Rumor: PS3 hardware "slow and broken"?

The misunderstanding evident in the recent Inquirer story relates to the distinction between local video memory and local system memory. The slow read speed under discussion is indicative of the feature's lack of utility. This is even reflected on the slide's statement: "No, this isn't a typo ..." A contact at Sony confirmed this telling Joystiq.com, "Again I cannot imagine a situation where you have any SPU reading from the RSX local memory." So looks like the PS3 will do just fine after all...

[Anerythristic26]

I have no knowledge of computer processors. What I did understand from this article is that a Sony rep did confirm that stat of 16mb , am I right? So that Inquirer article was not rumor but fact. I also know that a Sony rep. would make excuses for a Sony gaming machine. Will anybody with computer knowledge that does not rec. a paycheck from Sony tell us if that stat of 16mb is actually , really bad or doesn't matter.

[ssj04]

You're just pathetic, give it a rest already.

[OutLaw]

The guy was just asking a question about if anybody knew about computers and instead of helping him you rip his head off. Like you always do to people.

[Anerythristic26]

What kind of reply is that? My question is simple. This post states that the stats for the PS3 in the Inquirer article are: FACT. A SONY rep states that it doesn't matter. My question is: Now that it has been confirmed does the stats on the Cell chip hinder it but I want an answer from someone that does not work for Sony , simple really. What do you think a Sony rep would say ? " Oops, You busted us the Cell is held together by bubblegum and popsicle sticks , sorry."

[Shadow]

The Cell does its physics and number crunching, and comes-up with the numbers to make a scene. It sends these figures to the RSX, where the RSX renders the scene and displays it.

The number in question, refers to the read speed that the Cell would be able to read from the RSX's cache of rendered material.

The kick is, there is absolutely no reason to READ that stuff, since its going to be displayed on the TV and then purged. There's little to no reason to have the Cell getting information about a scene that's already been rendered.

IE. The Inquirer was right about the 16MB.

It was wrong about it being a severe bottleneck, since the PS3 doesn't actually use it for anything.

That's the uber simplified way of saying it.

[Anerythristic26]

Shadow , that is all I wanted to know.

[ACE]

tells us some thing we dont know lol

NO SUPRISE THERE THEN LOL!!

BROKEN YEAH WOULDNT SUPRISE ME ,,, MORE THEN LIKLT IT IS.

[Islandkiwi]

I don't understand. You're saying the 16mb bottleneck is not a bottleneck because it doesn't get used. Then why does it exist at all? What purpose does it serve?

[Bill Nye]

Islandkiwi, this is the same for just about all PCs and even the 360. Except people make a bigger deal out of it because it's PS3, and when the information is given to someone (Inquirer) who doesn't know what they're talking about.

[shotty]

Isn't the video outputted through the rsx. The cell needs to read L2 cache fast or else what seperates a Pentium 4 from a Celeron.

[Bill Nye]

It does. It reads it's own L2 at 25GB/s.

http://www-128.ibm.com/deve...

[Bill Nye]

Oh, sorry. It it's actually 51GB/s for the L2 and LS (SPU).

[Retard]

Anyone notice this is just for the Dev kits? There isn't any facts that Cell is actually broken or is even in the dk.

[ssj04]

Nvidia Said to expect the ps3 graphic to be similar to the Quad SLI.

That mean The RSX have been upgrade to the 7900GTX SLI. WOW O_O crazy.

[Schmitty07]

Sony PS3 is teh bomb, and I will defend it till my death!

Why can't we have an intelligent conversation? I hate fanboys.

[Lucidmantra]

Thats not to intelligent, it is an inanimate object. Besides all you are really to Sony is a $$$ sign. I wouldn't goto the death for someone who didn't love me.

[ssj04]

Given that the RSX can write to Main memory (read: XDR) at 15GB/s it's not a big deal that the SPEs can't read from the graphics memory at a fast rate. If some shader needs to draw something that requires Cell post processing it can write it back to system ram, then the cell can work on it if absolutely necessary.

But in general, because the Cell will be doing a lot of vertex processing most of the data to the RSX will be coming from the Cell, so Cell doesn't need to ask the RSX for info it just passed it in general. This is why the Cell does not need to read from the RSX at all really.

The confusion is because that screenshot is a power point slide FROM THE PERSPECTIVE of the RSX. So when it mentions local memory, it is talking about the GDDR3 memory. And people assumed that Cell accessing "local memory" meant it's local store, or maybe XDR, where what it really meant was Cell accessing RSX's GDDR3 memory because from the perspective of the RSX local means GDDR3.

[Lucidmantra]

You have a schematic illustration of this? I really would like to see it ssj04. Very good post also. I understand what you are saying.

[Bill Nye]

What, you don't believe him? Amazing how this rumor doesn't need to be proven true (because everyone believed it when it first came out), it just has to be proven wrong. It's like guilty until proven innocent. What's wrong with you people?

If you look at the link I posted on comment 2.1, you'll see that the bandwidth for Cell's own L2 and LS (for SPE), or in other words Cell's 'local memory' cache, is 51GB/s. Also in the Element Interconnect Bus (which connects the SPEs and PPE) the bandwidth is 25GB/s. Thus, the Cell's local memory bandwidth is NOT 16MB/s like the Inquirer thinks that slide says. Because it doesn't even say that at all...

The 16MB/s read from 'local memory' found in the slide is exactly how ssj just explained it. Those slides are about RSX, so when they say 'local memory' they're referring to the video memory. So Cell does indeed have 16MB/s read from that memory, but as ssj wrote(or whoever actually wrote that), it doesn't matter because in no real application would the Cell ever need to read from the video memory. And as ssj also explained, if someone ever DID want to have Cell get information from the video memory, it's much more efficient for RSX to read it, then pass it to the main memory for Cell.

Anyway, the folks at The Inquirer just took the slide out of context and ran with it like it was a gold mine while not even checking to see what it actually meant.

[Master of Menace]

This is the mentality we're getting from lots of places on the net. Someone digs up news they think is dirt, and then tries to pass it off as gold. It doesn't matter because only those already decided on another console would believe it anyway. And PS3 owners will have a higher IQ, because they will have thought before they bought.

[user9422077]

rofl