Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Hardware

More PlayStation 3 Grid Computing Details 225

Posted by timothy from the or-at-least-hints-of-them dept.
gwernol writes: "Redherring has a good article on Sony's forthcoming PlayStation 3: not too many technical details but good background to the Xbox/PlayStation wars. Sony are touting the use of massively parallel 'cell computing' to get a 1,000 times performance increase over the PS2. This plan, also known as grid computing is also discussed here."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

More PlayStation 3 Grid Computing Details More

More PlayStation 3 Grid Computing Details

Comments Filter:

  • Has to be said (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
  • relying on other playstations on the internet to do 3D rendering for you?

    How is that possible even if there were gigabit ether internet connections?

    I want 30+fps games here not 1fps because at 9pm everyone is playing their ps3 and theres no processing power left to be used
    • I read that as, "I'm a journalist that doesn't know what the hell I'm talking about."

      I couldn't keep reading at that point.

      Considering that I have a Playstation 2, and it works, and is cool, I doubt Sony is so retarded that they'll try and make what was reported in that article happen.
    • Its not quite as dumb as the Redherring article makes it seem. Whoever the idiot journalist is who wrote that (not even worth my time to look it up), he obviously got confused between different forms of distributed processing. The PS3 isn't going to use SETI-like distributed processing, its going to use a large collection of local processors to do its work. Somewhat like the old Thinking Machines cubes.
    • This is just another one of SONY's big bullshit lies that sound cool and sway many idiots to believe they have a killer project. As you remember, SONY initially was claiming the PS2 was capable of a 75 million polygon count on screen at 60fps [nintendoexpress.com]. This ridiculous figure, backed up with CG "screenshots", took much of the wind out of Sega's sails with their dreamcast.
      My fellow slashbots, the above theoretical statement by SONY is utter drivel and will never be realised.
      Anyone have a clue as to how much technology like this would cost?
      That's what I thought.
      • Actually, the Playstation 2 is capable of 75 million poly's a second. They were all drawn at 0,0,0 with a size of 0, and the buffer they were drawn into wasn't drawn on the screen.

        I shit you not, that's how they came to that #.

        • Sounds a bit "iffy", sir (Score:5, Informative)

          by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @07:06PM (#3924276) Journal
          Hmm. That's very odd.

          The PS2's geometry engine is a 4x4 arrangement (16 pixel pipelines in total), so the fastest possible render is irrespective of 4x4 or 0x0. Given that a 4x4 triangle at least possesses triangular nature, I'm surprised that they would go for 0x0.

          The PS2 also doesn't use co-ordinate space of 0,0 to be anything special - the hardware has automatic scaling from an abstract 4096x4096 space into whatever resolution you happen to be working in. Typically (at 640x480), the co-ordinate (0,0) is at (1728,1808). Why then does it matter where you render the triangle ?

          Whether you draw the buffer to the screen or not is also not relevant - you can't "draw" to local memory - it's drawn to RAM with a 2048-bit bus on the same chip as the video processor. There's no reason why displaying the screen would slow that down, so why open yourself to criticism if that were the case. Odd behaviour to say the least...

          In short, I think you're wrong.

          There are detailed figures for different types of draw operation in the GS users manual. The 75 million/sec is for no-texture, flat-shade, no-anti-alias. It drops down to 16 million/sec for textured, gourard shaded, fogged, anti-aliased triangles.

          Simon

        • That's nothing compared to the 42 billion/second i drew in ascii art on the top line of this post.
    • Any network scale distributed processing is going to be limited to large scale world maintenance stuff, not rendering (latency [stuartcheshire.org] issues kill that crack pipe dream stone cold). Unfortunately many people (in and outside of Sony) are confusing this with cell processing, which is really about having multiple cores on the same chip.
    • FFXXI requirements:

      * Broadband, 8 Idle PS3's

      * "Fantasy Freak" status in one or more of the following areas: - LOTR - D&D - Materia Magica or similar MUD

      * No Boyfriend/Girlfriend/Wife (Recomend: Squaresoft FFXXI Divorce Kit). Note: Internet Boyfriend/girlfriends are OK

      * Star Wars fanatic status (jar jar sucks) - Star Wars Stratego game owners +10 HP

      * Active dislike for star trek fans

      * Fanatic status for atleast two Anime series, one of which must involve robotic suits.

      **** Requirements waved for The Dragon Master [somethingawful.com]

    • Re:This has to be the dumbest idea ever (Score:5, Funny)

      by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @04:51PM (#3923859) Journal
      Does the parental admonition "Close the door! I'm not paying to heat/air-condition the whole neighborhood!" ring a bell? How many parents are going to allow their kids to tie up a phone line or leave the console on 24-7 to allow complete strangers all over the world to use their PS3?

      Seriously, either the author of the article doesn't know what he's talking about or Sony's been smoking something other than Xbox sales. I saw Dean Takahashi (the author) give a talk to promote his new Xbox book at the San Jose Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago. I was sitting in the cafe area, occasionally looking over to get an idea of whether the audience seemed interested in what he was saying... but they seemed so dead I didn't bother walking over.

      At the end, he distributed free X-box games to random audience members, and I distinctly remember the look on each person's face as they accepted their prize: "what the fsck am I gonna do with this?"

      • Does the parental admonition "Close the door! I'm not paying to heat/air-condition the whole neighborhood!" ring a bell? How many parents are going to allow their kids to tie up a phone line or leave the console on 24-7 to allow complete strangers all over the world to use their PS3?

        Anyone here on the SETI or other simalar project? Ok, people will leave their systems on for others to use if it's the same type of people keeping it on. Also look at Kazaa and other P2P services, they all rely on people leaving their systems on- which really, a ton of people do.

        The only reason that I wouldn't leave mine on would be if it sucked a ton of electric. 400 watts would just be unacceptable (however for some reason I don't mind leaving on my AC all the way, as well as the 6 computers in that room...)
        For a gaming system 400 watts would be too much, but face it, no game system currently takes that much that I know of- so it's not really an issue.

