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When did we find tri-core PPCs and multi-SPE Cell processors in our cabinets?

I attended a meeting a few months where Grid Computing was presented and discussed.

In a talk with the professor afterwards (while eating and drinking as is the norm) he told me he considered the PS3 the new PC. Simply because the processor is so powerful you can unite the Home PC, the Media Center and the Game Console in one unit.

I believe he's got a strong point.

That all depends, right now the PS2 can only do one thing at a time, so if you want to do something other then play a game, or just change games, you need to basically reboot the system. If the PS3 made it possible to switch between apps on the fly, like a desktop with apps, games, movies etc then I think you could think of it as a PC. You would also need enough for people to actually create distros for it (or if sony sold them stock with one that would be powerful, web browsing etc built right in that works when you plugin the ethernet cable). A cool idea, but is Sony really that smart?

Probably not (at least not yet), but I believe the FLOSS-community is.

"Simply because the processor is so powerful you can unite the Home PC, the Media Center and the Game Console in one unit."

And what's the difference with an actual PC ? I can use it as a Home PC (!), as a media center and play on it (as a game console) ...

Anyway, it is funny to heard that, as nobody as already tested the CELL ...
Last time I heard something about the CELL it was about problems of IBM to produce it.

And what's the difference with an actual PC ? I can use it as a Home PC (!), as a media center and play on it (as a game console) ...

There is no difference. That's the point.

Which brings to question; whats the purpose of XBox then? an attempt by Microsoft to make their own line of computers and appliances?

Come on, this is marketing, I can't believe you took this seriously.

Perhaps because the PS3 (and the Xbox) *IS* almost the same hardware than a PC now ...

The XBox perhaps, but the PS3 IS NOT at all the same architecture and hardware as a PC.

So I should say, 'We do not need the PS3'

Of course, nobody "need" a game console, nobody need a PC either for that matter.

Since Sony and MS have went into this console thing, it goes way too fast.
Looking at the japanese market, Sony is still selling 20 times more PS2 than MS is selling XBox 360 there !!

what realy is a pc these days?

is it that x86 compatible cpu that makes it a pc?

the cell is basicly a power (a close relative to the powerpc cpu that apple used not so long ago) based cpu with 8 vector units on the same chip. linux can allready run on it, and ibm is planing on offering it in blade-server packages (basicly a desktop pc without the box).

so in many ways its a pc as long as you can do your spreadsheets, your word prosessing, your gaming and your internet tasks on it.

in many ways we should stop thinking pc vs non-pc and rather think about the computing tasks we want to have done.

If we are talking about a computer that can play commercial media (purchased music/movies/etc), play networked video games, and interoperate with devices, we are probably talking about a Windows-based device. By these measures, the Vaio has a better chance of beating the 360 than the PS3 does.

nah, it dont have to be a windows device. it just need to have some way of loading drivers for unknown hardware, and maybe codecs for unknown software.

linux anyone?

so maybe thats what seperate a console from a pc. the pc have a extendable os. but in theory you can allso put that into a console in diffrent ways...

No way with the cell proccessr

Neal Saferstein

Blu-Ray players are out in August! You just need $1000 bucks and it's yours http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7763823&type=prod...

And then what will you play on it? Charlies Angels 2? At what price? Bluray can go suck an egg.

Hmmm...so. If it's a PC, and Linux is open-source (they probably have a lot of close-source integrated), who will be the first to make the games run on a Dell?

Go ahead and try to make a decent performance Cell-emulator on today's hardware. Best of luck.

Two points in response to that:
1) The platform is open source, but the games aren't.

2) The PS3 uses the Cell processor, and I suspect that many of the titles (either due to pressure from Sony, or just the need to use the Cell SPUs) will be highly dependent on the architecture, and would be difficult to port, even if you did have source code. Additionally, the fact that the PS3 is a homogenous platform lets the programmers make assumptions about hardware that wouldn't be true on a PC, which would make the game even more PS3 dependent.

