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The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

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Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#91

Post by [deleted] »

abtinf wrote: post #80
DCKing wrote: post #49

The Playstation 1, 2 and 3 are each in their own way Sony's take on an alternate history of computer graphics. It was Sony's intent with all three consoles to put the "special effects" (that in 2019 are performed using shaders) in the CPU , and not the GPU. As a result, the PS1, but especially the PS2 and PS3 were engineered to have amazing vector capabilities in the CPU. The PS2's Emotion Engine had extremely high p…

Why doesn’t Intel make a chip specialized for gaming? Something like a dual core CPU optimized for single threaded performance and a variable number of GPU cores (a guaranteed minimum up to a perfect maximum), binned by clock speed. Skip all the support for extra pcie lanes (except maybe for storage). From your comment, it seems like Sony tried exactly this but failed. Is there an inherent flaw in such a design or ju…

[deleted]

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#92

Post by matheusmoreira »

rvz wrote: post #8

This was the moment that Sony could have made something useful out of themselves here for allowing Linux to be used on a popular games console at the time, as in improving the accessibility of installing Linux on a computing machine. (Or even basing GameOS on Linux). Instead they cowardly remove it due to a 'hack' by Geohot and locked it down for 'security purposes' and potential researchers, scientists and those wit…

It was never about supporting Linux or scientific computing. They just wanted to pay less taxes. Linux support is what allowed them to argue the PS2 and PS3 were real computers rather than just an entertainment product.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#93

Post by wmf »

hyperman1 wrote: post #75
grogenaut wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm sure I'll lose karma for explaining Sonys side, since some people just want to be mad) Linux support was not removed due to Geohot. It was a driver and business priority issue. Geohot just sealed the deal. Having worked there during the kerfuffle, I can confirm their reason was valid for not supporting Linux going forward. It was a non trivial effort and they wanted those engineers to make it support the new har…

I am taken aback a bit by this characterisation: And then a bunch of the community responded as petulant children and Sony supported linux in public, people bought their hardware for it, and then, without warning, sony janked the rug from under them. Of course people tried to take back their hardware, for which they paid. The blame here is 100% on Sony. Sony has a massive internal conflict of interest by being both a…

I have a feeling that many people who complained were not affected because they either never used Linux or they only used Linux and could just not upgrade. I understand that in theory Sony should have fixed their hypervisor bugs and kept OtherOS working, but I also understand that the world isn't perfect.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#94

Post by matheusmoreira »

grogenaut wrote: post #18
rvz wrote: post #8

This was the moment that Sony could have made something useful out of themselves here for allowing Linux to be used on a popular games console at the time, as in improving the accessibility of installing Linux on a computing machine. (Or even basing GameOS on Linux). Instead they cowardly remove it due to a 'hack' by Geohot and locked it down for 'security purposes' and potential researchers, scientists and those wit…

(I'm sure I'll lose karma for explaining Sonys side, since some people just want to be mad) Linux support was not removed due to Geohot. It was a driver and business priority issue. Geohot just sealed the deal. Having worked there during the kerfuffle, I can confirm their reason was valid for not supporting Linux going forward. It was a non trivial effort and they wanted those engineers to make it support the new har…

> This required the new hardware. So they dropped Linux.

Lack of support for new hardware does not explain why they dropped support for early hardware.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#95

Post by ljm »

DCKing wrote: post #49

The Playstation 1, 2 and 3 are each in their own way Sony's take on an alternate history of computer graphics. It was Sony's intent with all three consoles to put the "special effects" (that in 2019 are performed using shaders) in the CPU , and not the GPU. As a result, the PS1, but especially the PS2 and PS3 were engineered to have amazing vector capabilities in the CPU. The PS2's Emotion Engine had extremely high p…

It's a shame in a way. I remember the reports about the Cell architecture for the PS3. By all accounts it wasn't easy to program for, but that was a hell of an innovation only to fall back to the standard PC arch. Impressive as hell but it took game devs a long time to make the most of it; and then they did in spades. You only have to track the trajectory of Uncharted in the space of a console generation to see what that architecture could do. It must have informed Naughty Dog's design ever since because they haven't suffered from rolling back to a traditional chipset.

It was a different world though, PowerPC was still alive and strong back then.

