Sony's Cell processor, another dumb idea from Sony?

[Anthony1]

I'm not so sure about Sony's so called "Cell" processor, that they are going to use in the PS3.

I'm not any kind of engineer or anything, and I don't really know much about it, but for some reason, I keep thinking back to all the hype about the so called "emotion engine".


Is this another case of Sony once again trying to re-invent the wheel?


I must say that I used to be a huge fan of Sony. I bought a PS1 the day it came out, on September 9th, 1995. The PS1 was an awesome piece of technology and one of the most logically desinged systems ever. It really was an absolute achievement in the world of video games.

Sure right now the PS1 kinda looks like a big pixelly mess, but back in 1995 and 1996 and even 1997, it was totally awesome.

So when Sony started first talking about the PS2 and the "emotion engine" I was totally excited and all jacked up about it.

In fact, I remember having to sleep in front of Target the day it came out to be able to get one on launch day. But after playing with my new PS2 for a few months, I came to the realization that it was one of the most poorly designed systems in history. To me the games didn't seem that much better than Dreamcast games. Not only that, but Dreamcast games were in 480p and looked super crystal clear on my progressive scan TV, while the PS2 was jaggie city.

I just really feel that the PS2 was a very bad design by the engineers at Sony. So much hype about the "emotion engine" and all that, and then this is the crap that we ended up getting.

Well, after awhile very talented developers finally learned how to squeeze every bit of power out of the PS2, but it was more in spite of the horrible design of the PS2. They had to find a way to make good looking games on the PS2 and they eventually did. But still, we all know that from a pure power standpoint the PS2 pales in comparison to the XBOX and GameCube.

So anyways, that brings me to this so called "Cell" processor. I really don't understand it, and I don't know much about it, but I have a bad feeling about it. To me it sounds like once again, Sony has to do things "their" way and try to be different and bold and everything. They had the "emotion engine" and now they have this "Cell".

Why can't they just make a normal CPU and GPU for their system and make sure that it's powerfull in the "real world" and not in theory.

Maybe I will be proven totally wrong and the "Cell" will just destroy everything in it's path.

I don't know.

I guess we will find out in 2006.

[Anexanhume]

To me, it sounded a lot like the xbox chip. Multiple cores, multi-threaded. The rest was just basically jargonized empty crap.

[Ed Oscuro]

The idea of offloading processing tasks onto other machines makes you sit up and take notice, doesn't it?

Quite a promising system. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/05/sony_cell_cpu_to_deliver/)

[ubersaurus]

Quite frankly, it makes me wonder how the system would work for people without the console hooked up to the net or something to access those other chips.

[Ed Oscuro]

Well enough, really. The PS3 will have - from what I've read - up to 8 Cell processors, and while you need to have more to really get the reported exponential gains in power, that's still going to put out an impressive amount of oomph. While this doesn't quite scale to the number reported for the PS3, it's said that 64 Cell cores (individual CPUs, working together) will perform on a level with 2200 G5s, or 2000 Athlon 64s, so you can imagine the results.

Sony and IBM announced that they'd created a workstation based on the Cell processor tech yesterday, actually...earlier news said they wanted to be selling them in time for Christmas.

[soniko_karuto]

*snip*
level with 2200 G5s, or 2000 Athlon 64s, so you can imagine the results.

*snip*

Take that G5!!!

anyways, it has to be jargon crap, i mean, if it really will work that way, you need 3 things:

1-. A very very very powerful programming team to fully utilize the power.
2-. A very very very very very fast connection to the other ps3's (i mean, you would need at least a gigabit ethernet connection with 0 to no lag).
3-. A lot of crap on your head to believe them. Why the fuck do they say that? look at it this way: what type of game would requiere that ps3's can connect toghether, wouldn't if they connected toghether it would cause some slowdown to someone?

[Sylentwulf]

Has any system not had a "new super hyper cell tom and jerry crystal multi-threaded nuke chip"?

No. So make 72 more posts for those chips.

[digitalpress]

Did anyone here actually fall for things like "The Emotion Engine"? C'mon, it's an OBVIOUS marketing pitch, just like thie "Cell" thing. C'mon, we're the informed gamers. That stuff is for the proletariats.

Just look at the system specs and the games that are going to come out for it. Don't be a chump and get all giddy because a system has a cool-sounding (made up) name linked to it.

[ddockery]

WHo cares what's inside or what they want to cal it? Once it's here, I'll see how it handles. If it greatly improves my gaming experience, then I'll be sold. It's as simple as that.

[Nature Boy]

They had to find a way to make good looking games on the PS2 and they eventually did.

Doesn't this happen with every system? Doesn't Halo 2 look better than Halo because they found a way to make the games better looking?