        As for tying up the phone, I don't think that's gonna be an issue. Alot of people playing PS/3 will be college students with always on connections or people at home with always on connections. I have had over 30 computers at home connected, I don't think a Playstation in the mix would really hurt anything.

        I guess though, that this makes the prospect for the 'mobile' PS3 nonexistant (unless wireless national networks ever happen)

  • what the hell are they talking about? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bigmammoth ( 526309 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @03:12PM (#3923492) Homepage
    this is completely worthless read. IT just throws out a bunch of buzz words and make no sense at all.

    "Buoyed by so much processing power, consumers will be able to interact with these worlds without worrying about hackers, viruses, or lost connections."

    What the hell are they talking about? I want to say some clever comment but I am not so much stupider having read that first sentence of the paragraph that I can't think of a thing to say.

    • Re:what the hell are they talking about? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Buoyed by so much processing power, consumers will be able to interact with these worlds without worrying about hackers, viruses, or lost connections."

      Wow... i already enjoy the freedom of not worrying about hackers, and viruses, and well also lost connections from my fast gameing system.

    • Re:what the hell are they talking about? (Score:5, Funny)

      by tunabomber ( 259585 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @04:41PM (#3923823) Homepage
      FYI, it's a "self-healing" article. Whenever the writer made a typo, the masssively parallel content management system dynamically replaced the mistyped word with a buzzword, making for one superintegrated synergistic media experience with meshed redundancy capabilities.

      • FYI, it's a "self-healing" article. Whenever the writer made a typo, the masssively parallel content management system dynamically replaced the mistyped word with a buzzword, making for one superintegrated synergistic media experience with meshed redundancy capabilities.

        Holy shit guy, you must work in marketing!
    • Um, yeeeah... Something like that...
    • Well let me explain, it's quiete simple... to date console users have been stuck with an insufficent ergo-zoom power feeling when it comes to paralell perpindicular cross-game match ups. Sony has decided to implement a way of increasing the speed of the game sooo dramatically that fun will go shooting through the roof. you'll be able to simultaneosly have fun across a network of PS3 systems. the feeling of the little joystick in your hand will leave you tingling. never before, ever ever in the universe.. has anyone ever come close to buoying so much connectivity in such a fun packed system. this whole situation will of course overwhelm even the most elitist of hackers.. therefore eliminating any need for further security. all this system-interaction will render hacker's efforts futile. they won't even know where to begin. computer viruses on the other hand, are such fragile creatures, that the quick flowing currents of the super bandwidth will quickly drown them out before they can spread. and lost connections! Don't worry! if you lose your connection you won't even realize it.

  • What the hell? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Seriously, why do we need a 1000x performance increase in a gaming console? What additional features or technologies would this allow developers to implement?

    --dambert

    • Re:What the hell? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, it *MIGHT* be powerful to run Longhorn(tm) as fast as Windows3.1(tm) ran on a 386 :-)

    • Re:What the hell? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gerardrj ( 207690 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @03:24PM (#3923540) Journal
      Exactly. What we need 1000x more of is developer hours on the games.
      Teh graphics are pretty damed realistic now. The plot-lines and interactivity of most games is at about the level of the games in the 80s. Worse in many cases.

      Why do these companies continually throw processor performance at a problem that requires a larger but no more processor intensive code base.
      • What we need 1000x more of is developer hours on the games.

        Absolutely. Unfortunately, technology can't directly solve that problem... although it can help. Easy, well-documented APIs make the developer's job easier. Nintendo and Microsoft were successful in this area with the GC and Xbox, while Sony failed miserably with the PS2 -- trying to code for the EE, VU0, and VU1 and making them work in parallel is a time-consuming nightmare.
      • This is exactly what my friends and I talk about. Instead of finding and training better coders, they just build bigger and faster hardware. This in turn makes for lazier coders. We need the guys that used to code for Atari and Nintendo "back in the day" to write code for the new platforms. Games would be incredible because they would be effeceint. Load times would be next to nothing. And then we need some really great writers to create story lines to base the games on. Then we need more artists like Gyger (horrible spelling ... the dude that did the Alien series). Beautiful art, wonderful story, and programmers to pull it all together. What's missing ... oh, someone that knows how to make it FUN. Call in ID (:

        ~LoudMusic

    • Re:What the hell? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Dthoma ( 593797 )
      Um...graphics?

      Seriously, I'm not kidding.

      Though graphics in general have improved a whole hell of a lot more, they still aren't perfect. One interesting area of research is that of how the reflections and light absorption of one object affects the lighting of another/all others in a certain area. Processing power at the moment hasn't yet been sufficient to simulate the global effects caused by local objects. After all, if I have a shiny red ball next to a shiny green ball, then depending on where I put the light source, the red might partly affect the shade of the green, or vice versa. Multiply this by a factor of 10, and you can see why you might need a lot of processing power to simulate this.

      Of course, this is assuming that the article really isn't just tossing buzzwords around.

      • Re: What the hell? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by realgone ( 147744 )
        After all, if I have a shiny red ball next to a shiny green ball, then depending on where I put the light source, the red might partly affect the shade of the green, or vice versa.
        If you happen to have the Fight Club DVD sitting around, there's a great bit in the extras where the FX crew talks about all the headaches this phenomenom created for them -- particularly during the IKEA living room scene. (For those who haven't caught the movie yet -- for shame! -- Edward Norton's living room is reimagined as a 3D IKEA style catalogue, with furniture and floating sales copy materializing in his wake as he strolls through the shot.)

        Every piece of furniture added drastically changed the ambient color of both the room and all the furntiure that had appeared prior. Trying to composite it all over the original base footage of an empty living room in neutral lighting turned out to be an absolute nightmare. And they had months to work on this. Imagine trying to render it in real-time! Trust me, every bit of rendering power the PS3 can churn out will be used.

        Really interesting stuff on that DVD. The wealth of geeky behind-the-scenes materials is almost better than the movie itself.

      • Sure, "better graphics" provide the motivation -- but the difficulty in coding for the more advanced processors tends to work against them.

