for Apple; An alliance with Sony, certainly on the software side (iTunes for PS3) possibly extending to the Cell. Note that IBM has said the Cell will be available in many different configurations. The ones in existence right now have a 64-bit Power core + (possibly limited) Altivec + 8 SPU's, running at 3.2 GHz, with some in dev kits running at 4.0+. Even if the limitations on the core preclude this being used for the next Mac, it's easy to imagine a slightly different Cell that would be perfect.
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#2 Wrong. The 360 uses a 3 core PowerPC. The cell is very different. That's why 300 posters before you failed to bring that point up.
The result will be highly acurate physical modeling. People got exited about HalfLife 2 because you could stack boxes. Pshaw! I want to have the option of lobbing a shell into a hillside to dislodge a rock to knock a tank over, not because it was scripted, but because it was there.
I think that was refering to the PDA/cellphone market, rather than laptops. The power/heat figures floating around seem that this might be possible.
Ooooh. Touched a nerve, there, didn't ya? Don't forget the multiple desktops!
Skipping any technological argument, I don't think Sony is going to invest so much in designing a chip, only to discover "Hey! This thing's no good for games!"
One cell could handle the needs of many HDTVs. Toshiba showed a demo they claimed was one cell, decoding 48 MPEG-2 streams using 6 of the SPE's. That leaves one left over in the PS3, or two left over in the full spec cell. Oh, and a 64 bit Power core with an altivec unit.
How do you get twice as evil?
The cell is able to do those functions. It's been demoed decoding multiple HD video streams and displaying them, outputing a digital video siginal directly. The cell will also handle the 5.1 sound in the PS3.
The Cell, OTOH, seems quite novel, and does some very interesting things, even if it does share the Power core. The published benchmarks are very impressive, though admittedly in a narrower domain than what you might be useing your PC for.
IBM has announced that they will be delivering a multi-cell workstation targeted at content providers. (drool...)
I think a solution for Sony would be to allow booting off of flash cards, but still keep the BluRay protected with Magic Gate. Keep the cost of a game below the cost of a 50G flash card, and no one will distribute pirated games. And as long as there is a easy way to boot your own, there's less incentive to work on cracking the protection.
I thought I was reading fark, samzenpus seems to be a new editor.
Laser ignition is not the path to a reactor.
Stills from the Gears of War demo have been up on the Unreal Technology site for at least 4 months. I don't know what's up with that, but it's a strong indicator that it was not running in realtime on the XBox 360.
Anyway, it's not the job of the hardware manufactures to write games. Go play your NES.
The cell exists. The dev kits contain a cell, running linux. Sony stated the demos were running on the cell. IBM demoed the cell at E3, and even encouraged people to touch the thing to see how cool it was. IBM has a cell section at developerworks, and has set up an engineering service for potential clients. I think that argument is dead.
You're totally right about the hype machine though.
Get over it. This isn't german, it's english, even if it came from the german. That's how english works. And english does not have an umlaut, Sie dumm fuhrt.
The 360 might have more general purpose CPU power than the cell, but we don't want a PC, we want a games/media box, and the PS3 has oodles more ability there. Physics, graphics, AI, and sound all can be done highly effectively with the cell. MS is also spreading FUD when it calls the SPUs DSPs, they are a lot more flexible than that. In addition, the SPU's are much more integrated than the 360's 3 cores, with the ability to read and write each others memory.
The GPU is a tough call. Little hard info is known about either, but they are going to be in the same ballpark. I don't think a machine with dual 1080p output (the PS3) is going to lag too much.
Memory bandwidth is also a tough call. It used to be chip+cache+RAM+video RAM, but these designs are different. Again, a machine with the video output and storage of the PS3 is probably going to be able to make use of it.
I do agree with the quote at the bottom of that page, though; "However, hardware performance, while important, is only a third of the puzzle. Xbox 360 is a fusion of hardware, software and services. Without the software and services to power it, even the most powerful hardware becomes inconsequential."
True, but a standard TV is gonna suck compared to the HD. I'm hoping to use my monitors.
It's not clear that 'neuron' is the end of the story, especially in the context of memory and memory retrieval. The question is, is it deterministic? There are theories of the brain that postulate quantum effects as being important, ie; in the folding of proteins and DNA in neurons. The romantic in me hopes this to be true, because I can't do the math.
It's correlated all right. What's more. it's been known for a long time. It's not the job, it's the IQ. People with higher IQs in a given ethnic group, tend to have males.
CPU power; Both platforms are going to deliver a huge leap in power, but the cell is going to deliver more, and it's looking like a lot more.
GPU;Tough call. The PS3's Nvidia claims "twice the performance of two 6800 Ultras", and doesn't talk pipelines, the 360 says 48 pipelines + USA, whatever that means for performance. Both will look amazing, and I think the killer games this generation will be more about pushing physics and simulation than graphics.
I/O; The PS3 is loaded compared to the XBox 360, built in wireless, bluetooth, gigabit ethernet X 3, BluRay, 6 X USB2.0. And don't forget the dual 1080p outputs.
I think the PS3 is the more desirable, at this point, but things can change. One area I see changing is clock speed. The IBM fab tapeouts of the Cell were running faster than that, the memory can handle it, and it's an easy way to one up the competition at the last moment. Other specs can change also. Price is a factor, but I think the market is different this time around. These are not just game machines, but super-slick-media-p2p-internetworking-entertainmen t-thingies, which bring me to my last point; software.
Both consoles have tons of power, and the software is going to mean a lot in how that is delivered. Can I stream HD video over the network to other boxes? Can I use video chat in games? Outside of games? Can I share media? Etc.
The next generation of consoles are going to play games very well. But they are also going to do a lot more than that. The best use of the built in networking, storage, and HD capabilities is going to come via software.
IMHO, there is no way in hell that Apple will switch to Intel CPUs. Other components sure, but not CPU. Intel has nothing exiting in the roadmap compared to the AIM alliance.
My prediction for Apple; An alliance with Sony, certainly on the software side (iTunes for PS3) possibly extending to the Cell. Note that IBM has said the Cell will be available in many different configurations. The ones in existence right now have a 64-bit Power core + (possibly limited) Altivec + 8 SPU's, running at 3.2 GHz, with some in dev kits running at 4.0+. Even if the limitations on the core preclude this being used for the next Mac, it's easy to imagine a slightly different Cell that would be perfect.