Folding@home, not possible on Xbox 360?
by Peter Vrabel 
{ May 3rd 2007 at 6:30PM }
The father of the PS3 Folding@home project, Vijay Pande, publicly shared his opinions on the processing power of the Xbox 360, as compared to the Playstation 3. In an interview with Pro-G, Mr. Pande advised that the Xbox 360's triple core processor might be able to withstand the requirements of the project, but the Playstation 3's hardware is, "much more powerful." Mr. Vande goes on to state that the PS3's architecture allows computations of "up to 20 times faster" than that of a standard computer. Playing with power, indeed.
So far, the Folding@home project has produced spectacular results in the short time since its inception. Mr. Pande noted, "Thanks to [the] PS3, we have performed simulations in the first few weeks that would normally take us more than a year to calculate. We are now gearing up for new simulations that will continue our current studies of Alzheimer's and other diseases."
Hats off to you, PS3 participants!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
humpty @ May 3rd 2007 6:35PM
Hey admins... you guys should have a counter on the ps3fanboy f@f stats.. i think the team is up past rank 400 (39x range).
kingofwale @ May 3rd 2007 6:36PM
even if it could, I would recommend most xbox owners to NOT participate.
I mean, how safe is it really to leave your xbox on at full speed and being unattended to?
seriously, do you want to come home and discover your house is burnt down?
Strike Man @ May 3rd 2007 6:43PM
Not possible? Hell, you can fold on an old 486 if you'd like, so I don't see how the 360's CPU would be unable to run the program. To headline is more than a little misleading here.
However, I don't doubt that the PS3's performance would be quite a bit ahead of the 360's for this program. Many already-existing Folding teams have gotten quite a boost since the F@H client was released for the PS3, and I personally know of at least two people who use their machine exclusively for this purpose.
Strike Man @ May 3rd 2007 6:44PM
I meant to say "The headline".
(I can't seem to type correctly today)
mccomber @ May 3rd 2007 6:52PM
Is it just me, or have we seen some PS3 lovin' lately from several different places? Sure, a lot of it has flambait written all over it, but still, feel the love!
massive_98 @ May 3rd 2007 6:59PM
You could run folding@home on a DS or a PSP as well. But amongst consoles the PS3 is the best for this program.
CANT WAIT UNTIL GTA:IV and MERCS:2(sandbox games rock)
mike @ May 3rd 2007 7:05PM
Wow if only every game was 100% mathematically based.... err they arnt the PS3 is a games console isnt it?
StarBird @ May 3rd 2007 8:08PM
Oh, Mikey-
Don't you know much of 3D game programming is all about the math? Tranforms, collision detection, kinematics, physical simulation, etc. The power of the PS3 when used to do these basic functions over faster, over larger data sets is going to blow you away in a year's time. I've included a link for your edification.
http://www.amazon.com/Math-Primer-Graphics-Game-Development/dp/1556229119/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/103-5040751-8490251?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178236888&sr=8-2
WebMaster @ May 3rd 2007 8:17PM
Tis a shame it hasn't translated into a a larger install base, and better looking games then the 360. Oh well, at least my PS3 can fold at home for the Universities.
Killer @ May 3rd 2007 8:22PM
"I mean, how safe is it really to leave your xbox on at full speed and being unattended to?"
Holy shit, I must be some crazy SOB. I do that all the time and It never does anything. lol Honestly, even if my 360 could do fold@home, I wouldn't have the time to do it. I am always playing my 360, even right now. weeeeeeeee....
kingofwale @ May 3rd 2007 8:30PM
>. I am always playing my 360, even right now. weeeeeeeee....
That's a lie, everybody knows Xbox Live is the only console (even portable ones) without a webbroswer. ;)
Killer @ May 3rd 2007 8:37PM
I have 10 pcs, guess which one I'm on? Exactly one of them. lol I hope to keep it that way. No webbrower on my 360, don't want mine getting all windows thank you very much. I don't want to hit A everytime a pop ad or something comes up. If my 360 doesn't have Norton then I'm not going anywhere on a webbrowers either.