        By the time developers really master the art of coding for the new platform, it's already "outdated" anyway, and they're just struggling to make it appear as good as whatever the new "latest and greatest" technology is.

        When I look at my collection of PS2 games, I see that the vast majority of the titles released in the first year or so have decidedly poor graphics. (Fantasy of Flight, for example, or Real Pool) These things look like 4+ year old computer games. They certainly don't look any better than most "respectable" PS1 titles.

        The graphics details they're trying to address in new platforms are miniscule problems compared to many issues they've *never* really fixed. (EG. Graphics glitches that draw black space instead of the side of an object when your character walks to just the right place and angle.)

        I don't even play SSX Tricky that often, but I've managed to "fall into" graphics screw-ups twice now. One time, my snowboarder kept getting redrawn over and over on top of a glitching, flickery backdrop that looked like it was stuck between updating two different frames. Finally, I pressed enough buttons that he "fell out" of the "trap" somehow and back onto the snow.

        Even in Grand Theft Auto III, I've had at least one instance where I managed to walk "through" the side of a building partially.

        To me, these experiences completely ruin the game's atmosphere - and are far more serious issues than the fact that some object doesn't cast the right shade of colored lighting onto a surrounding item.

    • That's simple. If you compare today's game with games of the past that were using sprites, we have now less interactive things than before. Take CRPG's for example. In Might&Magic, where the opponents were sprites, you can have to fight with sometimes a hundred of evil creatures. Now in most modern games, you have at most 10 polygonized meshes. Is it progress ? We definitively need more processing power.
    • The 1000x increase refers to the the estimated limits of the technology, I'd assume, not the actual power of the ps3 This is a ridiculous violation of Moore's law and it is supposed to be broken in the other way.

      Expect the ps3 to be out in 2-3 years with about 10x the performance of the ps2, or possibly 20x seeing how outdated the ps2 is now.

    • You need 1000x and change for better graphics. Seriously, the industry wastes huge amounts of man hours forcing artists to keep their polygon count down. If those artists could be freed to other tasks, the quality and depth of games would skyrocket very quickly. Most games made today are not programmer bound at all in terms of depth and balance. When artists can stop worrying about polygon count, you'll see some amazing games.

  • Difficulty not in the hardware but in the software (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Putting 1000 computational "cells" onto a chip is not difficult considering as we should be into the hundreds of millions of transistors a chip by then.

    The difficulty is how to most effectively organize and utilize these units.. just imagine a 1000 machine clustor but on a chip, you've still got the same problems to sort out.
  • Due for release in 2005, the PlayStation 3 will thus be able to use its broadband Internet connection to reach across the Internet and draw additional computing power from idle processors. And if still more horsepower is needed, the PlayStation 3 can use a home network to enlist support from other available machines to tackle big computing jobs. Pieces of a computing task--for example, creating realistic 3D graphics that simulate entire worlds--will be distributed among available processors to harness their combined power.
    Now, there's a thought that's running through my mind. What is it....

    Oh yeah. No fucking way.

    Look, I think the chips themselves will probably be great, and with 500 million transistors, they'll probably kick ass, do massive anti-aliasing (to get rid of them PS2 "jaggies"), and render Final Fantasy XIV chicks so realistic that 14 year old masterbation fantasies won't be realized by the CGI scenes, but by the game engine itself.

    But. I don't believe that broadband will be far enough into the market - even by 2005 - for distributed computing to take off. Let's ignore my own home firewall and the like, where there's no way in H-E-double-hockey-sticks I'd let another computer "borrow" some of my processor power so they can play Grand Theft Auto 5: The Leiberman Censored Editition.

    Powerful chip? Sure. Distributed computing for games? I'm not buying it yet.

    Then again, if the product shows up and works with the distributed net and all, I could be proven wrong, and I have no problem admitting that. For now, I'm waiting for it, hoping it's PS2/PSOne backwards compatible, and keeping my fantasies just to Selphie Tilmitt. (Nunchucks...rowr!)

  • Unfortunately (Score:3, Informative)

    by screwballicus ( 313964 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @03:27PM (#3923551)
    There's no point in pretending to argue against any of this because it doesn't say anything.

    This is like being presented with the statement 'in ten years, men will fly like birds!'

    You just can't say it's not true because it doesn't particularly carry any meaning in the first place.

  • that until they design a system that is upgradable, consoles will NEVER be able to compete with PC's. Most computer users don't by a new PC every 4-5 years just to keep up with the latest technology. They upgrade their CPU next month, get a new video card in a year, and stick in a bigger hard drive when they need it. This way a user is always pretty much keeping in pace with technological advances without being left behind. With a console, unless I purchase one as soon as the new one comes out, I'm screwed. Obviously this is on purpose, but now that both Microsoft and Sony are shifting their focus to a Do-Everything box, they're going to have to implement upgradeability as well if they ever want to compete. Now the issue of using a low resolution TV-set for this will have to be tackled at a later date ;-)

    • Re:When will console makers learn... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RaboKrabekian ( 461040 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @03:42PM (#3923606) Journal
      There's so much wrong with this statement.

      First - it's not consoles that can't compete with PC's, it's the other way around. PC game sales are miniscule when compared to consoles. Gaming on the PC is restricted to RTS and FPS gaes for the most part - games which take advantage of a mouse/keyboard setup.

      People play consoles because they DON'T have to worry about upgrading, or getting drivers to work, or crashes, or any of the other headaches involved in PC gaming. Consoles games just work - the way they're supposed to, every time. And they work the same way on everyone's system.

    • I don't think consoles -do- compete with PCs. In fact, as far as I know, they far outpace them when it comes to entertainment software sales and profits. PC gaming has definitely come out of its niche in the last few years, but it's no competition for the mighty Playstation.

      As far as upgradability goes, doing so would eliminate the biggest advantage of a console -- a stable platform. When I buy a console game, I know just how it's going to run. Moreover, the manufacturer knows the exact platform it's running on, so they're able to use little hackish tricks to squeeze out better results. They can also ensure 100% (well, ideally) stability. If you start mixing up the platform, you lose that. No thanks.
    • When will you learn that the inherent assumption when describing a console is non-upgradeable/fixed platform/known hardware?

