PS3 will be playable at E3 2006

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rubyracer

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Not only did Sony Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison reveal that the next-generation console will launch worldwide in 'early November' he also went on to reveal that WARHAWK would be playable at the event, meaning the PS3 will be present.

E3 will be running from May 10 - 12 at the LA Convention Center.
 
So, a prototype will be there in less than two months! Or most likely, the finished design. I'm curious about all sorts of things. If 1080p will be going, which it should be. What the console will look like. What the controller looks and handles like. How the unit is internally cooled. I can't imagine the thing not looking something like the X Box, with room for cooling nine 3.2ghz processors (yes, tha-con, one central processor and eight RISC processors).

The peripherals, like racing wheels. ;)

Word from developers on how the development tools let them harness all that multi-core, multi-processor power, like an SPE devoted to bot A.I.? I doubt they'll spill anything like that, but info like that is fun for me to collect. I'm a proud geek. May can't come soon enough.
 
rubyracer
Not only did Sony Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison reveal that the next-generation console will launch worldwide in 'early November' he also went on to reveal that WARHAWK would be playable at the event, meaning the PS3 will be present.

E3 will be running from May 10 - 12 at the LA Convention Center.
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We already know! There's no need to clutter up this area with crap you already posted here... https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showpost.php?p=2181036&postcount=1022
 
at least you are in the country, i live in england! think how bad i feel! lol. its a good sign that it is at E3 because it means that the console is basically finished!
 
I bet we have to wait till mainly next month or 2, before shops like Play.com and Game start taking pre-orders.
 
Tenacious D
So, a prototype will be there in less than two months! Or most likely, the finished design. I'm curious about all sorts of things. If 1080p will be going, which it should be. What the console will look like. What the controller looks and handles like. How the unit is internally cooled. I can't imagine the thing not looking something like the X Box, with room for cooling nine 3.2ghz processors (yes, tha-con, one central processor and eight RISC processors).

The peripherals, like racing wheels. ;)

Word from developers on how the development tools let them harness all that multi-core, multi-processor power, like an SPE devoted to bot A.I.? I doubt they'll spill anything like that, but info like that is fun for me to collect. I'm a proud geek. May can't come soon enough.
Click to expand...

Not even going to waste my time going into this again.

Silicon Straining. Reduces power consumption by 40% and lowers heat output. I've already pointed this out to you. I have no idea why you are stuck in this train of thought.

It is ONE processor. ONE. They all operate at the SAME frequency. The fact that there are 7 SPE's (not 8) Does not mean they will accumalate heat and you combine their clock speeds as you would a multiprocessor unit. It is ONE processor, running at 3.2Ghz, with 7 SPE's, this DOES NOT increase the heat out put. THIS is why the CELL is such a MARVEL.


Learn how the technology works before you start making assumptions and what not.
 
And for God's sake, don't call them a processor or you might get jumped on. :D

And tha_con, I am aware that the 90nm process, and smaller, which the high speed chips have migrated to is reducing the factor of heat generation. However, at the clock speeds these processorsr are running, they still get bloody hot. All nine of these processors will need massive heat dissipation, and even a few little fans might mean a case larger than the current XBox.

Since everyone including Sony and IBM are discussing the cooling issues involved, maybe I'm not the one who should learn how the technology works before making assumptions and what not. ;)
 
Tenacious D
And for God's sake, don't call them a processor or you might get jumped on. :D

And tha_con, I am aware that the 90nm process, and smaller, which the high speed chips have migrated to is reducing the factor of heat generation. However, at the clock speeds these processorsr are running, they still get bloody hot. All nine of these processors will need massive heat dissipation, and even a few little fans might mean a case larger than the current XBox.

Since everyone including Sony and IBM are discussing the cooling issues involved, maybe I'm not the one who should learn how the technology works before making assumptions and what not. ;)
Click to expand...

Funny, because I'm not talking about the 90nm process, I'm talking about Silicon Straining, which improves the conductivity of Silicon in the chip, making data travel faster and more effeciently, reducing the need for higher amount of power, thus, reducing the heat output.

And I still find it terribly amusing that you INSIST on saying it's a 9 processor unit. It's one processor, with 8 SPE's, but ONLY SEVEN, READ, ONLY SEVEN are functional. However, the SPE's do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, count as a multi processor setup as you are so intently insisting.

It is a Single Processing Unit, which consists of one PowerPC core, with 8 other processing ELEMENTS (and only 7 are functional).

The purpose of the SPE's is to handle a specific task that it is programmed for, not to be an individual processor, it cannot function without the PPC Core.

Also, the fact that there are 7 SPE's on the die, does not increase the heat output of the chip, as they all function in the same respect as a standard CPU, operating at the same speed, the fact that there are 7 of them does not mean that all of the SPE's are producing more heat in their own respect.


ALSO, you cited the SPE's as being RISC processors, which is far from true, as SPE's have a much broader function when it comes to Vector ALU's (functioning in groups of 4 32-Bit vector ALU's, vs a RISC processor which has fixed point traditional ALU's).