Killer @ May 3rd 2007 8:38PM
I spelled Webbrowser wrong twice..How Stupid of me. Wooops
Edge of Blade @ May 3rd 2007 8:52PM
Wow. This guy had to be paid off. There is no doubt. You can run F@F an any processor (it's the network architecture I would be more worried about). This was either damned ignorant...or paid off.
makes.no.sense @ May 3rd 2007 10:00PM
I don't think I'd want my console running when I'm not there, regardless if it's a PS3 or Xbox360. That just wastes my electricity. They're never gonna find a cure for anything really deadly anyway, so what's the point? The world is overpopulated anyway. I guess what I'm saying is: long live the Xbox360.
tobin92 @ May 4th 2007 12:31PM
Noobish statment.
He forgets that Xbox 360 has a ATI GPU, allowing for the CPU to due calculations as well.
450 X1900 generated 44TFlops
massive_98 @ May 3rd 2007 10:27PM
Your mean. If you were dying of a deadly disease wouldn't you want to know people are trying to help?
but this brings up a dilemma.
Save the earth or Save a life.
makes.no.sense @ May 3rd 2007 10:48PM
"If you were dying of a deadly disease wouldn't you want to know people are trying to help?"
No. There are plenty of faith-based initiatives already in place for that very purpose, and luckily none of them use technology or science, both of which are highly overrated. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go to an EBGames and steal an Xbox360... but I'll settle for a PS3... if I have to. Pray I don't get shot the eff up.
hunchbak @ May 3rd 2007 10:44PM
LOL!! No home for me?? rats!! oh well, lemmie get back to these new maps... I have a REAL home and a REAL life. My gametime is too limited to look at walls and trophies...lol speaking of trophies, how many are available now?? 4??? LOL!!
REP96st @ May 3rd 2007 10:46PM
Lemmie stop hating... enjoy your HOME... I'll enjoy your GAMES.
LOL!
Lithium @ May 3rd 2007 11:49PM
omg, I really hope the previous comment is just flamebait. If I'm dying of some rare disease I don't need prayers, I need some scientist dudes crunching away on some PCs trying to get some answers.
Once you do get shot you will be lucky we have science and technology to keep you alive.
mccomber @ May 3rd 2007 11:08PM
Just because it keeps coming up, here is some information on the amount of impact a ps3 running home 24/7 for one year has, as well as other common sources of pollution for comparison. All numbers pulled from various sources on the web, and computed by carboncounter.org for Colorado.
Ps3 using an average of 200 kwh of electricity a month. Metric tons of carbon produced = 2.04 annually.
Average midsize car = 4.39
Midsize truck/suv = 5.27
Average electrical usage in a home = 9.15
Flying from LA to NY once = 1.82
And for grins...
Average fast-food restaurant = 183.51, just from electrical usage
Real Gambler @ May 3rd 2007 11:57PM
Wow, cannot believe some people who could afford any expensive console, and not be able to give a little bit back to science. When I go to bed at night, instead of shutting down my console, I let it run Folding at Home. I need to sleep, but not my console. It's not the few bucks it cost in electricity that will kill me, because I give way much more than that to charity, and other good cause.
Now, I do understand that this is a PS3 web site. And there's already quite a few 360 owners who claim they would not have the time to let Folding at Home run because they play 24 hours a day. Well, if that would be the case, you would not have the time to visit PS3 forums either and post some stupid stuff would ya? So maybe you're not gaming 24/day...
Maybe you cannot give money either because Live cost too much? Maybe you don't have anybody in your family who had cancer, Alzeimer, you name it... Well lucky you, have fun playing 24 hours a day if you say so, but if they ever find a cure for people who cannot sleep, I still hope they will cure you!
BTW, I'm a PS3 owner, and I think he's pushing it too. I would have love to see a client for the 360 as well. Anything could help. Maybe the 360 as less crushing number power, but with so many of them in the field, we would have already reach the Petaflop big time. If the 360 has more crushing power, than cool for ya, end of a long debate. Until then, remember, if you seat 24h/day playing games, you may get a cancer just below the belt for sitting too long, so maybe you will owe your life to a PS3...
John @ May 3rd 2007 11:44PM
@mccomber, good times.
And yes, I've noticed this too, what is this bizarre trend? What? People not hating on a great piece of hardware?
Lithium @ May 3rd 2007 11:50PM
well, not the previous one now, but I think you guys can guess which one I meant.