      Making it significantly upgradeable makes it not a console.
    • that until they design a system that is upgradable, consoles will NEVER be able to compete with PC's.

      They've settled into a business model that's comfortable for them -- they don't want to compete with PCs. Each console has a 3-5 year lifespan; that's the way consumers like it (not having to upgrade their console very often), and that's the way console makers like it (they get to squeeze as much licensing as possible out of each console, while their cost of goods drops over the console's lifetime).
    • OK, some valid points, but do you think that Sony will price the PS3 at $299 initially? With all those features I wouldn't be surprised if they price it at $499, which then makes the whole "upgrading every 4 years is cheaper than PC's" a mute point. Though if they do decide to price it competitevely, then I agree, upgradability becomes a non issue.
    • This is laughable. I appreciate the sentiment, but the market reality behaves otherwise.

      The console game market totally dwarfs the PC game market. Technology is only part of it, and while the latest PC will always shortly outpace the latest console, the constant cost and hassle of the endless upgrade path is part of what drives people to consoles instead. Console development costs are lower because the platforms are fixed, and console player costs are lower because the platforms are fixed. Over a long period, buying a $300 console every 4 years is an order of magnitude cheaper than keeping hot PC up to date in the same time.

      The real winner would be a console system that's silently self upgrading at no cost via an inherently programmable architecture. If it could double a console's lifetime performance-wise, it would own the market on cost alone.
      • and some people only have enough money for one... am i going to get the box i hook upto my tv to play games ? or am i going to get the box i hook upto a monitor, use to play games, keep in contact with people, keep up with the news, do my writing, do my music and branch out to the rest of the world and gain a free library of knowledge with a phone jack ?
    • that until they design a system that is upgradable, consoles will NEVER be able to compete with PC's

      Heh. That's not true by any means. It usually comes down to this:

      Cost of a new console: $200

      Cost of a fancy new video card, sound card, or hard drive: $200

      Now even if the second is less than $200 sometimes, you get the idea. PC upgrading isn't free, and you still have to chuck your PC every few years and get a brand new one, and that doesn't preclude all the upgrading that can be done in the meantime. So your argument is a red herring.

    • People upgrade their computers? Sounds like news to me -- I know lots of "computer people" upgrade their computers, but I doubt my brother and sister would... (unless it's a new printer, etc.), and my parents do only because I do it for them.

      I doubt the average user ever opens the box, let alone realizes that they need a new video card (as opposed to a faster CPU, more ram, etc). Not only do people not posess the knowledge to upgrade, but with crappy PCs, it's pretty hard to upgrade, anyhow (few slots, etc). I assume that most people who buy HPs/Gateways/etc just buy a new computer every few years, and give the old one to their kids or to their grandma.

      It always amazes me how out of touch /. people are with the non-geek reality that a large number of people live in.

  • They can have all the multi processing power they want. Not having anti-aliasing just sucks.

  • hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by martissimo ( 515886 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @03:30PM (#3923570)
    how many people will really want their bandwidth getting chewed up by a console that they are not playing, so that others can play? especially with all the talk of providers going to a capped model that allows you to transfer X number of gigs per month before incurring additional fees.

    personally if they could even make the sucker work, i would just yank the cat-5 out of the thing whenever im not playing
    • No kidding. I wouldn't want to buy this thing for $300+ and have it kill my bandwidth cap and cost me more money every single month.

      Would it even be possible to develop some sort of loopback device that plugs into the network port to make the thing usable while not connected? Or route it into a dummy home network?
  • peer to peer routing wireless connection between them with wired fallback to ensure the ability to share....have it work with 802.11 hubs and we can get rid of a few big business "solutions" for accessing the internet.... One real problem with internet content is that the discouragement of individual web servers practically guarentees that the data you want is going to be "out there" instead of close to home, driving up traffic.
  • ok, somebody has to explain the reasoning behind these MS/Sony 'all in one' home media things.
    as far as i can tell they want to make a gaming console that will be able to surf the web, check email and play movies etc.
    well, can't a PC already check email + browse the web and play movies? and a PC can already play games!

    as far as i'm concerned the PC already IS the media center/all in one box for the modern home, with a vast pool of development resources behind it. Why are these companies trying to reinvent the wheel?

    • Nothing else to say really. If I want a console it is for games. My PC is my entertainment workhorse. The console is convenient because its just for games and usually games that aren't as well suited for PC. PC games are in a league of their own and I like it that way
    • Why are these companies trying to reinvent the wheel?

      It's obvious; to eventually build a truck and run down disbelivers! Or maybe there are people wanting to play games in the couch.
    • Because the "Home Computer" is something sadly missing from todays market, back in the late 1980's/early 1990's, there were things like the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST on the market, cheap (relatively) fairly capable and fairly fixed platform computers...

      games were written that hit the hardware, and they were quite capable for proper work also (the CGI for the first episode (and I think some of the first season?) of Babylon 5 was done using Lightwave on Amiga's)

      right now we have consoles pretending to be computers (PS2 Linux) and computers pretending to be good value (emachines)

      sadly, IMO, both miss the mark (the cheap PC moreso than the PS2 w/linux)..
      a system that fit the fixed platform/proper computer ideal would be great IMO.. imagine a Gamecube with a small harddisk + mouse + keyboard + realtime OS with assorted applications for mail/web etc. (and the option of installing applications that did other, more interesting things :)

      I'd guessitmate £299-350 for something like that?
      I know I'd buy one.

      Of course, such a thing will probably never happen.. and I happen to think that's something of a shame >:(

  • What about the speed of light? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Maybe someone else can help me out here, but the bigger problem I see here isn't bandwidth so much as latency. Even if they have enough bandwidth to send a super-realistic rendering of the whole world in parallel what good does it do if I get it 20 frames later? Last time I checked you can move anything faster than the speed of light. Maybe we'll use tachyons instead of electrons......
  • Bad in practice. Who leaves their playstaion on all the time? Who would be willing to share their bandwidth so that other playstation users can use their extra cycles?

