4 ms·

The ps3 cell processor with the 8 "synergistic processing element" co-processors was definitely weird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor) https://e

by geon 3y ago

The ps3 cell processor with the 8 "synergistic processing element" co-processors was definitely weird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor)

masklinn 3y ago
The ps3 was incredible, not so much in what it could do as in what IBM managed to make Sony pay for.
- kernal 3y ago
  IBM also made Microsoft pay for the Xenon in the Xbox 360.
  - breadmaster 3y ago
    And they had Nintendo paying 'em in that generation (and the one before) too.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    Xenon is a pretty standard SMP design, having 3 cores is basically the height of its oddity. It was a fine early-multicore CPU for consoles. The Cell was very much not that, the SPEs were unnecessarily difficult to use for a console and ultimately a dead end though they made for great supercomputing elements before GPGPU really took off (some people built supercomputers out of PS3s clusters as that was literally the cheapest way to get cells). The Cell supposedly cost 400 millions to develop, a cost largely borne by Sony. MS got IBM to retune the PPE for Xenon, but they'd likely have made do with an other IBM core as their base had that not existed.
    - kernal 3y ago
      This claim that the SPEs were difficult to use and maximize may have been true in the early years, but all of the major engines were optimized to quickly abstract them. Naughty Dog, a key contributor to the PS3 graphics libraries had optimized them so much that porting PS3 games to the PS4 was "hell" in their words. >I wish we had a button that was like ‘Turn On PS4 Mode’, but no,” Druckmann said. "We expected it to be hell, and it was hell. Just getting an image onscreen, even an inferior one with the shadows broken, lighting broken and with it crashing every 30 seconds...that took a long time. These engineers are some of the best in the industry' and they optimized the game so much for the PS3’s SPUs specifically. It was optimized on a binary level, but after shifting those things over, you have to go back to the high level, make sure the systems are intact, and optimize it again. "I can’t describe how difficult a task that is. And once it’s running well, you’re running the [versions] side by side to make sure you didn’t screw something up in the process, like physics being slightly off, which throws the game off, or lighting being shifted and all of a sudden it’s a drastically different look. That’s not improved any more; that’s different. We want to stay faithful while being better.”
      - masklinn 3y ago
        > This claim that the SPEs were difficult to use and maximize may have been true in the early years The 7th gen appropriately "lasted" 7 years, "the early years" was a ton of it. > Naughty Dog, a key contributor to the PS3 graphics libraries ND is a first party studio, that means access to information and efforts to push the platform most developers can't justify, especially as third parties would usually need cross-platform support: the PS3 was no PS2. > so much that porting PS3 games to the PS4 was "hell" Which proves the point: the PS3's Cell was an expensive, unnecessarily complicated, and divergent dead end.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        Remember that Naughty Dog was acquired by Sony, thus access to internal info, and until Sony released Phyre Engine, and the GT demoed what was possible with the PS3, most studios were kind of lost targeting it.
tapoxi 3y ago
"The Race for a New Game Machine" is an interesting book on the development of Cell, if the author comes off a little annoying at times. It was a neat idea to offload certain operations to the SPEs (glorified vector processors) but they all had their own RAM and communicated via a bus, so you really needed to optimize for it.
brezelgoring 3y ago
TIL the PlayStation 3 is used (on a grid/cluster of 16) as a viable alternative to Supercomputers by Physics researchers, this grid calculates how black holes collapse (!). I assume this is a cost-cutting measure by the researchers, and it makes me think how much more expensive a ‘supercomputer’ is and why, if it can be suitably replaced by the console with no games.
- xcv123 3y ago
  That continued with researchers using cheap gaming GPUs for simulations. Today a single Nvidia 4090 GPU exceeds the performance of that PS3 cluster.
  - pezezin 3y ago
    "Exceeds" is an understatement. The Cell CPU had a maximum performance of 200 GFLOPS of FP32. A Nvidia 4090 has 73 TFLOPS of FP32, equivalent to 360 PS3.
    - xcv123 3y ago
      For physics simulations they are using double precision. They increased the cluster to 400 PS3s so it continued to be useful in the 2010's. https://web.uri.edu/gravity/ps3/ https://web.uri.edu/gravity/ps3/ But I guess the cluster overhead would reduce performance to less than a 4090 in real applications.
      - pezezin 3y ago
        Oh, in that case consumer GPUs absolutely suck at FP64, the vendors want you to buy the expensive data-center version. The RTX 4090 has a 1/64 rate when computing with FP64, so only 1.2 TFLOPS! But from what I can find, the Cell also sucked at FP64, with a rate of 1/10 for a total of 15 GFLOPS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_technical_specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_technical_specif... , second paragraph). The 400 PS3 cluster would be 6 TFLOPS or 5x RTX 4090.