Real Gambler @ May 4th 2007 12:00AM
MCCOOMBER: Read all the other comments. The 360 and the PS3 take pretty much the same power. Now on one side, you have 360 fans claiming they could not Fold at Home because they play 24H/day, and on the other side, you have PS3 owner who claim that when they are sleeping, their consoles are helping fighting diseases. What about your PC, your mega TV, or even your water heater. Are they helping? Should I stop Folding at Home, or maybe just take the bus instead to go to work..... Na, I'll do like most people. Make sure I not help anybody find cures while I still leave all my computers on, all the time, showing nice little fishies.
And btw, those stats are for Colorado. What do they use to generate hydro? Could they use something that pollute less??? Hope it's not charcoal for sure....
Andir3.0 @ May 4th 2007 12:12AM
"14. Wow. This guy had to be paid off. There is no doubt. You can run F@F an any processor (it's the network architecture I would be more worried about). This was either damned ignorant...or paid off"
Yes... because the guy isn't the lead of a project that puts him in the spotlight and getting that many more followers gives him the ability to see his project expand. Of course, he got paid to deny access to a device that would require yet another team of programmers and probably benefit them about as much as the Mac client is.
thebigfatj @ May 4th 2007 12:19AM
You do realize that the PS3 is only a fraction as powerful as the new ATI card for folding at home. This fraction is about 1/5th.
It also only has a fraction of the fill rate.
The PS3 is much more expensive than the ATi graphics card however.
That said, I wouldn't run folding@home on a PS3 if I had it one. At the moment, I'm not particularly interested in a PS3 because Sony is likely to drop the price more than $100 by the end of 2007 and maybe there will be a few good games by then.
mccomber @ May 4th 2007 1:02AM
Hey Real Gambler, I just posted those to help show what the ps3, running all year long, produces as far as a carbon footprint relative to other common sources of pollution. Not hating on the ps3 at all, ask anyone around here and they would tell you I'm one of the people often posting in it's defense/offense. I may be wrong, but it seems as if you think I don't support this stuff. If you think I'm attacking folding@home or the ps3, you are quite mistaken; right now I'm at 78 wu completed, number 15 on the ps3fanboy team. My ps3 is running folding@home as I type this.
Again, I only posted some numbers to show the ps3 relative to other sources of pollution that we are all familiar with. I tried doing so in as even a manner as possible, and certainly wasn't taking sides. I personally think it's positive impact on research is greater than it's negative impact on the enviornment (and my wallet) but those numbers show where it falls, good or bad.
Also, since you asked, Colorado's main source of electricity is from coal, pretty sure around 70% of our power comes from that. After that natural gas, then hydro, then all others. Since we have a lot of coal, it just makes sense. Importing power would use more energy and be worse, in the long run, than burning coal is. We hope to have renewable resources producing about 20% by 2020 iirc. The more you know...
Extinction @ May 4th 2007 3:59AM
"Wow if only every game was 100% mathematically based...."
Every game is.
Wardo @ May 4th 2007 10:59AM
I thought game consoles were meant for gaming. Honestly, if you need to feel good about participating in things like folding@home or seti@home or any of the other distributed computing projects, USE YOUR PC.
I know I sure as hell wouldn't put down $600 for a lump of black plastic just so I could do something I can already do on my PC. Turn the monitor off and you're using roughly the same amount of electricy.
Call me crazy but I buy a game console to play games.
N0M4D @ May 4th 2007 7:19AM
360 fanboy here :-P
The 360 would of course be able to do Folding: like several posters have stated already, it can be done on any processor. And I do believe the Folding@Home program would benefit something from the addition of around 10.000.000 machines with a triple core (that’s 6 software threads!) at 3.2 GHz. And as a user, I think it would be a great feature for the machine.
Carrying on, it’s really no surprise that the PS3 would have an easier time with this. The Cell, thanks to its DSP’like SPEs, is really well suited for streamlike number crunching (remember the high TFLOP count Sony initially published). Folding has exactly this processing profile, which is why it not only thrives on the PS3, but also on high end graphics card GPUs – again, composed of several fast, extremely specialized processing elements.