    It is more likely that when a playstaion is on it is actually in use and competeing with the rest for the extra cycles.

    Add in the issues of communication overhead/latency, parallezation and fault tollerant distribution of computational work, and say security and you have several very hard if not intractable problems.

    I would personally love to see Sony pull this off. However, I don't think massively distributed computing lends itself to the production of near real time 3D. Now if you can wait a week or a month for your graphics I am sure it will work famously.
    • "Who leaves their playstaion on all the time?"

      I do.

      I've had my PS2 (running linux of course) on since I bought it about 2 months ago. Works great.

      I think you'll find the reason it's not yet popular to leave the PS2 on is that there's no reason to. As soon as there is a reason to, it will happen. In my case, it's so I can ssh into it from work :-)

      Simon

  • It's interesting. I havent heard much mention of it, but supposedly Hiroshi Yamauchi's replacement, Satoru Iwata stated in a press conference that ...

    "We can't be optimistic about the game market," ... "No matter what great product you come up with, people get bored. I feel like a chef cooking for a king who's full."

    For anyone interested, it's on Page 26 of issue #112 of Game Informer (GameSpot's review mag)...

    Not much mention of it otherwise, appearently they thought he was refering to the fact that M$ and Sony really aren't upgrading graphics or sound so much as making them "trojan horses" for downloadable media.

    Nintendo isn't really leaving the market, just won't be developing new hardware all of the time.

    Anyhow, now that it looks like Nintendo is voluntarilly getting out of the hardware race, wonder how this will effect Sony and M$ and moreso, who might take the "3rd spot"???
    • So, uh, you failed to quote the part that said that Nintendo is not making any new hardware.
      • The guy didn't say that there would never be any new Nintendo hardware, just that he thought they should be aiming more for better games with current hardware rather than making new hardware at the rate of Sony or M$.

        And, umh...sometimes you just have to read between the lines...take your pick...neither comment seems to be saying "Yea, we have a new system comming out soon".

        It's also worth noting that this was actually in response to a question regarding the PS3 and Nintendo's possible plans for the future. So, in this context, maybe it makes more sense.
        • When Nintendo were setting the pace, the cycle lasted around 7 years. Sony accelerated it to 5. Microsoft have been talking about cutting it to 2.

          This reads like Nintendo would like it to drop back to 7.
          • You're probably right, but if Sony and M$ continue at a 2 year rate, that would mean that Nintendo would be 3 1/2 generations behind by the time they released a new system. Now, it's worth noting that by that time a GameCube would probably be ~$29. As for the 2 years thing, I understand that M$ knows this rate will make it so that noone ever becomes "good with the hardware" so that they are forced to use the peecee standards that M$ provides...which won't fly with console developers.

            But this doesn't make sense, as he was commenting on Sony's new system. So, it could be assumed that he was saying "5 years is too soon", which means he could have been talking about any timeframe, as 7 years is still close enough that they would have to go through 3 generations (almost 20 years) before they were a generation behind.

  • Move along, nothing to see here (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jfedor ( 27894 ) <jfedor@jfedor.org> on Saturday July 20, 2002 @03:48PM (#3923628) Homepage
    It's just the Sony hype machine again. Remember what they wanted you to believe about the PS2?

    Of course PS3 is gonna be faster than the PS2. No, it won't be 1000 times faster.

    -jfedor
    • It could be. This is Sony we're talking about, here. They have strange ways of illustrating performance. They think that rendering 75 million 0-pixel polygons within a second is a fast machine. All they have to do is increase SOME number by 1000x, and they'll claim it's 1000x faster.

      Reality will tell a whole different story. And you know what their rationalization will be? "well, the system is up to that speed, it's dependent on the game developers...".

      One should never believe Sony's #'s about anything. To be honest, I don't believe that's really the Playstation 3. It's only a potential #.

  • If you think the PS2 architecture is weird (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bobtree ( 105901 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @03:48PM (#3923631)
    you haven't seen anything yet.

    In terms of scalability, the uber-parallel-processing-pipelined PS2 makes a lot of sense, and will continue to get more powerful in the future as its software improves. In terms of usability though, the PS2 has irked a lot of console developers because it's an entirely different beast and doesn't behave like a PC when you get down to performance bottlenecks.

    The PS3 and beyond can only continue this trend. Sony hopefully won't make the same mistake ease-of-use wise, but the PS3 will be getting tantalizingly close to the "do everything you ever cared to do in a game" performance.

    The future of this technology is hugely dependant on software capability to make sense of and utilize it. This will be the biggest hurdle, and clearly nothing like it really exists today.

    One of the next big steps may be carbon-nanotube based computing, because it will enable architectures with massive hierarchical processing power and near limitless involatile stupidly fast memory, all embedded everywhere. Carbon (and other) nanotubes will be used for both logic and memory (as well as actual display surfaces), and ultimately be laid out more like a brain than a serial system.

    I look foward having a complete system in a display where you push morphing procedures in one end which ultimately get streamed into content on the output side.

    The networked aspect will be important too, but not how it's colored in this article. Your games will ineveitably run graphics processing on your local machine, with non-realtime and background tasks offloaded to others on the network. However, distributed simulation of gaming environments will only really make sense when players become the content producers and the worlds expand procedurally to simulate whatever ideas of interest their imaginations have conjured.

    Then I just have to ask, when game consoles power the realization of our imaginations, whose world are we going to be living in? [hint: this is rhetorical, don't answer, just think about it]
    • The networked aspect will be important too, but not how it's colored in this article. Your games will ineveitably run graphics processing on your local machine, with non-realtime and background tasks offloaded to others on the network. However, distributed simulation of gaming environments will only really make sense when players become the content producers and the worlds expand procedurally to simulate whatever ideas of interest their imaginations have conjured.

      I suspect Sony has something very different in mind. Sony is aiming to become/team up with a big ISPs like AOL etc. PS3 users get cheap/free internet access, but Sony will have access to the computing resources of their boxen. And the grid will enable them to sell this power to customers.
      It's no secret that all console companies aim for the internet these days - mainly the reason for the X-Box attack by MS. But the average console owner is a kiddy with no money to pay expensive ISP fees. So they must set up for a system which produces profit, but enables Sony to provide cheap access for the kiddies.