by geon 3y ago

The ps3 cell processor with the 8 "synergistic processing element" co-processors was definitely weird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor)

masklinn 3y ago

The ps3 was incredible, not so much in what it could do as in what IBM managed to make Sony pay for.

kernal 3y ago
IBM also made Microsoft pay for the Xenon in the Xbox 360.
- breadmaster 3y ago
  And they had Nintendo paying 'em in that generation (and the one before) too.
- masklinn 3y ago
  Xenon is a pretty standard SMP design, having 3 cores is basically the height of its oddity. It was a fine early-multicore CPU for consoles. The Cell was very much not that, the SPEs were unnecessarily difficult to use for a console and ultimately a dead end though they made for great supercomputing elements before GPGPU really took off (some people built supercomputers out of PS3s clusters as that was literally the cheapest way to get cells). The Cell supposedly cost 400 millions to develop, a cost largely borne by Sony. MS got IBM to retune the PPE for Xenon, but they'd likely have made do with an other IBM core as their base had that not existed.
  - kernal 3y ago
    This claim that the SPEs were difficult to use and maximize may have been true in the early years, but all of the major engines were optimized to quickly abstract them. Naughty Dog, a key contributor to the PS3 graphics libraries had optimized them so much that porting PS3 games to the PS4 was "hell" in their words. >I wish we had a button that was like ‘Turn On PS4 Mode’, but no,” Druckmann said. "We expected it to be hell, and it was hell. Just getting an image onscreen, even an inferior one with the shadows broken, lighting broken and with it crashing every 30 seconds...that took a long time. These engineers are some of the best in the industry' and they optimized the game so much for the PS3’s SPUs specifically. It was optimized on a binary level, but after shifting those things over, you have to go back to the high level, make sure the systems are intact, and optimize it again. "I can’t describe how difficult a task that is. And once it’s running well, you’re running the [versions] side by side to make sure you didn’t screw something up in the process, like physics being slightly off, which throws the game off, or lighting being shifted and all of a sudden it’s a drastically different look. That’s not improved any more; that’s different. We want to stay faithful while being better.”
    - masklinn 3y ago
      > This claim that the SPEs were difficult to use and maximize may have been true in the early years The 7th gen appropriately "lasted" 7 years, "the early years" was a ton of it. > Naughty Dog, a key contributor to the PS3 graphics libraries ND is a first party studio, that means access to information and efforts to push the platform most developers can't justify, especially as third parties would usually need cross-platform support: the PS3 was no PS2. > so much that porting PS3 games to the PS4 was "hell" Which proves the point: the PS3's Cell was an expensive, unnecessarily complicated, and divergent dead end.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Remember that Naughty Dog was acquired by Sony, thus access to internal info, and until Sony released Phyre Engine, and the GT demoed what was possible with the PS3, most studios were kind of lost targeting it.

tapoxi 3y ago

"The Race for a New Game Machine" is an interesting book on the development of Cell, if the author comes off a little annoying at times. It was a neat idea to offload certain operations to the SPEs (glorified vector processors) but they all had their own RAM and communicated via a bus, so you really needed to optimize for it.

brezelgoring 3y ago

TIL the PlayStation 3 is used (on a grid/cluster of 16) as a viable alternative to Supercomputers by Physics researchers, this grid calculates how black holes collapse (!). I assume this is a cost-cutting measure by the researchers, and it makes me think how much more expensive a ‘supercomputer’ is and why, if it can be suitably replaced by the console with no games.

xcv123 3y ago
That continued with researchers using cheap gaming GPUs for simulations. Today a single Nvidia 4090 GPU exceeds the performance of that PS3 cluster.
- pezezin 3y ago
  "Exceeds" is an understatement. The Cell CPU had a maximum performance of 200 GFLOPS of FP32. A Nvidia 4090 has 73 TFLOPS of FP32, equivalent to 360 PS3.
  - xcv123 3y ago
    For physics simulations they are using double precision. They increased the cluster to 400 PS3s so it continued to be useful in the 2010's. https://web.uri.edu/gravity/ps3/ https://web.uri.edu/gravity/ps3/ But I guess the cluster overhead would reduce performance to less than a 4090 in real applications.
    - pezezin 3y ago
      Oh, in that case consumer GPUs absolutely suck at FP64, the vendors want you to buy the expensive data-center version. The RTX 4090 has a 1/64 rate when computing with FP64, so only 1.2 TFLOPS! But from what I can find, the Cell also sucked at FP64, with a rate of 1/10 for a total of 15 GFLOPS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_technical_specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_technical_specif... , second paragraph). The 400 PS3 cluster would be 6 TFLOPS or 5x RTX 4090.