How does this advantage translate to games? Not too well, I’d wager. Look at a desktop PC: how many games do you see running exclusively on the graphics chip? It just isn’t doable, since you need the general processing power of the main CPU to do so many parts of a game. The Cell isn’t very well suited for that particular kind of processing.
Don’t get me wrong. The PS3 is a great peace of hardware, even if it has its flaws – the exact same thing holds true for the 360. However, the general consensus in the industry is that when it comes to games, the Cell isn’t really helping just yet.
Will developers find ways to overcome this? Sure! They’ve been doing it every single console generation to date. Still, right now, that’s far from being a reality on the PS3.
On a final note: ps3fanboy is going strong with the flamebait lately…
Real Gambler @ May 4th 2007 8:08AM
MCCoomber: Very cool. You're beating me by a lot. I guess I will have to Fold every night now. Forgive me, because I only saw a hint of a negative note in your post, even if you did add the part about Fast Food in your stats. I had and have many people with cancer in my family and friends and one with Alzeimer, so I do care a lot about Folding at Home. And when I give money (which likely account to more then price of a PS3 every year) I still have that feeling that too much of it goes to admin fee, advertising and so on, and only little is left for the good cause. Still I give because everything count. Same for Folding at Home.
Now, for guys who say you can do it on PC, YES you can, and please do!!! They cannot crunch number as good as a PS3, but anything help. But it much better Folding, than showing little fishies on your screen.
You know what is the best thing about this debate... There's so many guys reading PS3 web sites (including 360 owners) that maybe we will find a cure for those stupid diseases next year instead of next decade or worst next century.
Start Folding...
ShadowHawk01 @ May 4th 2007 9:47AM
I am really starting to lose faith in this site. Your article title makes an insinuation that there is no way the Xbox 360 can run the Folding project. However, the article you based this from says nothing to that nature. I believe that more projects like this should be available to any system regardless of speed. I would gladly welcome any and all Xbox 360's into the Folding@home project. The more machines that run the program the better. While a single PS3 may be able to fold faster than a single Xbox 360... who cares in the end! This project is about the progression of science and medicine.
Here is a quote from the article:
-- Start of Quote ---
After being asked if he thought the power of the 360 could be useful, he said: "Possibly, although the cell processor in the PS3 is much more powerful for our calculations than the CPU in the Xbox 360."
-- End of Quote ---
I think a title stating "Folding@home limited on the Xbox 360" would capture the meaning of the article a little better than your title. I don't mean to be mean here, but journalism is about portraying the truth first and foremost. I would hope you guys know this... so please put down the pitchforks when talking about Folding@home.
Lion @ May 4th 2007 10:00AM
The Folding@Home program is a great program, and I'm glad that the PS3 can help so much ...
... But who is this guy to say that the Xbox 360 couldn't keep up? Vijay Pande is an Associate Professor at Stanford, specializing in Physical and Biophysical Chemistry. He has abosolutely no credibility when it comes to talking about the processing power of a machine he has never used. The truth is that the Xbox 360 wouldn't be quite as useful as the PS3 for Folding@Home on a per-unit basis; but with three times more consoles, I think it's safe to say that the Folding@Home program would benefit from leveraging the unified power of those Xbox 360.
WebMaster @ May 4th 2007 10:07AM
It was only a matter of time before it occurred with the current atmosphere on PS3fanboy.
Fanboy on Fanboy Violence by mccumber & real gambler.
BTW, I sure hope to hell Colin & Peter aren't being paid. Their yellow journalistic, intentionally misleading, flame bait laced headlines are dragging this sight down. After thorough disgust with several fanboys here, and lurking on xbox360 fanboy, and NOT seeing this type of journalistic poo bag, I picked up a 360 elite to sit beside my PS3. Now, I'll really be able to see which one truly put's out better looking games.
mccomber @ May 4th 2007 10:56AM
The funny(?) thing is, we're both PS3 owners—what can I say, it was a misunderstanding, the backbone of any blog/internet forum. Obviously it's now cleared up. But, anytime a post starts with my name, I've got to respond to it. Protecting my honor, satisfaction, so on and so forth... no pistols this time though.
I've seen many, many people bring up the amount of electricity being used by the ps3 running folding, and the potential enviornmental impact it has, and decided to post about it. The most interesting part of that, at least to me, was how much electricity a fast-food restaurant uses. So many of us, as individuals, try and do something to help the environment, but look at how much impact a single business has.
