More growing concerns over PS3 hardware?

by Adams Briscoe { Jun 5th 2006 at 11:45AM }

It's not hard to connect the dots or figure out how all this started, but Sony's flagship console (the newest version at least) has started to become the system everyone loves to rail on.

Take this latest article for example. According to the author's source, Sony is having some major problems with their hardware before manufacturing has even started. We're not talking malfunctions or anything either. Apparently the specs are not very pretty.

For starters, the Cell processor has some major disparity in the memory performance. Speaking in terms of local memory, which is very crucial, the Cell can only Read 16MB/s while its Write speed is 4GB/s! The picture from the slide speaks for itself ("no this isn't a typo..."). So what does all this mean? Here's what the author had to say: "Someone screwed up so badly it looks like it will relegate the console to second place behind the 360." Keep in mind where this is coming from, and make up your own decision after reading it with a critical eye.

[Thanks, Joe]

Tags: blu-ray, cell, hardware, launch, playstation, price, ps3, sony

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Paul @ Jun 5th 2006 11:55AM

I dont understand much of this stuff but this is BS right? mainly because of the use of the GPU right?

Eyecandy @ Jun 5th 2006 11:57AM

WOW!!!! Maybe the last article should have been "Should the Cell have been optional?" I think Sony stepped into something Bad.

MMagic @ Jun 5th 2006 12:05PM

I will reiterate what somebody has said on another forum maybe it will keep things clear
This makes more sense that the idiot talking on the inquirer

"Local Memory is different from the local cache on the processor core. Just to clear up some confusion that may arise from wording.

The presentation was on the RSX processor. The Inquirer "failed" to divulge this little important piece of information. Local memory to it is like the memory on your video card. Why would your processor need to access this memory?

When programming for the RSX/Cell platform, RSX will read textures from the Main memory and use it's Local memory for processing that data"

ymmv @ Jun 5th 2006 12:54PM

According to this http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=187510&cid=15471653 the whole Inquirer article hubbub is a non-issue. The cell can read from the PS3s main memory at full speed, it has even faster access to its own cache memory. It only has to deal with a severyly limited bandwidth when reading from the GPU's memory but this is something it'd hardly do it all.

adamsb @ Jun 5th 2006 1:04PM

Nice one! Thanks for the heads-up there

TheGuyNextDoor @ Jun 5th 2006 2:17PM

But oh how the media loves to jump on the mere whiff of negativity surrounding PS3 and ride with it, with no care of consequence or confusion. I mean, the likes of poster number 2 up there fell straight into the trap without a hint that sites such as TheInquirer and Kotaku might have an agenda.

SuicideNinja @ Jun 5th 2006 3:10PM

This isn't the problem for the Cell. The problem is that it only has 1 core and 7 available SPE's which cannot act of their own accord (and have no cache). The core still has to tell those SPE's what to do, as opposed to working on their own.

Brian @ Jun 5th 2006 7:16PM

This is the freaking Inquirer, it's a nonissue. They are about as qualified as the crochety old man who yells at kids and complains about foreigners on television to tell me about technology. They have a laughable history of accuracy and are not taken seriously by anyone. When ArsTechnica reaches that conclusion then I'll believe it.

boots @ Jun 6th 2006 8:42PM

"7. This isn't the problem for the Cell. The problem is that it only has 1 core and 7 available SPE's which cannot act of their own accord (and have no cache). The core still has to tell those SPE's what to do, as opposed to working on their own."

Its performance is still higher than the one for 360. It will only be a bitch to program for... but so was PS2.

Ask Carmack for more information on the subject.