Is Sony eating hundreds of dollars on each PS3?

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Libraries and physics

All that will be required is a library call to get some ultra-fast processing done.
The 8 simpler processors can help with jobs such as:

One time period has elapsed, I calculate where a particle is. Is it beyond the horizon? (so I need to do Zp - Zh). If it isn't then remove it from the model.

I remember trying to optimize this on X86 for a friend. SIMD was pretty useless. Sure you can do the calculation (Zp - Zh), but you couldn't bittest the result without writing to main memory from the FPU, then reading back into the CPU, testing and so on.
Now in comparison with the Cell, you could do (Zp-Zh), do the test, etc simultaneously on 8 off 3.2 GHz processors, without any intervention from your main 3.2GHz CPU.

For doing math and so on, you just don't need User/Supervisor and Virtual memory and so on, you just need a raw workhorse, and lots of them.

With a good physics library, the Cell will be amazing.
Sure it's difficult to write software for, BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE. Remember you need at least ?10Million to make a game these days. Scenery designers, character designers, musicians, sound effects engineers etc etc.

It isn't going to be some guy at home writing an entire game anymore (or at least highly unlikely).

My feeling having finally seen an XBox360 running on a HD screen: yes it's good. But is it different enough to the previous generation. Myself I think not. I think it's like the Dreamcast all over. Not enough of a leap.
If the PS3 can't do better than Xbox 360, then I think both will be slow sellers.

The thing that gets me about the Wii is that the only thing it has really is a new controller.
What if the old PS/2 gets a similar controller and a few more "fun" games?

Posted by: stevey_d   Posted on: 11/19/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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