Of course, the games that are designed to run on both PS3 and XBox (and thus were designed portably) will probably have the games released for PC as well

That read speed is when reading the *Video RAM* from the Cell. It's not when using system ram (which is much, much faster). By the way, reading the video ram from the CPU doesn't really happen much.

Also, since when did the PS3 become "linux-powered", AFAIK ps3 games, and it's OSD ("bios") will not be using linux or running under linux.

You are correct that Sony has not specifically stated that PS3 games will be built ontop of linux, or that whatever basic OS they create will be built ontop of linux either.

They have, however, stated that PS3 harddrives will ship with linux pre-installed on them (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2370343858.html). Maybe the regular computing facilities like web browsing etc. will only be available if you boot into linux rather than the video games, but I personally doubt that. It just doesn't make much sense of them to give that kind of functionality, then make sure that you can't integrate it with the game and network side of things, as well as not take advantage of the development environment that linux has built up over the years.

Also, to one of the parent post's peers, IBM has ported 2.6.something kernel to Cell, so I assume that the linux installed is not the firmware version.

I would certainly not assume that games/OSD/etc run ontop of linux for the reasons you give. Running outside of linux gives developers alot more freedom and predictability. (And if games are running ontop of linux, you can be sure we would have heard about it by now, one way or another).
BUT! We know that the Cell has nice things like hypervisor, so even though games themselves might not run ontop of linux, it may still be possible to run both at the same time, giving the advantages you mention.
This is all speculation, of course.

But the thing is; not the support, by the level of support; the processor is supported, but will we see the bluray supported? the video card? the ability to be able to upgrade the kernel? will the specifications of the machine be open enough as to allow alternative operating systems like OpenSolaris, *BSD and numerous others to be ported to the platform?

Its all very nice for Sony to release hardware, and Linux, but we all remember the shithouse effort they put behind PS2 and the lack of disclosure when it came to hardware specifications as to allow DVD playback, and hardware acceleration of 3D within X Windows, not to mention the inability to upgrade the memory.

@jBit
>By the way, reading the video ram from the CPU >doesn't really happen much

Refer to Page 6 from
http://www.ati.com/technology/pciexpress/PCIEWP.pdf

> Refer to Page 6 from http://www.ati.com/technology/pciexpress/PCIEWP.pdf
What about it? I'm refering to video-ram -> CPU transfers, and especially for games. That document is really talking about bus issues.
If you need textures or graphics buffers that the CPU can read (and write) easily (for whatever reason) you put said textures in system ram.
The RSX on the PS3 has a huge ammount of bandwidth availible for accessing Cell RAM. The "16MByte/sec" is ONLY when the Cell is reading VRAM, Not when the RSX is reading/writing Cell RAM.

I see the dumbass author hasn't published a retraction for that piece of crap journalism.

The "local memory" in that chart refers to the RSX's local memory. It shows that the CPU reads from RSX memory slowly.

Slow CPU reads from the framebuffer is not news, it's a fact of life even on the PC.

@rayiner

>Slow CPU reads from the framebuffer is not news,
>it's a fact of life even on the PC.

Actually about 8X reduction. Geforce 6800GT has about 32GB/s of VRAM bandwidth.

GeForce6800GT, PCI-Express, 256MB
Driver: 71.74_x86
"Real World" Readback: ~3.9Gbyte/sec (limited by 16X PCI-E)
Synthetic Readback : ~5.09Gbyte/sec

Refer to
http://wiki.vislab.usyd.edu.au/moinwiki/GraphicsHardware

I've been voted down... It seem ignorance is sin around here... On another note:

The PS3 will be a Jack of all trades... Able to do everything but nothing incredibly good. I look forward to the Wii for gaming, and I will keep my PC for everything else!

You probably got modded down, because you handled information in a pretty ignorant way.

Just a guess, but I believe that would be the explanation.

I don't think he handled the information in an ignorant way at all. He simply reiterated what the article said. It was the article that was faulty --- people writing tech news really should understand the subject they are talking about.

