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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

#121

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

zanny wrote: post #87
Nition wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are not developing game consoles out of anything but an incredibly evil greed - they are wasting insurmountable amounts of raw materials making computers that cannot be used as computers. I think this is a bit harsh. Is artwork a waste of good canvas? (I guess to be fair to you here, at least canvas is a renewable resource)

There isn't an appropriate analogy for IP based DRM because the real world doesn't behave like intellectual property. I was trying to come up with some convoluted analogy about making art on a gold plated easel that self destructs every decade and burns any canvas besides a specific size that is put on it, but just trying to formulate a physical analog hints at the absurdity of it all. Actually, wait. You buy a tract…

I thought the John Deere thing was only to the extent that they locked-down their users from tweaking their firmware - not that their firmware actively tries to frustrate use-cases like attaching a plow or disabling the tractor after 3 years?

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#122

Post by pheon »

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 architecture and design of PS1/2/3 were driven from Tokyo, where as PS4/5/+ are driven from the US. It happened because the internal corporate structure changed significantly, leading the design to be heavily influenced by game dev community vs hardware engineers.

As such... its sad as we will never see any new crazy ass hardware architectures going forward.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#123

Post by redis_mlc »

callalex wrote: post #98
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?

Well, actually yes.

Notice how there's very few military aircraft companies in the USA?

That's because the little fish got a visit from Washington saying, "that was your last contract unless you merge."

Northrop tried to resist, for a while anyway.

Regarding foreign companies, the Avro Arrow was cut up after the US offered Canada a northern missile defense network. The Arrow was an early Mach 2 interceptor - think of the foreign sales possibilities.

Many of the designers ended up at NASA.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#124

Post by dreamcompiler »

moonbug wrote: post #26

It was a cute way to get a Cell processor running Linux for an order of magnitude less than any other option, during the brief window where that processor looked like it was going to be future of high performance CPUs. (Anyone else here have the misfortune to work with LLNL's Roadrunner?). But then IBM killed it, and Nvidia came along and ate the market.

LANL had the Roadrunner. LLNL had BlueGene/L at the time.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#125

Post by Dylan16807 »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #103
mr_toad wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it took waaaay too much effort to get there making it a very poor value proposition for developers. It’s funny that this is always a criticism levelled at the CPU and not the developers.

You kinda have to work with the people existing, while there were other CPUs available at the time. And even if everyone were a super smart 10x-developer like you surely are, their time would still be better spent on a platform that is more productive. The idea that some technology is difficult but rewards proficiency with incredible productivity is almost entirely wrong, which is why nobody does web development in A…

> And even if everyone were a super smart 10x-developer like you surely are

That's not called for. They never implied they were even above average. Just that a bunch of game devs were somewhat lazy.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#126

Post by deogeo »

Gracana wrote: post #112
wmf wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would many people complain if they were not affected? That seems like an odd conspiracy theory.

If you wait till you're affected, it's too late. Take secure boot for example - should we wait until there are no computers on the market where the user can unlock it, before we complain? Because that's what it would take for someone intent on buying an unlockable computer to be affected.

You can apply this to any other infringement on freedom.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#127

Post by Legogris »

dehrmann wrote: post #106
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…

> As a result, the PS4 and Xbox One have PC hardware. Does this mean the Xbox was pretty revolutionary for showing that you really can make a console with commodity hardware?

Yeah, I recall the Xbox being super popular to pick up for the sole purpose of repurposing into a media center (the main OS being the Linux distro Xbox Media Center (xbmc), today known as Kodi)

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#128

Post by rasz »

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…

Did you just call wobbly fixed point vertex no subpixel precision no transparency no perspective correction mess full of gaps on PS1 a nicest graphics of their generations?

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#129

Post by octbash »

menzoic wrote: post #107
Jasper_ wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird PS1/PS2/PS3 were because of Japan's heavy arcade culture, where quirky hardware/software designs were the standard. Xbox was approached from the "let's make a DirectX Box" angle, from commodity PC hardware, and it wasn't until the PS3's initial huge cost blunder that Sony realized they needed to go the commodity angle. > There's a persistent rumor that the Cell was so powerful that Sony had intended for the…

> The PS3 shader compiler infamously had a random search for an optimizer, and Sony's recommendation was to just run it continually with different random seed inputs in hopes it found a better optimization for your shader. Sounds like machine learning with linear regression.

How is it like linear regression, considering linear regression has a closed-form solution, and even if you're using an iterative solver, is a convex problem.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#130

Post by rasz »

scarface74 wrote: post #27
MrMember wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never buy another Sony console again after they removed the ability to run Linux on the PS3. It's one of the reasons I bought one and I used it a lot.

Do you think that Sony is having executive board meetings worrying about a few Linux users who won’t buy their consoles?

Im pretty sure they had more than one board meeting worrying about sudden coordinated effort of 'linux nerds' to utterly destroy PS3 security model.
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