  • With the wireless networking push that Microsoft is trying to make they can just leverage an already existing PC platform for all the additional non-graphics tasks that the PS3 will have problems with. That way they will provide cheaper more robust set-top boxes while also keeping and even increasing the Windows software strangle hold on the desktop PC.
  • Why is Everyone so negative? I mean who isn't going to try and get setiathome (and other distributed computing projects) to work on ps3, I mean thats the only realistic application of Broadband based Parrallel computing. My Duke Nukem Forever Platinum Titanium 3000 won't work with a 250ms lag time for borrowed cycles...

  • If they build it, will they come? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @03:50PM (#3923642) Homepage
    It's certainly possible to build a cluster of CPUs on a chip. And you could even implement a graphics engine on them. But more general applications are tough. People have struggled with architectures like this back to the ILLIAC IV days, and they're really tough to program. This translates into games taking a long time to develop. The PS2 was tough; hope in the game developer community was that the PS3 would be more vanilla.

    Anything this wierd will require some kind of distributed OS to manage the thing. (Obligatory "Beowulf cluster" remark might actually be appropriate here.) Operating systems like that are hard to do and not, historically, easy to use.

    The hype is totally out of sync with the hardware concept. "If Sony's aspirations succeed, then the Playstation 3 will not be a pure video game console, but rather measure the amount of milk left in the fridge, record TV programs to hard-disk, automatically download new software..." Huh? For this we need massively parallel computing?

    Note that the last IBM press release on this [ibm.com] was 16 months ago.

    This has to be a bad description of what Sony, IBM, and Toshiba are up to. Those are real companies that do real innovation; they have to have a clearer vision of where they're going.

    • It's bait.

      Sony is trying to bait Microsoft into trying to 'copy' what they're doing (knowing what they say doesn't make any sense). Sony can then create the good stuff, while Microsoft has a really expensive toaster, gaming machine, vcr, and program which downloads patches automatically -- until someone comes up with a codeblue for the patch downloader.

  • Xbox/PlayStation wars? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What? Check magic box [the-magicbox.com], in Japan the Xbox is being outsold about 3:1 by the obsolete PS1!! I mean, seriously, how many people are buying a PS1 these days when the PS2 isn't *that* much more expensive and plays all the PS1 games as well. GameCube is killing the Xbox in Japan, which in turn is being killed by the PS2.

    In the US Nintendo's GameCube and the Xbox are selling about equal (GameCube was selling better, but the recent price drops helped SOny and MS more than Nintendo). Both are far behind the PS2. In Europe the GameCube is outselling the Xbox.

    In fact the worldwide sales of the GameCube and Xbox combined don't equal the sales of the PS2 in just one of the three major sectors (Japan, US, Europe).

    There are no Xbox/PS2 wars. The PS2 is the clear winner. Maybe some GameCube/PS2 wars. Definatly some GameCube/Xbox wars. The Xbox is stuggling to keep up with the GameCube for the distant 2nd in terms of market share.

    • Lets get something strait- It's homefield advantage that's killing the XBox, not hardware. I think we can all agree that Japan is the undisputed gaming captal of the world and it just so happens both Sony and Nintendo live there. With few exceptions, the Japanese is very hard for US companies to penetrate effectively. It's literally hostile territory in terms of importation and marketing, where the US is a lot more leanient in those areas, despite what you may hear. The fuss made over a small batch of XBox's scatching game DVDs is enough proof of that.

      The biggest issue is the games, in my opinion. Not that they are bad (exceptions noted), just that I don't consider them nessisarily console games since the XBox seems to be leaning more toward American style PC games. Beyond Sega and one or two other popular developers, there's not a whole lot from the Japanese side of things. It feels more like a PC than a console now. If the Xbox wants penetration, it's machine needs to feel like a console and the Japanese have shaped a lot of what that feels is for just over 20 years. Those developers need to be a major presence to compete against the homefiled players.

      Of course, MS seems very adept at viral infection of markets. Gates and company tend to have a very long view of their ultimate goals.

  • Streaming games? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This part of the psreported.com article caught my attention:
    The Playstation 3, as well as other applications that will use the Cell, will take advantage of the CPU's "self healing" capability. "Self-healing computers will be programmed not to go down," Doherty said. "Bus and processor areas are automatically corrected using a new meshed era redundancy technology." The Cell's compression engine, for example, will use a multi-processor engine to reconstruct missing pixels or other missing features due to glitches in a
    streaming PS3 game or video.
    (emphasis added)

    Could this mean that they're intending on rendering their games on servers and streaming just the video over to the console? This would make them using the grid-computing concept more reasonable. I mean, I wouldn't want to waste any of my cpu cycles just so that the kid next door could get a few more polygons on FFXV chicks' breast. If I was playing a game myself I probably wouldnt have much unused processor power to contribue, and when I wasn't playing a game, my console would most likely be off.

    What if the consoles wouldn't use their computing cycles on anything locally displayed, but would merely act as a part of the world biggest rendering farm and a dumb client for recieving the distributedly-rendered video stream of the game they are playing?

    If they think they can stream movies, as mentioned in the other articly, could they also stream games? Would this be technologicly possible, in 2005? Would it even make any sense? I find it an interesting thought, nonetheless.

  • http://10.10.10.1/ps3/webcam/ (Score:5, Funny)

    by peterdaly ( 123554 ) <{petedaly} {at} {ix.netcom.com}> on Saturday July 20, 2002 @03:53PM (#3923656)
    Instead of using a mouse or game controller, players might wave their hands in front of a Web cam, showing what they want to do through gestures.

    Sony...where half the fun of a game is watching someone else try to play it.

    -Pete

    • Re:http://10.10.10.1/ps3/webcam/ (Score:5, Funny)

      by ender81b ( 520454 ) <wdinger@@@gmail...com> on Saturday July 20, 2002 @04:16PM (#3923725) Homepage Journal
      wave their hands in front of a Web cam, showing what they want to do through gestures.