And where are all the people who cry that great graphics don't make a game anyway, they want gameplay consarnit!

Don't believe the hype...

[Jorpho]

So when Sony started first talking about the PS2 and the "emotion engine" I was totally excited and all jacked up about it.

You strange. ;)

[rbudrick]

Mmmm...Blast Processing....<drool>

-Rob

[Sylentwulf]

The mode 7 superfx chip is teh R0xOrZ

[tritium]

I'm still really pissed about hte PS2. The load times for Soul Calibur 2, and it runs worse tha SC 1 on the DC. It was so hyped, everyone waited for the PS2 instead of getting a DC. A mistake I regret till this day. I won't make the same mistake again.

-Tritium

[link1110]

In fact, I remember having to sleep in front of Target the day it came out to be able to get one on launch day. But after playing with my new PS2 for a few months, I came to the realization that it was one of the most poorly designed systems in history. To me the games didn't seem that much better than Dreamcast games. Not only that, but Dreamcast games were in 480p and looked super crystal clear on my progressive scan TV, while the PS2 was jaggie city.


That's not the worst. How about when you're switching discs and the DVD drive door closes unannounced and actuallyu scratches your games?

[crazyjackcsa]

What also pisses me off is polygon counts. Always has, I forget the numbers but I remember when the Ps2 specs were announced it was some massive number, Microsoft did the same thing. But it was like only flat shaded polys with no effects or Ai or anything, Sega (And Nintendo with the GC) said "look, This system will run X number of polys with effects, AI and everything else." If memory serves the Dc would push in the area of 4 million and the Ps2 was advertising like 60 million or somthing stupid like that.

People are dumb. That's why crap like this works.

[Ed Oscuro]

Did anyone here actually fall for things like "The Emotion Engine"? C'mon, it's an OBVIOUS marketing pitch, just like thie "Cell" thing. C'mon, we're the informed gamers. That stuff is for the proletariats.
Well, Cell isn't all hype. The "Emotion Engine" was garbage put out by Sony and Sony alone...but with Cell we're talking huge promise. Even if it doesn't do all they say it will, it's definitely going to be one of the frontrunners in computing a few years from now. If the specs hold - and hold they will - a single rack server with Cell chips could suddenly be among the top 50 supercomputers in the world. That's amazing.

Sony (and IBM, and Toshiba) is going to spend over a billion dollars on fab plants for this thing (think the actual number is $1.2bn). IBM and Sony have spent at least half a billion dollars just developing the thing.

So far, the only chip I've seen which will provide Cell-level performance is from some company or other that I haven't heard of, and we're talking $1000/CPU. Not terribly affordable.

I also spotted an "OMFG IT WILL CAUST 2 MUCH TO DEVELOP FORE" argument. Yeah, I imagine lots of people were sitting on their BBSes back in the day arguing that CD-ROM systems were satan and that poor game companies would never be able to fill up 650 MB of data..! Well, I understand where the argument comes from, but this isn't any Cray supercomputer. It's fully scalable, and a scalable system should be easy to develop for. 8 vector processing units per chip ("core"), and you can put as many (or as few) together as you like.

Toshiba's using them for dedicated HDTVs.

No, it's not being hyped so much as it is seeing the future flash before one's eyes. I am excited about it. I expect (as a way of being generous) problems to arise in any fashion possible, but anybody who isn't exited - and concerned, as well, for Intel's sake - by the idea of having the same system driving TVs and game systems apparently hasn't been paying much attention to this.

"Cell" isn't an empty word...back when Kutaragi announced it in 2001, he couched the upcoming technology in terms of biology. Nobody understood what "Emotion Engine" stood for, and as far as I know it never has stood for anything in particular.

I'm definitely a fan of technology, and Sony's plan puts them in a position of partial ownership of the technology. Wanna know why Microsoft's getting screwed over with the next XBox? They didn't "own" the hardware their games run on, and they can't inexpensively emulate it. Nintendo and Sony have both done well to make sure they own enough of the hardware so that regardless of what their particular vendor of the week is feeling that they should be able to continue to support that product with upgrades...not so Microsoft.

It's just fun to watch this stuff. It doesn't particularly matter to me how the technology works out, as I'm just here for the games, but the concept opens up some very interesting approaches and possibilities for gaming.

[rbudrick]

The mode 7 superfx chip is teh R0xOrZ

Super FX was real technology. It was a chip that allowed the SNES to make polygonal 3d graphics. Didn't it involve an extra 10mhz processor on the cart or something? I forget...

Mode 7? Also a real feature built into the SNES. For rotation and scaling, I believe...or one or the other...I forget which.

-Rob

[Jorpho]

Some people were agog about the efficient architecture of the Nintendo 64 back in the day, too (back when no one else had 64 bits).