Andir3.0 @ May 4th 2007 11:14AM
@N0M4D: Do you realize how very little of the general processor games use? The only reason your processors are pegged most of the time is because most 3D applications use closed loops to control the application. Even then, the closed loop is most likely doing some basic floating point math to determine the next position of every object on the screen through transformation matrices (math on vector objects). Yeah, it's true that there are calls from the main loop to handle physics on objects and such, but this is all just more math (again, vector objects). Now, you get into collision detection, where the processor does more math to determine the distance between the objects (for simple collision) again, using floating point square and square root calculations. All of which the Cell excels at. The only thing I'd argue might be fairly "slow" is some of the game logic, but that's what the PPE general processor is designed to handle.
Real Gambler @ May 4th 2007 11:19AM
Fanboy on Fanboy violence??? Where did you see any violence in any of our comments. Read back, you'll never see myself saying anything bad against the 360 or Wii, or Pong. What I said was that people are going to burn electricity no matter what. Doing it for a good cause is better than leaving your PC on running screensaver that take more power than if you would just have turn your monitor off. MCcoomber is pretty much doing the same. I don't think he ever said anything bad against other consoles as well. So this is why I took out my gun and start firing at him??? No, I just try to tone down a comment that was issued by a PS3 fan because I would not want people to stop folding because of it. If there's a war in this forum, on a PS3 web site, it's because gamers who claim they play 24h a day, have nothing better to do, than come here and start a war. Let's be it. Still wish 360 could Fold as well, will always do. And don't forget, unless those console are unreliable, they will all still be working when you will throw them away. I still have all my consoles since pong. (three of them are black in white...), Intellivision, NES, Phillips, and it keeps going. Guess what, they all still work. So even if my PS3 run 24 hour a day, I'm sure in 10 years, I'll throw it in my basement still working. Same goes with PC. Any idea how many good 386, 486, Pentium 1 or 2 are going to the landfill and are still working?
So get those PS3, PC, Mac, you name it going, and hopefully, 360, Wii and others one day...
In fact, come to think of it, I wish they could write Folding code for the old consoles. There's millions of PS2 outhere. Sure enough, it's only about the power of a pentium 3, but if I could buy the CD for cheap, I would set it up in my basement running 365 days a year. Until it possibly dies in year 2041. This thing doesn't take any power and anything help.
Now back to real violence... My PS3 is better than your 360 and you all have a small Wii LOL! (Hey, first time a throwing gaz on the fire)
WebMaster @ May 4th 2007 11:22AM
@ mccomber
I know you were defending youself. I understood your post, as I'm sure most did, and it was an informative post, as well. My point being, people are becoming super defensive on this blog, thus real gambler jumped the gun and fired off a negative retort to your post prematurely.
Let's face it, xbox owners complaining about the power bill of the PS3 running folding@home is as spurious as PS3 owners complaining about paying $50.00 a year for a robust, mature online service.
The price of each, in relation to what we pay for the console, accessories, HDTV's, games, etc, is trivial.
Real Gambler @ May 4th 2007 11:51AM
Please WebMaster, tell me what was so negative about my post. Stats posted by MCcoomber were for Colorado. I hope most states use cleaner power generation than charcoal. I know my hydro power is coming from a less polluting source. I really just wanted to make sure nobody would stop folding because they think their PS3 pollute. End of story. Maybe my point didn't came across correctly. So I'll say it again. Keep Folding, and stop using your Air Conditionner, bike instead of using your 4X4 to go to work, and it will make everybody feel better about using hydro power to help science
I've ALWAYS said the 360 should Fold. When I see somebody who say I bought my console to play games only, then be it. Does that mean that if it would start spewing out money, you would not take it because it's only meant to play game? I don't think so. I bought my console as well to play game, but when I'm sleeping, I help science...
So yes, I made fun of some of those 360 fanboys comments. It's a PS3 website!!!!! I never ever went to a 360 website. Maybe PS3 fanboys are doing the same, so please forgive them.
So again, please quote everything you find negative and violent about original post, because I read it again, and saw no blood anywhere.