      This could lead to a disaster of epic proportions. Imagine hundreds of sexual frustrated males showing the playstation what they want it to do. Can you imagine the warranty requests?

      Good god.
      • I saw a company's demo of a kid playing some fighting game that used a webcam to capture his movments. I couldn't tell if he was trying to play the game or having a seizure. Sometimes you'll get a freebie or two, where you can pop bubbles, but it got boring quickly.
    • Sony had this set up at the Game On exhibition in London (still on at the Barbican if you're here in the next few months) - camera pointing at you, with some software that lets you 'grab' a control and do something on screen by waving our hands in front of it. You could get some nice effects such as rippling water, flames, etc, but I'm not sure it would work for precise control of a game. Interesting idea though, and Sony are planning to put it into future games, according to the video that went with it.
  • Wow... I can't believe Sony is planning a worse development nightmare than PS2 is. I can't speak from personal experience, but from many developer interviews, the general consensus seems to be that it's a pain. As games become larger and larger and more and more complex, developers will want to spend _less_ time fighting with the hardware. The trend is definitely moving away from this very low level hacking and more towards using standard API's (e.g. id is using C++ and OpenGL).

    It took almost a year to see any decent apps on PS2 because of the extra development time. Where XBox shares titles with PS2, they typically look as good or somewhat better, and only a few months after launch. Throw out some massive parallel/distributed monster and it'll sink like a stone.

    Why is PS2 alive and well today? Because PS1 was traditional architecture, quickly had lots of good apps, and bought them tons of brand loyalty. I don't think that's going to work for them again on the next iteration.
  • that's all fine and good, but will it play ps2 and ps1 games?
    • that's all fine and good, but will it play ps2 and ps1 games?

      No, they're using a grid of GameCube GPUs and adding four cartridge slots. :-]
  • i;m not sure about you, but i don't think its skynet that will be running the world over with machines....
  • It's gonna take one hell of a lot of PS3 Minesweeper players for me to get the kind of framerates in my 3D games that they're speaking of...

  • Marketing PHB? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by peterdaly ( 123554 )
    This sounds to me like a Marketing droid who knows jack about this stuff saying it will be a fast processor on a platform that is built for network games and applications.

    Based on the other comments, that may be the closest thing to the truth from that article.

    -Pete
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I find it astonishing that this *ahem* article does not even mention Nintendo. In my mind--and I'm sure that most of you my age will agree--they are videogames. All I'm reading here is a lot of talk about things that sound good on paper--and even then that is a stretch--but will fail horribly in practise.

    The idea of an all-encompassing box is one that has been consistently been shunned by gamers. I realize that there has been a large influx of casual gamers into the fold, but I don't think that this does enough to change the picture.

    If Sony is really planning to go down this road, I'll gladly sit on the sidelines, GBA in hand, laughing as they crash and burn.

    • If Sony is really planning to go down this road, I'll gladly sit on the sidelines, GBA in hand, laughing as they crash and burn.

      No kidding, articles rambling on how it'll replace the TV?

      Announcing the new iPS3!

      Their slogan could be "What planet are you on?"

  • Grid Computing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by XavierXeon ( 585110 )
    The articles are complete bullshit.

    OK so Sony, IBM and Toshiba are developing a new chip which is powerfull.
    The real problem is the grid part.

    Grid engines are already used for sientific purposes like the hepgrid for the LHC or as a very simple example SETI@home.

    The problem is that for a game you need near real-time processing power, so to make it work with a grid you would need to exchange data over TCP/IP between processors in a time scale smaller than a screen update.

    With the state of the internet as it is right now i do not see how this can be done. I also do not think it will improve (speedwise) in the next couple of years.
  • "If Sony's aspirations succeed, then the Playstation 3 will not be a pure video game console, but rather measure the amount of milk left in the fridge, record TV programs to hard-disk, automatically download new software..."

    See, they all want control of your house, not just Microsoft. So get it out of your heads that MS is the only greedy, self serving mega conglomorate out there looking to own a piece of your life and income.
  • Condense the article into these two lines:
    1. Due for release in 2005, the PlayStation 3 will thus be able to use its broadband Internet connection to reach across the Internet and draw additional computing power from idle processors.

    2. Sony is sending out the message: "Match what we're doing by 2005, or we're going to race ahead of you..."
    Translation of the first line: "We're going to win this race by taking a shortcut in which we make a death-defying leap over this huge, deep canyon!"

    Translation of the second line "You hear that, Microsoft? Here's what we're gonna do to whip your butt, so don't even think about stealing our idea! (wink wink, nudge nudge)"

  • Maybe not what we think? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by oGMo ( 379 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @05:17PM (#3923950)

    I agree that the idea of using your neighbor's PS3 to render a few extra frames is, well, stupid. At least without an extremely-low latency terabit network, and even then it's more trouble than it's worth.

    But maybe that's not what this is all about. I was just re-reading Idoru [amazon.com] last night, and just now I thought of this, like the "Walled City" in that book. What if this is not all about rendering frames, but rather solving the server problem?

    Instead of having a massive server farm to handle a million players, the million players are their own servers! They distribute the load that way. This makes sense in light of the comments in that article, as well. It provides a cheap, sustainable online strategy, and we know Sony is going for the online games, especially with the success of Everquest and the competition from Microsoft.

    That's actually something that might work.

  • There seems to be a lot of negativity here. Probably Microsoft droids, bitter that the Xbox got it's teeth kicked in by the PS2 and trying to score some early FUD points in the upcoming PS3 vs Xbox2 (3?) match. :P

    Now about the article, the claim of 1000X the PS2 is probably exagerated, but IMO if anyone can pull it off or even get close to it, it's probably the Sony+IBM+Toshiba alliance.