[digitalpress]

Don't fall for it, Ed. Always remember: it's about the games.

[SegaAges]

cell or no, if the games suck balls, it won't matter what kind of processor is behind the ps3.

granted, there are cases where a better processor could have helped a system (game.com comes to mind).

with the game.com, many of the games were pretty good. the problem was that the system itself sucked. i enjoyed playing lost world on game.com, but it got difficult with scrolling issues (i couldn't even imagine how bad sonic was)

with the ps3, unless there are stellar games, i will wait for a hefty price drop and get it then. hell, i am doing the same thing at this moment for an n-gage.

[Sylentwulf]

Super FX was real technology. It was a chip that allowed the SNES to make polygonal 3d graphics. Didn't it involve an extra 10mhz processor on the cart or something? I forget...

Mode 7? Also a real feature built into the SNES. For rotation and scaling, I believe...or one or the other...I forget which.

-Rob

Of course they were real, so was the emotion engine, the DS stylus, the playstation CD format, and the cell processor. My point is, it doesn't matter. When it comes out,has great games, and is well supported, it will do well. Even if it runs 5 polygons per second.

[rbudrick]

granted, there are cases where a better processor could have helped a system (game.com comes to mind).

Think so? I always figured it was the unwatchable LCD...just too blurry. I really want to try these games on an emulator someday with no blur just to see what they are REALLY like.


Even if it runs 5 polygons per second

LOL. I bet the Atari 2600 could do that, heh heh.

-Rob

[bargora]

I will believe all of this when I see it. And until then, I read about it and keep hearing this voice in my head saying "Shoot The Core!"

[evilmess]

Don't fall for it, Ed. Always remember: it's about the games.

Not anymore. At least not in the eyes of MS and Sony.

Games are just a one feature in a long list of features that your next console from MS and Sony will offer. If you think the Cell was designed soley for games then you're wrong!

We touched on this idea of what the future consoles will offer in this thread (http://www.digitpress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=47239).

[ddockery]

I don't think anyone said Cell was designed just for games. I believe what he meant was that if the games suck, a lot of people won't be buying it, because as much as Sony, MS, etc want us to, most consumers aren't being sold o the multi-function thing. Not yet anyway. I already have a TiVo, a great DVD player, etc. While I have no problem with them ioncluding these types of features, I will have a problem when they try to charge twice as much for it and the games blow.

[Nature Boy]

I believe what he meant was that if the games suck, a lot of people won't be buying it, because as much as Sony, MS, etc want us to, most consumers aren't being sold o the multi-function thing.

It's not even that. If the games suck and you can get a multi function machine that does everything the PS3 does *but* play games, and for less month, what do you think people are going to buy?

I know most people here hate 'em, but the multi functionality of the systems *is* a selling feature. I know people who bought PS2s to use as DVD players. From a business point of view, anything you can add as a selling feature is a *good* thing, as it gives them one more reason to buy their product over a competitors.

[Stark]

Sony should pour every cent into this so I can have my virtual woman. I wonder what she would smell like?

[BigGeorgeJohnson]

Sony should pour every cent into this so I can have my virtual woman. I wonder what she would smell like?

LOL

[Sylentwulf]

Sony should pour every cent into this so I can have my virtual woman. I wonder what she would smell like?

LOL LOL LOL LOL

Amen!

[JJNova]

Sony should pour every cent into this so I can have my virtual woman. I wonder what she would smell like?

Holy cow! Have you ever wandered through a porno shop/ Those synthetic reproductive organs cost a lot already.....

A virtual woman would be like, a lot. or something.

[XxMe2NiKxX]

I smell a saturn (development-wise, anyway)...

[suppafly]

Dumb idea? I dont think so...besides, Nintendo has the patent for all the video-game related DUMB ideas LOL

[FurinkanianFrood]

Just look at the system specs

The system specs are BS if you mean benchmarks. They are complete BS, mathmatically impossible in some cases even.

The structural design specs definitely include the cell, which is awful BS. Ridiculously hard to tap its potential. However, that may not be necessary to make decent games. However, it will needlessly increase the cost of the console.

Why pay extra money for hyped components that serve no real purpose?

*cough*Blu-ray*cough*



I smell a saturn (development-wise, anyway)...


Yes indeed. Sony says "no you can use C and C++ with OpenGL" as if that will make much of a difference when task division is handled solely by programmers. A huge load of extra work.

Every algorithm will need to be pain-stakingly optimized to get any perfomance from this setup. And the scope of what people expect is way beyond the early 32-bit era (Toshinden impressed people for crissakes).

It may very well also have the Saturns price point

I smell a Jaguar....