And yes I hate MCcoomber. He has more Work Unit done then me! (Again, I'm just kidding.... Just in case you would not pick it up!)
navstar @ May 4th 2007 12:25PM
IBM's CELL chip *is* better at these specialized vector math functions. IBM's PowerPC based 360 chip is three general purpose core.
Apple had a vector math accelerator called Velocity Engine (Motorola's Altivec) that gave G4 Macs similar boosts. (But the Cell has 7 Altivec-type engines).
Real Gambler @ May 4th 2007 12:19PM
Webmaster: BTW, original violent reply is number 25.... Quote violence away!
Mccomber: Sorry for writing your name wrong so many times... Believe it or not, I have a friend who's first name is M... and last name is Coomber. And thank you again for the nice answer about Colorado power generation, I was really curious about it...
Real Gambler @ May 4th 2007 1:48PM
OK, looks like I'm the oldest here, so back in time for a history course, that I hope will clear many misconceptions.
Processors were only processing numbers, until the Pentium 1 MMX came out. Anything before that, including the 486 were just processing numbers. Still you could get windows with GUI (graphic user interface) going, even if the processor could only manage numbers. First Pentium 1 were in the same boat.
Then they added a few more instructions code to the pentium 1 and called them MMX. Those were basically the first instructions codes added specifically to handle graphics. I think they are still there today, for compatibility.
But everybody found out that it was better to use a very specialized GPU (Graphical Processing Unit) to do all the graphics, and let the processor do what it's best at and crunch numbers. So PowerPC and RISC processors (Reduce Instruction Set, so no graphic processing there!) came out (Mac and it's awesome graphics anyone?). They went back to a very very reduce instructions set. And all they did, was crunching numbers and throw the results at the GPU. During that time, because it would have been hard to recode windows, Microsoft kept using Pentiums 2,3,4, and so on up to the Core 2 Duo (and all the AMD, this is what a cross-compiler is good at). I think still today, the MMX code is still there but I may be wrong. But guess what, nobody use the MMX operational codes anymore. They use the processor to do the math and the GPU to handle the graphic. So basically you NEED both. I cannot play Supreme Commander on a pentium 1 with a $800 graphic card, because the game is not just graphic intense. And I couldn't play it on my Core 2 Duo with a $20 graphic card, because the game is not just processing power.
So no matter what processors you find in any consoles, they are just there to do heavy calculations and pass those to the GPU.
So this is why I always said they should write the Fold@Home code for the 360. It's feasible.
If we don't see it, it's likely because Microsoft will never cooperate. Like many guys who know their consoles have said, both consoles are pretty much the same. The PS3 may have a little edge on computing numbers, and the 360 on the GPU side. (Or is it the other way around?) Anyway, Microsoft would not take the chance to get bad publicity if the 360 came out crushing Work Units a "wii" bit slower than it take for the PS3. (Wii war coming on!)
Now, why do you think you find only 512meg of memory in a console, and 2 gig is a minimum on a recent PC. Simply because developpers code better on fix hardware, using the CPU to do the math, passing it to the GPU who handle graphics and send them to your screen. No need for huge memory there. Everthing is done on the fly. Once the data come out of the CPU, it goes straight to the GPU.
For the PC, developpers have to code for guys who have cheap video cards, slow processors, or both. You need more buffer if your CPU is crushing numbers faster than your GPU can process it.
So you need both Processing and Graphical power, and both consoles are very well made for that.
Now, you want to know why I picked a PS3 instead of the 360? Because I think both consoles can handle tremendous amount of data at warp speed. But that data has to come from a media, and I think 9gig of data to process, will be nothing for both consoles in the future. So I went with the console who could hold 50gig of data, knowing that eventually, developpers will fill them as well, happily feeding my PS3 Processor and GPU...
StarBird @ May 4th 2007 3:21PM
@N0M4D:
Careful what you wager:
Makes no sense to say that the 7 SPE's in the PS3 are of no use. If you're EA writing a tired port, perhaps. But shops like Factor 5 have already stated that the Cell makes opens up new horizons, whether it comes to physics simulation, what have you.
That said, makes no sense to say that XBOX360 can't run FAH, either. Clearly, it has substantial capability.
I think that it is more likely that MSFT would like (wisely) to avoid putting themselves in a situation where FLOP to FLOP comparison with the PS3 is possible. I think they'd rather fight on a game-to-game basis where they clearly have the advantage today.