Of course, this begs for a "misinformative" option in the moderation options.

The problem with the guardian article was that the info as is was half correct and has been debunked numerous times, but yet the info keeps up crawling again and again.
Sony did many mistakes, but the architecture per se is not one of them.

Ofcourse you are beeing modded down - claiming the PS3 is slow because reading Video RAM from the main CPU is slow.

It is equally slow on your off-the-self nVidia card - does that mean the PC itself is slow - or reads slowly from normal RAM ?

(as a sidenote, the PS2 didn't let you read from the video ram at all from the main CPU).

>> "(as a sidenote, the PS2 didn't let you read from the video ram at all from the main CPU)."
Hopefully not bringing the comments too off topicm but while the EE couldn't directly read VRAM, you could bounce off VIF1 to read GS vram into EE memory.

No, you were voted down because of the tone of your post; it screamed nothing more than flame bait; if you wished to bring up the issue, the more polite and respective way would have been:

"Pardon my ignorance, but according to [TheInquirer link], the memory read speed is 16MB/s, however, that doesn't seem quite right, is there anyone here who can explain the issues behind the technology used in the P3?"

That would have been a lot more respectful way of bringing forward this issue instead of the provocative way in which you did in your original post.

Edited 2006-06-12 22:38

I'm no PS3 fan, not by a longshot, but that article is full of shit and many top developers have said so.

This project is entirely different.

It' basically a PC used as a Gaming Console. Certain people are getting wet by the sheer thought of using the PS3 as the PC it actually is.

Considering how much easier it is for people to use consoles, and how complex operations they are capable of performing using a console (operations they cannot handle on an ordinary PC), it just might be the right way for them to handle technology.

but now we have 50"+ tv screens that can do just as good a display of said web-pages that your computer screen can.

most lcd and plasma tv's today come with a vga or dvi connection, so...

One word.... Opera.

Just about the best choice for the job. Nintendo has already chosen them to be the browser of choice for limited screen space and resolution. Wii (still shuddering about the name...) and the DS are using it.

And I have used it on mobile devices and it works extremely well. Compared to the others, it seems to be the only browser that has been aimed towards this type of display. And it does it well.

(edit) Not that they DON'T want you to buy their new WEGA.... I recognize the sarcasm... using it often myself...

JRM7

Edited 2006-06-12 16:08

Sony and Microsoft are trying to unite two unrelated markets - the hard core power hungry gamers, and the casual entertainment crowd - who might play games, but are ok if they are less glitzy (cell phones, flash games, etc.)

The best positioned for success IMHO are Nintendo and Apple (and no there will not be a merger). Their product lines compliment each other nicely, and don't require you to purchase the portions that you will not use. You can buy a Wii for the gaming, and a mac for pc stuff - and wait for HDTVs and BR/HDDVD to come down in price. The accompanying Mac Media center (will be called something way cooler), which I'm sure will come eventually, probably when HDTVs reach a much higher market saturation point. Neither company has a whole lot to gain by pushing HDTV atm, sine they aren't in that business, though I'm sure they will be able to take advantage of Sony's hard work to install those TVs.

As much as I like the graphics of the new XBox 360, and the Playstation 3 (from what I've seen online anyway) I learned my lesson from the Playstation 2, and will wait until I have the some good reason to purchase the PS3 (like a new FF game or something), and might even wait until after I upgrade my TV. Until then, I'll be playing my Nintendo Wii.

Until then, I'll be playing my Nintendo Wii.

Which is fine for those who look forward to the newest Mario reincarnation, but no doubt Nintendo will once again focus on the younger market. Their bread and butter.

Actually there were some really fun games for the Nintendo, for example the 007 games, The Legend Of Zelda series, Need for Speed Underground, even Mario and Harvest moon were fun. Just because games are kid safe doesn't mean they're not fun, and a handfull of the best games were available for both the Sony and Nintendo systems of their time. Most people just said Nintendo was for kids because Nintendo took a stand and made publishers remove swear words from their games, a decision which made me very happy to be a customer of theirs since I hear enough four letter words at school.

