Starman535 wrote:The PS-3 is a 160 Gb model that seems dog slow under YDL, but very fast in the GameOS. I don't know how much of that is caused by the slow disk, and how much is the lack of memory.
Just FYI: Most of the slowdown is caused directly by the Cell and by the framebuffer display.
Linux doesn't understand the unique multi-core architecture of the Cell, since it was designed around x86 processors. Unlike x86-family multi-core processors, where each of the cores run the same instruction set, the Cell has two separate architectures for the seven cores - one PPE and six SPEs. The PPE and SPEs are not binary compatible - therefore, Linux only runs on the PPE. The PPE, which is normally used to set up the SPEs for games, is a moderately fast, single core, dual threaded, in-order execution PowerPC processor.
In addition, the PS3 uses a simple framebuffer display. There is no 2D or 3D acceleration - the CPU has to draw every pixel you see. Since the PPE isn't incredibly fast, this slows it down even more. The nVidia RSX chip - which the GameOS uses directly - is abstracted into a framebuffer display by the Linux hypervisor.
We've found that improvements to hard discs and memory optimization techniques can help - but aren't panaceas.
Cheers,
Paul