The second different would be that a RISC processor requires an L1 cache, the SPE's do not have this, instead they have 256KB of localized memory that is dependant completly on software.



With that said, there are NOT, I repeat, NOT, 9 processing units, and to be even more correct, there are not 8. There is ONE processor, with 7 SPE's that function along side of the IBM PPC RISC processor. Not 9, not 8. ONE.
 
What's the purpose of the 8th SPE? I've probably read it before, but if it's not functional, why is it in there? The only reason I can think of is that the setup of the Cell and the SPE's requires 8 SPE's to work properly, but the fuction of the console doesn't require all 8, if that makes any sense.
 
I originally thought the 8th SPE was reserved for repetative tasks, however, I was wrong.

What Sony and IBM have done, is *turn off* the 8th SPE on the Cell processor that will be used with the PlayStation 3.

The reason they have it disabled, is because it will improve the overall yeild of functional processors that come from the factory.

You see, the process for producing the Cell processor is not *perfect* per se. Thus, (and this is a guess) it is possible that one or two out of every say, twenty five processors that leave the factory have the possibility to have a defective 8th SPE that does not function correctly. However, if they turn it off by default, it does not matter if it is functional or not, as it will never be used, thus, those that come out without the functional 8th SPE can still be used in the console at no loss.
 
live4speed: evidently the eight SPEs are on one massive chip. I haven't read anything specific in that regard, though one of the other posters said so. And this part of Sony's press release is another clue:

"Only seven SPEs are active; the eighth is redundant, to improve yield."

Yield means a working chip. If you've ever seen a video of an electronics plant with a robotic assembly unit plucking chip wafers off of a plate to place in a chip housing, you'll notice that several of them are avoided. Those are chips which failed an integrity test. A high yield means most or all of the chips printed are good, but with printing process approaching the molecular level, 99% efficiency just isn't possible at our current level of technology. So printing eight SPEs on ONE chip with one being redundant allows a yield approaching 100% per chip, since the SPE yield only needs to be 88% to be fully functional. Very clever stuff.

tha_con: there are quite a few technologies which come along for the ride with the new chip printing manufacturing, and silicon straining and other phototrace and substrate technologies certainly work hand in hand like tuning elements on a sports car to increase power while reducing thermal waste energy. In fact I was surprised to just now find an article which states that the Cell chip will be produced wih a 65nanometer process, so the circuit traces are getting ever closer to the point of being just a few hundred thousand molecules wide. Holy nanotechnology!

I know you hold onto this notion that only a central processor is a processor, undoubtedly from PC jargon, where the only chip called a processor is the CPU. But if you look at other electronic elements, you'll find that motherboard makers will discuss auxilliary processors, graphics card makers have graphics processors, and so on. A processor is simply a chip which manages processes in an electronic devide.

Quibbling about the eight Synergistic Processing Elements not being RISC processors because they don't employ floating-point math or have an onboard cache is kind of strange too. Not only is the definition of a RISC processor simply a Reduced Instruction Set Chip, meaning it has a command list of computing operations which is simplified to make it operationally faster and more efficient, as well as error reduced, but Sony's own press releases call the SPEs "RISC processors":

"3.2 GHz Cell BE multi-core processor: PowerPC-based 'Power Processing Element' and 8 Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs), also 3.2 GHz. The PPE has a 512 KiB L2 cache and one VMX (AltiVec) vector unit. Each of the eight SPEs is a RISC processor with 128-bit SIMD and superscalar functions. Each SPE has 256 KiB of software-addressable SRAM."

Since Sony doesn't even call the Cell proccesor a CPU, I wonder what you make of that. ;)

EDIT: *laughs* Well, nice to bump info with you tha_ :D
 
Well, I can only assume that Sony is calling it a RISC processor based on the similarities of their functions as far as simplified instruction sets, however, I have never in my life bumped into a RISC processor that can handle vector ALU's, or do branch prediction in software only, or that has an onboard cache, since every single RISC processor I have ever seen in my life has used an L1 cache. The cache is really what makes it different to me, since an L1 cache requires a lot of overhead and such, while the onboard memory for each SPE is fully programmable to the developer, and information can be bumped around via the L1 cache on the PPC.

I'm still going to stick to my guns and tell you that "9" processors is the wrong answer, because you imply that it is a multi processor set up through your words. In fact I do not even know why Sony would refer to the processer as a "multi-core processor" when IBM has said that the SPE's should not be thought of as "cores" rather, processing elements that assist the PPC with the heavy number crunching.
 
Well, there is this tidbit in the basic press release about the SPEs:

"Each SPE has 256 KiB of software-addressable SRAM."

So the SPEs operate the way previous generations of processors did, with an offboard cache. The first generation Celeron design didn't have an onboard cache either. I'm assuming the SRAM is offboard because the SPE chip has eight of them crowding it, and it must have been an acceptable compromise to IBM and Sony to do it this way. Or maybe it didn't make a lot of difference. I'm sure the crucial performance element is the Cell. In any case, I'm sure we can shake hands over how good the games will be when the PS3 gets all plugged in. ;)
 

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