Most people just said Nintendo was for kids because Nintendo took a stand and made publishers remove swear words from their games, a decision which made me very happy to be a customer of theirs since I hear enough four letter words at school.

Note that Nintendo hasn't done anything of the sort for the last fifteen years -- since the advent of content ratings and the ESRB. In any case, even in the 1980s/early 1990s it was only the American branch of Nintendo that promoted such.

Nintendo took a stand and made publishers remove swear words from their games, a decision which made me very happy to be a customer of theirs since I hear enough four letter words at school.

Excuseme, but in terms of 'kids', kids will always learn and know swear words, wouldn't it be better to teach your children that there is a time and a place for everything, and swear words are not acceptable in certain circumstances.

Sure, I swear, but I know there is a time and a place for it, as was told by my parents; a few clips around the ear and a kick up the jaxy, and I quickly realised when not to use that language.

Its like sex education, simply knowing about it, doesn't give one the licence to bonk everything with two legs, and spread ones wild oats.

I wouldn't necessarily call it "insanely cheap" at $500-600 a pop. Frankly, you'd be better off going with the cell-based blade servers, which are certainly much more suited towards building a very powerful computing cluster.

How about just buying a bunch of cheap 200$ linspire live boxes from sub300 instead? They aren't that powerful, but at a price like that it wouldn't be hard to afford several of the things for a commodity home cluster.

The problem with using consoles for clusters is RAM. Any vaugly interesting problem that could benefit from a cluster will require far more RAM than any of these consoles supply. So basically you'll be swapping like crazy and won't get any benefit from the powerful CPU. A dual dual-core CPU box with 2-4GB of RAM will beat a cluster of XBOXs or PS3 costing the same every time.

These predictions happen every few years and have been happening for the past 20 years. And they're always wrong.

The bleeding engine is always on the PC and will always be. Of course since the XBox especially, and even the PS models are becoming increasingly PC like, the lines start to blur.

Ignorance and stupidity are different things -- don't confuse them.

Thank you for writing the most relevant (maybe the only relevant) post in this thread.

@SK8T

>You see, sony wanted to say, that when you buy a
>PS3, you don't need to have a pc because every thing
>you need is integrated in the ps3...

At least XBOX 360 can suitably connect to MCE enabled laptop…

Yeah, osnews at its best. Why link to the interview if you can link to Nintendo Fanboy Central aka kotaku instead?

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,419072,00.html

"SPIEGEL ONLINE: Speaking of online, Microsoft has just announced "Live Anywhere", an integrated Windows-Xbox-Mobile environment. Is that something you're worried about because you don't have the same access to the PC market as Microsoft does? (emphasise mine)

Harrison: No, it doesn't concern me and I don't think it concerns the consumer either. Once you adopt a game system as your primary entertainment device, that's what you want. We think that Playstation 3 is the place where our users will be doing their gaming, their movie watching, their Web browsing and a lot of other computer entertainment functions. That will satisfy them. Playstation 3 is a computer. We don't need the PC."

The "we don't need the PC" is not about Sony wanting to replace the PC (also in this case limited by Phil Harrison to its function as a complement to the Xbox360 as entertainment device, not as general purpose computer) with the PS3. They just don't think MS's stranglehold on the PC market combined with Live Anywhere will give MS a big advantage.

A lot about the PS3, Blu-Ray and Sony is really screwed up but the amount of FUD and spin that's posted lately is stupid . Don't you think that valid complaints would make more sense than wild accusations that often border on the ridiculous (tomorrow: Kutaragi announces that the PS3 will launch for $299 instead of the previously announced $599, headline on osnews: "Kutaragi: PS3 not worth $600"

Edited 2006-06-14 20:34

-Lost USB on rear of console
moved to the front panel

-Lost multiple network ports on back of PS3
useless

-Not an awful lot of memory
XDR is expensive, but this time PS have a fair amount of memory.

-No raid
raid? it is console, not server =]