    Also, I don't think they're talking about harnessing the power of other processors over the Internet as much as on a local network. Say, for example, that your Sony PVR isn't recording anything and is running one of these "grid enabled" chip. Then, your PS2 can go and ask for its extra processing power (which BTW solves the "having a game slow down while recording a TV show" problem, since it would be a separate appliance). Or it could be your DVD player. Or your new camcorder, Aibo, Vaio etc, etc...
    In a way the PS3 would be the center of a "digital hub" where the more you buy Sony/IBM/Toshiba appliances, the more powerful they'd get. Which means acceptable cost for each element and a strong incentive to buy only Sony/IBM/Toshiba stuff. Seems like a good business strategy to me! :)

    Another part of the article caught my attention:

    The company's plan contains no mention of how it will handle Microsoft's software applications, which are widely used for home computing."

    Hmm... I actually was at the presentation given by Okamoto san at the GDC. At the time I had noted a few interesting things apart from his lengthy talk on the PS3's architecture. One third of his talk was reserved for Gnu/Linux on PS2, which at the time seemed like a lot to me. AND he also talked about the research his team was doing on GUIs and showed a couple of weird looking screenshots. AND he kept raving about Sony's alliance with IBM and how closely they were going to work together and how much he was interested in everything IBM was doing (he was talking about grid computing at the time).

    And we all know how IBM is interested in GNU/Linux, don't we?

    So, I might be totally off base and, yes, this is total speculation at this point. But here goes: I really wouldn't be that suprised if Sony decided that the best way to compete with MS on the software side was to co-opt a GNU/Linux distro, slap a "made in Sony" GUI on it, et voilà!
    PS3 is ready to take on mighty MS on the software side!

    And if that ever happens, remember: you read it here first... ;)

    • I thought we were anti-Sony today (their backing for the DMCA), not pro-Sony (cool games console). Or is that Tuesdays? It's confusing being a Slashbot.

      What if the PS3 ended up running GNU/Linux?

      Even the devil may quote Scripture for his purpose. And if Sony continue on their current path, controlling both mechanism and content and restricting fair-use rights, then I don't care if they use Linux, Windows or Object Oriented Cobol for that purpose, I still won't be using it.

  • Sony Engineers Aren't Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20, 2002 @05:41PM (#3924009)
    I know Sony must have some engineers, or they could never have built the PS2. The engineers must know that everything that's been written about the PS3 so far is hype and fluff, but they must also have a non-stupid idea in mind. So the question is, can we extrapolate from the hype and fluff what the non-stupid idea is? Two thoughts come to mind.

    1) The PS3 processor will be composed of many small, simple computing elements which will make it possible to keep a lot more of the silicon busy if programs can be parallelized, which in the case of world simulation, which is what gaming is converging into, maybe it can. You can just assign individual processors to individual components of the world.

    2) Future PS3s will be joined together into some kind of virtual computing grid, where the grid as a whole will simulate the gaming world. Using a grid to do rendering won't work. Even if ping time was 50 msec and processing time at the remote node was 0 that would set a limit of 20 frames per second. Before someone thinks I'm stupid, that's only one of the reasons it won't work. Meanwhile, GPUs are getting so powerful that there is no need to offload rendinging to remote processors.

    However, what if a portion of the processing capacity of each console was used for shared world simulation? You could have a peer to peer MMORPG game. It would require that the consoles be trusted and that the world state be saves as consoles joined and left the game, but if it could work we might be able to have MMORPGs where you just have to buy the game but not pay a fee to someone else to run a server for you. Not that that would be good for Sony since they make tons of money running the servers, but it would be great for gamers.

    Anyway, this is the best I can make of the utter nonsense that's been written about the PS3 so far. Bother very futuristic, but not outside the pale of possibility. Meanwhile, maybe someone can explain to that reporter that a fast computer does not protect you from hackers and viruses, any more than a fast car protects you from car theives and catching a cold.
  • I think the distributed computing method in Playstation 3 is to appeal to all of Sony's Iraqi customers [slashdot.org] :).

    Nerds in Iraq don't fantasize about Beowolf Clusters of things, but rather Playstation clusters.

  • "If Sony's aspirations succeed, then the Playstation 3 will not be a pure video game console, but rather measure the amount of milk left in the fridge...(snip)"

    Is there a point at which I can say my life is digital enough? Maybe I don't want PS3 to monitor my fridge, sharing the milk inventory with sony, spamming me with ads from 5 vendors who want to bring me milk, telling a data mining service how much milk I drink in a year, telling a doctor I need more milk, telling many people things that are NONE OF THEIR FUCKING BUSINESS!!!!
  • Confuses cell computing with network distributed networking.
  • Doesn't sound like Sony is going to fit the Emotion Engine into this equation after all.

    The original gameplan was use the first generation EE/GS for the PS2. The next generation, EE2/GS2, would be used for graphic workstations and would have "100x the power" of the original EE/GS combo (or something like that, Sony PR). Then, the EE3/GS3 would be used for the PS3, giving it "1000x the power" of the PS2.

    Distributed processing for console games (or games in general) is not a good idea. People want their games to work all the time, not only when peak bandwith isn't occuring. It doesn't sound good on paper, and definately wouldn't look good for actual processing and rendering.

    Maybe if the game required you to find an actual extra-terrestrial, then you might have a reason for distributed processing on a game. Otherwise, I can't think of any reason Sony would do this. It would be a headache to keep maintained and wouldn't really bring in the cash considering the slower-than-expected broadband invasion.

    This article isn't really a great read.

  • 3 interesting things I see about this.

    1. maybe they could make some money off selling you additional processing resources in the aftermarket, so you don't have to keep getting incompatible hardware and developers can build satisfying worlds. Supercomputers for business are expandable.

    2. Sounds like they're trying to build a second world wide web on a proprietary protocol which would suck in a Burning Chrome / JM kind of way, and your game playing would slow down maybe when people come to visit. More like people asking your machine to render rooms for them or send graphics commands to be shaded on their own PS3. Though if it was totally opened (protocol and code) it would be very cool. Totally open except to M$ is also okay.

    3. Someone is going to have to add some secret code to the PS3 like they did for the PS2 which lets you ignore regionality on DVDs or otherwise kill the DRM features.

    Unfortunately, the rest of the article is vapor ^ 3.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra

Close