[HN Gopher] Playstation 3 Architecture ___________________________________________________________________ Playstation 3 Architecture Author : bangonkeyboard Score : 169 points Date : 2021-10-20 18:56 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.copetti.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.copetti.org) | johnzim wrote: | I remember the Idle Thumbs podcast made a running joke of the | fact that 2010 was supposed to be "Year of the PS3" because I | believe Kaz Hirai had suggested that it would take multiple years | for developers to unlock the true power of the system. | | Which is an excellent way to brand how much of a pain it was for | Devs to wring performance out of it. | mywittyname wrote: | This wasn't unusual sentiment for the time. Historically, | consoles had a stark difference in quality between the initial | batch of games for any system, and the last AAA titles for it. | Compare Super Mario to Super Mario 3 on the NES. Or Donkey Kong | Country vs Super Mario World on the SNES. Or LoK: Soul Reaver | to Tomb Raider 1 on the PS1. | | Some of the later PS3 games still look incredible. The biggest | graphics limitation is resolution. | Lammy wrote: | > The RSX inherits existing Nvidia technology, it's reported to | be based on the 7800 GTX model sold for PCs | | You can also see this in the early Cell Evaluation systems which | at first had 6800s in SLI and switched to a 7800 GTX before the | RSX was ready: | http://www.edepot.com/playstation3.html#Early_PS3_Models | monocasa wrote: | Apparently the addition of the RSX was a last minute | modification of the console. They got hit by the same dennard | scaling issue that killed of the Netburst derived architectures | too [0]. They had been planning on cranking the Cell to over | 4Ghz, just including two of them in the PS3, and running GPU | tasks 'in software' on the SPUs. The Ghz wall hit them hard and | had them reeling looking for an actual graphics chip at the | last minute. | | [0] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling#Breakdown_of_D... | corysama wrote: | The story I have heard directly from insiders is that they | had a GPU design from Toshiba. But, it was so deeply VLIW | that writing an effective compiler for it was deemed | infeasible and hand-coding for it would require deeply | dedicated skills. So, they gave up on it late in production | and went to Nvidia. | | They looked at the G80, but that was too early and risky to | jump on at the time. So, they settled for the 7800. | | It's a shame. If they had delayed the release and went with | the G80, the PS3 would have crushed the 360 as far as | graphics. Instead, a whole lot of Cell SPU time had to be | dedicated to shoring up the PS3's GPU issues to bring it on | par with 360 titles. | monocasa wrote: | I heard that the Toshiba GPU was also part of that last | minute change after the dual Cell design didn't work out. | The Nvidia talks happened sort of in parallel, but that was | the last option. | | I want to say it's mentioned in The Race For A New Game | Machine too, but I'm not 100% on that. | midwestemo wrote: | https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/ If anyone's interested | in more writeups about console architectures from this person. | flipacholas wrote: | Alternative edition without styles: | https://classic.copetti.org/writings/consoles/playstation-3/ | | (ideal if you use accessibility tools, like text to speech, or | want to read from an eBook or legacy browser) | | If you spot a mistake, please log an issue on the repo | (https://github.com/flipacholas/Architecture-of-consoles). | Thanks! | jt_thurs_82 wrote: | minor correction | | > The accelerators included within PS3's Cell are the Synergistic | Processor Element (SPE). Cell includes eight of them, although | one is physically disabled during manufacturing. | | This was disabled in software (by syscon) early on in the boot | process. Many people "unlocked" theirs without stability issues. | My understanding was that it was a yield thing, and definitely | not intended for general use ;) | | > This makes you wonder if IBM/Sony/Toshiba hit a wall while | trying to scale Cell further, so Sony had no option but to get | help from a graphics company. Interviews from early 2nd party | developers confirm this: | https://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/08/playstation-3-was-de... | | That's also why the PS3 has two separate RAM, compared to the | xbox 360's unified memory - Sony was trying to do that as well. | | > HDMI connector | | idk if anyone remembers this, but sony was talking about multi | display gaming, such as having a status display. There was a | prototype that had two hdmi ports and three ethernet - sony | claimed it would also be a home server and router at that time. | devkits did include two hdmi ports, and i suspect that the two | screen claim was something that they made up almost on the spot, | but who knows. | | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PS3_e3_2005_prototyp... | sydthrowaway wrote: | Love this. Any good books on HW architecture at this level? | qqtt wrote: | I find the PS3 historically interesting partially because the | convoluted architecture was a natural evolution of Sony's | continuing steps to make developing for their consoles harder and | harder, driven partially by their arrogance at past success. | | The PS1 was basically a repackaged project from their Nintendo | partnership. They didn't really have time to develop proper | development tools for it, and almost as a consequence of that, | the development environment was very scrappy - it hooked into | existing PCs and included a bunch of libraries that developers | were somewhat familiar with using. As a result, the developer | toolset was relatively easy to use. It allowed many developers to | get started making 3D games and experiences very quickly. This | caused developers to be swayed to the Playstation ecosystem | early, and drove all 3D resources into Playstation development | away from the Sega Saturn, which had the typically convoluted | development environment from past generations (further | exacerbated by Sega bolting together additional chips onto the | Saturn to try to compete with the PS1). | | PS2 came along, and Sony was already deviating from their easy to | use console debut. Their "emotion engine" was notoriously hard to | develop for, but Sega with the Dreamcast didn't have the legs to | compete with Sony's momentum from the PS1, and quit the console | business. Nintendo also screwed the pooch that generation with | the Gamecube and Microsoft didn't seem to be a threat with the | Xbox which was a major flop in Japan. | | Along comes PS3, and Sony goes full speed ahead on their hubris - | expensive console, impossible to develop for, an architecture | somewhat reminiscent of Saturn's hodge podge of chips. At this | point they completely lost their way from what made the PS1 set | them up for multi-generations of success. | | It's interesting to consider how the ecosystem matters when | developing these hardware products, and how easy it seems for | companies to lose sight of that. | hbn wrote: | On one hand, it's obviously the smart thing to keep your | architecture standard in a world where most games are released | cross-platform. Consoles are essentially just PCs with a set | spec and in a clean wrapper at this point. But on the other | hand it's also a bit disappointing that it's not really an | option to make strange/interesting new architectures for a | console. | | Consoles are one of the last holdovers from the era where | computers were designed with the hardware and software built | and integrated from the bottom up into a cohesive package. | Where they'll do a new one only every 7 years or so, and users | just expect to have to buy new software for them every time. So | it sounds like a space where they could get away with weird | innovations and risks, but because of the need to keep cross- | platform development feasible, it's not really an option. | | I don't know. I see why it is the way it is, but I'd like to | live in a world where consoles could get away with weirder | things. Nintendo has kind of occupied that space with their | touch screens and motion controls and whatnot, but the Switch | is also more standard than ever before. Probably a net good for | consumers though, with how much software is able to be ported | to it. | VortexDream wrote: | Interestingly, Apple is moving back towards the old console | model. You now have a bespoke CPU/GPU platform from Apple | running their own OS. I'd say we're already seeing the | performance benefits of owning/designing/developing the whole | stack. | mywittyname wrote: | What's the benefit of being weird today? A console can | achieve pretty amazing graphics with basically off-the-shelf | components, so the company isn't really buying much buy | rolling their own solution. | | The 3d was still being figured out in the 90s, which is what | lead to so much diversity in product lineups. Not just for | game consoles, but video cards, graphics API, etc. Being | weird/unique was necessary because everyone was treading in | uncharted territory. | | Prior to the 3d era, game consoles had repurposed/customized | off the shelf components. The 6502 and it's variants were | used in all kinds of consoles and computers. And the 68000 | was used in many, many more. | | Gaming consoles have come full circle. | rbanffy wrote: | > impossible to develop for | | This is what I remember from the Cell (both BE and the | "serious" version IBM used in blade servers). It's a | fascinating machine, but being inconvenient to write software | for is a key weakness. | lowbloodsugar wrote: | Sony is a hardware company. So they thought they were great at | making and evaluating hardware. | | Ironically, the CEO of nVidia once stated that nVidia is a | _software_ company - the graphics cards are just dongles that | monetize the software. This is what Sony missed. | | The story I heard was that when sony finally went to buy a | graphics card, they wouldn't pay for the software side of | things. When nobody could get any performance out of it, they | went back, cap in and and asked for the software to go with the | hardware. Don't know if it's true, but I developed on PS3 and | it feels true. | | As I understand it, it was US developers and leaders like Mark | Cerny that begged sony to stop fucking around and just make a | console with a big cpu and a big gpu. | azalemeth wrote: | It's worth saying that the whole site is an absolute gold mine of | fantastic information about console architectures over the ages, | and I particularly like the way he always highlights how the DRM | has been broken. It's really fascinating to see the convergent | and occasionally divergent evolution that goes on in these | machines, speaking to, but slightly independent from, the | technological trends of their time. | hbn wrote: | If anyone is interested in a less in-depth, but still | informative overview of game console architectures and DRM | cracking history, ModernVintageGamer on YouTube has a lot of | videos on the subject that I've enjoyed. | | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjFaPUcJU1vwk193mnW_w1w | ronama wrote: | While MVG does a good video production job, he tends to get a | lot of information wrong [1] and never corrects it after he's | told [2]. Don't get me wrong, he's done very good videos in | the past, but I wish he would take better care of his | content. | | [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/fnl0o1/why_playst | ati... | | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26222361 | ronama wrote: | For the adventurous, I can't find words to express the absolute | wrath of information found in the 'PS3 Developer Wiki' [1]. | Countless people around the world voluntarily sharing their | research to build one of the most complete sources of | information of an enigmatic console. | | [1] https://www.psdevwiki.com/ | Moosdijk wrote: | The ps3 dev wiki [1] is also a great resource on thi topic | | [1]https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Main_Page | [deleted] | ivraatiems wrote: | A fascinating writeup! It's a small thing, but I love the UI here | for choosing images where the caption above the image tells you | what you get if you click. Very user-friendly. | k__ wrote: | I remember my university buying a bunch of PS3s for their | datacenter back in the days. | mhh__ wrote: | If the author sees this: Well done, really nice read. | flipacholas wrote: | Thanks. I was worried about the fact this console has so much | going on inside, so if I end up writing too much (like 100k | words) about it, the reader may get too tired and lose | interest. In the end, I wrote 20k words with lots of diagrams | to help out. I also adapted the site to properly add citations, | in case the reader wants to know more about a specific topic. | NikolaeVarius wrote: | Really cool. I remember when Sony really pushed the idea that the | Cell arch would power so many different things, shame that never | took off. | | I wonder if that university still uses their PS3 based | supercomputer cluster | jgtrosh wrote: | Afaik these university projects were done to test out how Cell- | based supercomputers would behave. They're not competitive with | up-to-date Supercomputers. | | In my lab I found a couple of PS3s lying around several years | ago, that hadn't been used in quite a while. (One of them may | or may not have been adopted for less scientific purposes ...) | em500 wrote: | The hype was probably mostly from "Crazy" Ken Kutaragi, who had | a knack for dialing the Playstation hype beyond 11. The PS2 was | already supposed to replace your home PC and revolutionize | ecommerce and online gaming and plug yourself into the Matrix | [1]. In the past he was compared to Steve Jobs by some, but in | hindsight he seems more like Sony's Baghdad Bob. | | [1] https://www.newsweek.com/here-comes-playstation-2-156589 | monocasa wrote: | At least the home computer part of that was a shtick to avoid | some european import taxes. https://www.theguardian.com/techn | ology/2003/oct/01/business.... | | I've heard on the grapevine that the PS3's OtherOS facility | was internally thought of as another go at the same idea. | "Look, judge, it's a general purpose computer for reals this | time. Your own universities are using it in super computing | clusters, without ever launching a game". | Rodeoclash wrote: | I remember speculation at the time that the PS3 would be able | to borrow from other cell powered appliances in your house when | it was running, i.e. your toaster, to enhance its power. | | Actually, I just did a quick Google on this and it was "Sony" | themselves that appeared to mention this! [1] | | [1] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cell-broadband-engine- | ps3-... | shaggie76 wrote: | I worked on PS3 titles that used SPUs and I can't tell you how | relieved I was to find that the PS4 did away with them. The | fear that the next PS would have "64 SPUs and a marginally | faster PPU" was real. | | The analogy I gave to my friends at the time was working in a | restaurant kitchen with a tiny stovetop and 2-dozen microwave | ovens; does some things really fast, but only if you can cut | them up into small pieces that are microwave-friendly. | NikolaeVarius wrote: | Im not an expert at all, but I seem to recall issues also | arising from the inability to do out of order execution. | pavlov wrote: | Hmm, probably not. Seems like the biggest PS3 cluster had 1,760 | units and was rated at 500 teraflops (single precision float, | presumably). | | An NVIDIA A100 GPU does about 20 teraflops. So you only need 25 | of those chips to match the theoretical rating, and they have | many other advantages like much higher memory per core, etc. | jabl wrote: | > I wonder if that university still uses their PS3 based | supercomputer cluster | | Almost certainly not. A typical lifetime of a supercomputer is | around 5 years, give or take. After that the electricity they | consume makes it not worth continuing to run them vs. buying a | new one. | | See e.g. the Cell-based Roadrunner, in use 2008-2013: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadrunner_(supercomputer) | dragontamer wrote: | 5 is a bit young. | | ORNL's Titan lasted about 7 years: 2012 through 2019. Its | predecessor, Jaguar, was 2005 to 2012. Also 7 years. | mustacheemperor wrote: | In 2012 the Air Force Research Laboratory built a supercomputer | cluster from 1760 PS3s that I think was in practical use for a | while[0]. I recall reading online that the Air Force struck a | special deal with Sony to buy some of the last remaining PS3s | that had not been updated to no longer support Linux | installation during manufacturing, but that isn't mentioned in | this source. | | >The Condor Cluster project began four years ago, when | PlayStation consoles cost about $400 each. At the same time, | comparable technology would have cost about $10,000 per unit. | Overall, the PS3s for the supercomputer's core cost about $2 | million. According to AFRL Director of High Power Computing | Mark Barnell, that cost is about 5-10% of the cost of an | equivalent system built with off-the-shelf computer parts. | | >Another advantage of the PS3-based supercomputer is its energy | efficiency: it consumes just 10% of the power of comparable | supercomputers. | | I wonder how significant the cost and energy savings were by | the time the project was finished, and how long the cluster was | actually used. | | [0]https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air- | playstation-3s-supercomput... | flipacholas wrote: | If you are referring to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, I | think it's been decommissioned (their project is now archived h | ttps://web.archive.org/web/20090426190617/https://www.bsc.e...) | . Though this is expected in my opinion (Buy equipment -> | Produce research -> Move to the next thing). IIRC their big | thing is now the MareNostrum 4 supercomputer | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MareNostrum). ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-10-20 23:00 UTC)