If the specs hold - and hold they will


You should do stand up, really......
The specs are complete BS (again the performance they state, not the structure of the system, they can build that if they want to....)
To get maximum performance you would need to be doing something terribly simple and little else. Searching a list for a siongle item or something. Otherwise it is too hard to balance the tasks properly. Even then, their numbers are nonsense unless they use some kind of mystical fairy dust.

IBM is the company that went with DOS and Intel for the 'ol PC, and look at what stable PC's we've been stuck with for 20 or so years.

Look at the PS2, what a an unstable POS.

Look at how Sony has forced everything to flash with zero substance.

Look at the reliability issues with some of their other products.

Remember the overheating PS? Remember PSs on their side for FMV? Remember all the people who bought it at launch for garbage titles?

Basically I think the PS3 will do about as well as the Saturn in the US, except that it won't have any good games in the US or Japan, unlike the Saturn, which puts the PS to shame in every possible way when you the two systems full libraries into account.

In Japan it will do well until the US market goes to pot, and then it will weaken quite a bit. It largely depends on if MSoft can get (buy) the loyalty of any big (read huge/essential) JP develos.

Sony doesn't have a clue how to make games, so why does anyone trust them to make game hardware.

Why do I care what other people play?

Because it affects what gets developed. Every sale of a crappy PS(insert digit) game inspires more garbage.

A system that has been around as long as the PS2 should have more than a dozen decent exclusives. It doesn't.

Don't buy the BS. The CELL chip IS BS.

Designs similar to the Cell chip have been tried before. Crashed and burned.

If this thing is such a damn revolution why isn't IBM using it for their big supercomputer project, Blue Gene? Because unlike Sony, their engineers aren't a bunch of incompetent morons. IBM knows it's BS.

Companies design and market BS all the time. Maybe IBM got the idea from Sony? It worked for them.....

What is inside does matter when it affects development of games!

The games matter! Games are developed after all, not delivered by storks.

[James]

I think FurinkanianFrood summed up Sony's existence in the video game world pretty well; they wouldn't be here at all if Sega and Nintendo hadn't made such huge mistakes back in the mid 90's. I'm looking forward to seeing the first true 64-bit video game console to be released at years end and it should be a good one, thank god someone big other than Sony is now in the market place.

The Cell processor that Sony's been toting for the last half year or so is just a convenient marketing gimmick of sorts as has been mentioned before in this post and others. This CPU does sound promising but promising as in Fable promising, I think it will fall way short of its current expectations. The CPU at its core is just an IBM Power PC G5 running at a mid 2006 affordable timeframe at a clock-rate between 4 and 5 GHz. Except this CPU is a really fucked up version of good older technology running multiple cores. That whole multi processing idea from connected PS3's that's been going around is the stupidest thing I've heard in a while, and as mentioned earlier you're going to need a really fast connection for that too be of any good and a 1 Gbit connection wouldn't do it, a 1 Tbit connection wouldn't even do it. Even if you were going to connect several PS3’s together you would slow them all down as a whole unless everyone was performing one direct task and outputting that task to one area but then even so as far as video, graphics and sound go one PS3 can't be helped by others in that department because of its computational hardware limitations.

Sony here on in is officially fucked. More than half of the PS2’s being sold are replacements from the faulty ones Sony has already sold before hand. Sony hasn’t gained much or any market share in almost 2 years. Microsoft is the only company in there gaining huge chunks of market share and that’s only going to go up. At the end of this year the Xbox Next will be released which should be a developers dream as far as configuration and optimization go with XNA being implemented in Xbox software development. XNA is a software to hardware translation method that will be used to more easily port software from other platforms to the Xbox Next platform and vice versa. This will virtually erase any previous optimization and hardware problems that occurred when porting was needed in the past. XNA is the successor to Direct X. For more information visit this site http://www.microsoft.com/xna/. If there is anything to get excited about for everyone involved not just the proletariats who will be buying the system anyway it’s this new technology which unlike the “Cell” actually stands for something and actually exists and actually works the way it’s supposed to. XNA will help developers out and bring gamers what they’ve wanted all along whereas Sony with their fucked up G5 codenamed “The Cell” will piss off developers and leave gamers in the dark much worse than what the Saturn or the CDI ever did. Let there be light and let thee Sony and thee SCE whatever and all that other BS be forever wiped from the Earth and shunned into the river below.

Edit: Sorry guys I forgot to add the XNA link.

[zmweasel]

More than half of the PS2’s being sold are replacements from the faulty ones Sony has already sold before hand.

You've just made the most ludicrous anti-Sony claim of 2005 (thus far). Congrats!

-- Z.

[SoulBlazer]

LOL

I would have said that myself but Zach beat me to it. :D