The PS4 does continue the trend but I think that's more a question of time and investment rather than pure tech considering they have a steady trickle of top notch exclusives.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#96

Post by voldacar »

ljm wrote: post #95
DCKing wrote: post #49

The Playstation 1, 2 and 3 are each in their own way Sony's take on an alternate history of computer graphics. It was Sony's intent with all three consoles to put the "special effects" (that in 2019 are performed using shaders) in the CPU , and not the GPU. As a result, the PS1, but especially the PS2 and PS3 were engineered to have amazing vector capabilities in the CPU. The PS2's Emotion Engine had extremely high p…

It's a shame in a way. I remember the reports about the Cell architecture for the PS3. By all accounts it wasn't easy to program for, but that was a hell of an innovation only to fall back to the standard PC arch. Impressive as hell but it took game devs a long time to make the most of it; and then they did in spades. You only have to track the trajectory of Uncharted in the space of a console generation to see what…

The homogenization of compute hardware is indeed very depressing

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#97

Post by hyperpallium »

abtinf wrote: post #80
DCKing wrote: post #49

The Playstation 1, 2 and 3 are each in their own way Sony's take on an alternate history of computer graphics. It was Sony's intent with all three consoles to put the "special effects" (that in 2019 are performed using shaders) in the CPU , and not the GPU. As a result, the PS1, but especially the PS2 and PS3 were engineered to have amazing vector capabilities in the CPU. The PS2's Emotion Engine had extremely high p…

Why doesn’t Intel make a chip specialized for gaming? Something like a dual core CPU optimized for single threaded performance and a variable number of GPU cores (a guaranteed minimum up to a perfect maximum), binned by clock speed. Skip all the support for extra pcie lanes (except maybe for storage). From your comment, it seems like Sony tried exactly this but failed. Is there an inherent flaw in such a design or ju…

IDK specifically, but generally: parallelism is the way to get more compute despite limited GHz, and something like GPU architecture is a neater fit than general-purpose CPU architecture.

BTW the latest AMD GPU architecture (RDNA) is specific for gaming, in that they get around 40% better framerates for the same raw GFLOPS of their previous architecture (GNC).

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#98

Post by callalex »

j1vms wrote: post #9

> "The Air Force had to convince Sony to..." To be a fly on the wall during that discussion. I'm sure money wasn't an issue for the Air Force, or that Sony had some balls of steel.

Are you implying that the Air Force is in the business of making “offers that cannot be refused” especially to foreign owned companies?

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#99

Post by p1necone »

DCKing wrote: post #62
forrestthewoods wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Console hardware is not really interesting anymore if you ask me. Agreed. And that’s a good thing. PS1, PS2, and PS3 were all underpowered. I’ll never forgive the PS2 for holding back games for 7 years. Grumble grumble. PS3 may technically not have been slower. But if it takes 2x the effort to get a 10% improvement it is in practice. Everything’s a PC now. Which means the focus can be on making good games instead o…

I disagree any of them were underpowered. The PS1 and PS3 arguably produced the nicest graphics of their generations - the PS1 because its competition was compromised in their own way, and the PS3 due to sheer brute force. The PS2 for sure was less powerful than the more conventional architectures of the GameCube and Xbox, but it was released 18 months before either of them in a time when Moore's law was still extrem…

Compared to PCs of the same era they were very underpowered. And that only got worse as the generation went on. The PS3 and 360 only had 512mb of ram shared between the cpu and gpu which was a pretty serious handicap.

(The lack of ram was definitely the biggest issue, and the thing that held back PC games the most as levels had to be made a lot smaller than they could have been otherwise - Destiny and Final Fantasy XIV are two concrete examples, both released expansions with much larger playable areas as soon as PS3/360 support was dropped).

Compared to other consoles of the same generation they were on par though.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#100

Post by pitterpatter »

DCKing wrote: post #49

The Playstation 1, 2 and 3 are each in their own way Sony's take on an alternate history of computer graphics. It was Sony's intent with all three consoles to put the "special effects" (that in 2019 are performed using shaders) in the CPU , and not the GPU. As a result, the PS1, but especially the PS2 and PS3 were engineered to have amazing vector capabilities in the CPU. The PS2's Emotion Engine had extremely high p…

The PSP as well had essentially a second CPU with some kind of programmable DSP for handling media like MP3 & MP4 playback. Some enterprising individuals figured out how to use it for general computation in the PSP homebrew heydays. I think there was a Nintendo DS emulator that used it for some kind of speed up.
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