maxximuscool wrote:Yes i know that 360 and PS3 can almost count as brother from the same mother. I just hate it because IBM sell what SONY invested in to Microsoft while it is still in a classified state.
Actually - that was Sony's stupidity, pure and simple. According to the book I mentioned earlier, the contract between Sony, Toshiba and IBM that created the STI initiative allowed IBM to use their PowerPC design for any other customer - at any time. And, that's exactly what Microsoft bought. Microsoft got none of the SPE technology - only the PPE, which IBM owned completely.
At no time were any Sony secrets passed on to Microsoft and vice-versa. Sure - the IBM team would request bug fixes that didn't make sense to the Sony folks - but bugs are bugs. They were things that should be fixed - just not for the reasons Sony thought.
To be honest, Sony just didn't believe that Microsoft and IBM would ever patch up their differences. IBM and Microsoft were still angry over the lack of MS commitment to the PS/2 computer architecture and the OS/2 vs. Windows operating system war. Sony was wrong - Bill Gates himself called the president of IBM, cut through the legal red tape, and made the deal - with a *lot* of money.
maxximuscool wrote:Microsoft basically got the CPU from PS3 and modified it a little.
You should really read this book:
The Race For A New Game Machine It will clarify a lot of your research. It was written by two of the IBM engineers that designed the PPE. It really illuminates a lot of the situation.
To start with, the original design of the PPE came from work IBM was doing for Apple. Remember the G4? Apple was unhappy with Motorola's design and implementation of that processor, and turned to IBM for help. IBM started work on a new version of the PowerPC core for Apple that got merged into the STI initiative.
Basically, it's not the CPU from the PS3 - the Cell is more than that. Sony wanted a PowerPC embedded core from IBM. Microsoft wanted a PowerPC embedded core from IBM. Nothing in the contracts prevented IBM from supplying the same embedded core to both. Remember - Sony designed the Cell's SPEs mostly themselves - IBM only designed the PPE. Sure - Sony provided most of the startup money for the project - but - that's business. IBM delivered their core on time and within specifications to both customers.
Heck - the Wii uses an earlier version of the PPE as well. The only real loser here was Apple: In order to make the schedule and keep complexity down, the PPE lost "out-of-order" processing. This made running a regular operating system slow - witness our relatively slow Linux. Apple was forced to use a different PowerPC from within IBM - the G5 - which was never able to match the power consumption of the PPE, since it was based on a POWER architecture processor from an IBM server division, not a PowerPC.
Shippy - one of the authors of the book - postulates that this is the real reason that Apple abandoned IBM and went for Intel.
maxximuscool wrote:But the down side of their Xbox360 CPU is it cannot handle intense graphics that jams into one scene lol. Where PS3 has the ability to handle those sort of work loads. XBOX360 quite laggy when there are too many things happening at once.
Not really - no. It's not that laggy at all. In some games it's better than the PS3 - in others it's worse. It's up to the programmers - as it always has been.
Think of it this way - the 360 has a triple core, hyper-threaded low latency PowerPC processor with a fairly high end ATI chip. That's 6 unified processing threads. And each pair of threads has its own Vector Unit processor - like an AltiVec - but better. Not as powerful as an SPE, but in conjunction with the more advanced ATI GPU and its shaders, it's enough.
For
traditional PC programming, this is a better fit than the PS3.
Let me reiterate: I said
traditional.
maxximuscool wrote:That is what my researched told me though.
I don't think your research is right, unfortunately. If the codebase started as a PC game, it adopts easier to the 360. Unless the production house takes the extra time to re-engineer the base algorithm, the PS3 port suffers.
For example, try The Orange Box from Valve on the PS3 & 360. 360? Smooth as silk. PS3? Stutters and pops. Valve fully admitted they had no interest in creating a PS3 version. Gabe Newell stated that he basically didn't have time to learn the PS3's architecture. There just weren't enough potential sales to justify the loss of Valve's programmers to the project. So - EA used an in-house team to do the port, and it showed.
Or - recently - the new Ghostbusters game. The framerates are close, but the PS3 version is 70% the resolution of the 360, and it's missing key graphical effects.
Again - PS3 titles can look great. Take Tomb Raider: Underworld. Much better on the PS3. Or Uncharted 2 - there's a reason that game is PS3 only. According to Naughty Dog, they're finally using the SPEs at 100% workload.
But - nowadays - you've gotta wonder - Is the PS3's strange architecture really worth it in the long run? Is the PC so ubiquitous that working away from that standard dooms you to failure? I consider the 360 and - heck - even the Wii - to be PC architecture. PowerPC CPU & ATI GPU in both units - that's a PC right there.
Cheers,
Paul