Ars's Hannibal analyzes recent rumours concerning details about the operating system used for the PS3. "The site Playstation 3 Portal recently got hold of a few details of the PS3's OS, and how it will make use of the Cell hardware. Technically, these details qualify as 'rumor', but for the reasons given below I think they're pretty plausible."
Post a Comment
Member since:
2006-03-13
Fans: 0
Member since:
2005-11-19
Fans: 0
It's good to see that they're using the SPE to implement the OS functions (assuming this report is correct). This will allow registers to be reserved to OS use without conflicting with the PPE's backward compatability.
The DMA-style memory access should take really good advantage of the RamBus memory since the bursts should be nice, long, and sustained.
Member since:
2005-11-10
Fans: 0
Jezus tap dancing christ on a pogo stick, do any of these rumour writers even know what they are talking about? The SPE is nothing more than an FPU on steroids, why on hell's name would any one use it as an OS? If there is an OS in the PS3 will have to run on the main PPC core... While we are at it, let's just come with better rumours shall we? Heck, I predict they will use the NVDIA gpu for OS related tasks... yeah, that is the ticket.
Do any of these technical rumour mills even have the slightest idea what a computer is and how it works?
Member since:2005-07-06
Fans: 27
The SPE is a general-purpose in-order core. Its only limitation is that its addressable memory is tiny (256KB) --- access to main memory is modeled as an I/O operation (commands to the DMA controller). Now, that is not to say it is particularly fast at running general code, but the Sony OS won't be running just on the SPE --- the SPE will be used for secondary tasks like file transfer, networking, security, DRM, displaying an informational console, etc. The PPE will be reserved as much as possible for game code, since its the only thing in the chip with something approaching passable performance on general integer code.
Member since:
2005-09-06
Fans: 0
Member since:
2005-07-23
Fans: 0
Member since:
2005-11-10
Fans: 14
Member since:
2005-07-11
Fans: 4
Any modern game console meant to offer services beyond classic monolitic games, needs an operating system of some kind, and naturally it has to use some part of the hardware. Speculating on "lost performance" isn't that interesting. When the services of the system are finalized and public, we can assess the cost/benefit.
Part of the PS3 software/firmware will have to run on the PPE, since that's where most (all?) hardware interrupts for things such as network and game interaction devices are likely to be coming in, and where the equivalent of device drivers will be called from.
The part of the PS3 software/firmware that provides system services in audio/video encoding/decoding, or encryption/decryption, is likely to be run by one or more SPEs.
There's nothing odd about this at all. The system and the games will (most likely!) share the hardware resources through means provided by Sony's operating system and their software development kit. Just like any other operating system.
Member since:
2005-07-11
Fans: 4
Audio/video/crypto and similar are much heavier workloads than shuffling network or harddisk data and managing running processes. The SPEs are meant for the computation intensive kind of work common in media applications.
Whether it's part of the game, or part the Sony OS doesn't matter. It's the end user experience that matters.
(OSNews: What's up with editing?.. "Can't remove all text?")