| How the PS3's Cell processor works.
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 Thorlord |
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Posted:
Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:58 pm |
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How the PS3's Cell processor works.
| Quote: |
First of all, as with Killzone developer Guerrilla in a recent online Q&A sesh, they were happy to point out that PS3 is not as complicated to write for as we've all been led to believe. Apparently, the machine's use of Open GL as its graphics API means that anyone who's ever written games for the PC will be intimately familiar with the set-up. In fact, PS3 employs a cut-down version named Open GL ES, which is even simpler - as Volatile's lead PS3 programmer, Lyndon Homewood explained:
"ES is designed for things like set-top boxes and mobile phones, where you want the fundamental graphics but don't need some of the fringe stuff that Open GL has. Because you've got that on PS3, it's going to be much easier than the PS2 to get something up and running - there are hundreds of books out there for it, so you can do your background reading. All the documentation is there."
We also got onto talking about how PS3 will deal with Cg - a version of the programming language C, which allows developers to code for advanced graphics processing units, specifically in the area of 3D shaders. (You can read more about Cg here and here). You may be completely up to spec on how this works, but Lyndon gives a decent beginners guide if not:
"Cg gives you a standard documented API for programming graphics chips. The main two segregations of Cg programming are the vertex shader and pixel shader. With the vertex shader you can act on 3D models at the vertex level, so for each triangle you can do something on each corner and then everything in-between is interpolated. So if you want to make your whole shape bigger, you can just push all the vertices out a bit. In this way you could, say, morph your character into a giant just by scaling up all the verts. It's a lot easier to get to that point in the graphics pipeline.” |
congrats, while this does come from sony's Bioch Guerrilla i acutally believe it because of the actual reporting of the software it will use.
what does this mean for the gamers?
PC to console ports will be possible with little extra coding, and development for the console isint as hard as previously believed.
also i've been reading more about the Cell processor. and i discovered something interesting. apparently SPE processors on the Cell will work together as one processor and does so by working on parts of code it is specialized in and pass it onto the next processor.
in essence that means that the PS3 will have really only 2 processor. but one will be a CPU found in standard PC's and the other will be a processor that can do virtualy anything in one cycle (at 3.2ghz)
while it does reudce the overall power of the console. the fact that the programmers will really be programming on only 2 processors rather than 8 will really cut down on the development time.
in comparison, the xbox 360 is using a tactic that is almost the opposite, they are tricking the 3 processors in the console to act as 6 processors with little loss of speed.
i can safely say that my doubts of the PS3's hardware are all gone and now its down solely on the games for power. mainly because each console now has different ways in it whupps the other consoles ass.
information gained from:
http://ps3.qj.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_processor
that Cg- sounds like a badass language that i should think of learning.
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| Trooper wrote: |
| ya know thorlord, because of you i darn near blew cocacola out my nose at work today, ... on the phone ta boot! lol |
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| danny2k6 |
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Posted:
Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:08 pm |
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who cares
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| T-Rex |
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Posted:
Mon Feb 20, 2006 1:34 pm |
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woah now. thats just mean my good man. some ppl might care, those that like to know how things work and of course how it measures up to other things.
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| Guest |
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Posted:
Mon Feb 20, 2006 3:18 pm |
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I'd say sony will once again win this cosole contest
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| Thorlord |
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Posted:
Mon Feb 20, 2006 9:07 pm |
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| cenedra wrote: |
| I'd say sony will once again win this cosole contest |
undoubtably.
there are far too many Sony sheep for it to become an even war at this point. so probably a few more gens down the road the sales of the xbox will match the sales of the PS.
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| Trooper wrote: |
| ya know thorlord, because of you i darn near blew cocacola out my nose at work today, ... on the phone ta boot! lol |
My Blog Book:
The Adventure Story of Ene
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