This from qj.net: http://ps3.qj.net/category/Cell-Processor/cid/1087
-------
[snip]
Often the root of many Xbox 360 versus PlayStation 3 wars, the Dragonlancer-esque game Lair is in itself one amazing title that needs serious horsepower stocked under Sony's next-generation console's hood. Not surprisingly, in an interview with GamePro, Factor 5's Julian Eggebrecht, chief creative director, said that they were impressed by the power of the PlayStation 3.
We were blown away by Cell. Not so much by the graphics chip because that was basically what was known and what we expected, but the Cell suddenly made it possible to use techniques in Lair that we had talked about before, but which we never thought a system would be fast enough to actually support. We were able to make this insane level of detail changes possible from the very, very highest point up in the sky all the way to the ground.
Eggebrecht explained that in their former flight title Rebel Strike for the GameCube, they had to "cheat around" with massive levels, making them look massive by loading the next level once the fighter landed. It wasn't a fluid, smooth option from going all the way up to all the way down, but it worked.
Now with the PlayStation 3's CELL processor, however, that's a whole different story. In fact, Eggebrecht revealed that their AI uses the processing units dynamically. Instead of dedicating certain AI tasks to one of the SPUs, the game would allocate processing resources to an idle unit.
They have animations running on some of the SPUs, with a full-blown physics engine. They also have actual fluid mechanics being simulated for the first time in a game, thanks to the CELL.
[snip]
y @ May 4th 2007 3:52PM
It's PROFESSOR Pande (or Dr. Pande if you must).
ShaleX @ May 4th 2007 4:48PM
Real Gambaler:
Your history lessone is true, but a tad flawed. Most modern CPUs are based of of the x86 instruction type. 386, 486, pentium 1, 2, 3, 4, and Core... and so on. On the other side you have RISC processors. WHile they have a reduced amount of math they can do, they are specialized for that math, and can do it faster. Now when it comes to math done by these CPUs you have 2 kinds. Interger, and Floating Point math. Interger is simple.. whole numbers... i.e. 2+2. Floating Point math is a bit harder because it dosen't use whole number... ie. 2.4+(-3.1). Floating point math is what alot of games use... espically when processing 3D space.
The way early intel CPUs were able to do things like that was many times in 386 and 486 CPUs, the system was built with a math co-processor. Much like Cell's SPUs, these were less generalized processors, made for handleing other tasks.
When the pentium came about, intel added MMX, a SIMD, Single Instruction, Multiple Data extensions. basically, it was a shortcut for doing multile mathmatical instructions.. but this was for gaming and multi-media. AMD's K6 CPU was also based on the x86 instruction set, but at the time, was weaker when it came to Floating point operations... what are now called FLOPs. But when their K62 line came out, they introduced their own SIMD set known as 3DNow. As we've gone down the line we have MMX, SSE1, SSE2, SSE3, 3Dnow1, and I think 3DNow2. All of these added to the x86 architecture. or also known as IA32. Now, we are moving on to x86 with EMT64 support for 64-bit commands.
That being said... if my 3-core dual threaded Xenos at 3.2 ghz can't run folding@home, what hope does my single-core, 2.0 ghz, single threaded desktop CPU have.
WTangoFoxtrot @ May 4th 2007 5:35PM
ohh and if they did do folding on the 360 they would do it on the ATI Xenon GPU instead and not on the CPU. this would allow the 360 to do almost twice the number crunching the PS3 can do, showing how much really the idiot making these statements knows about the folding @ home project, afterall it was initially made for the ATI gpu....
N0M4D @ May 4th 2007 5:44PM
@Starbird:
I never said the SPEs were useless ;-)
@Andir3.0:
Again, I didn't say the SPEs don't have their strong points. But things like game logic and AI will not be the easiest thing for them to "digest".
I guess we'll really only know each machine's fate as the big games start rolling in.
Cheers,
Real Gambler @ May 4th 2007 7:04PM
WTangoFoxtrot: First of all you're right about one thing. You can fold proteins on a GPU. From there, saying the 360 would be twice as fast as a PS3 would be really hard to prove. Currently, both consoles have very decent GPU, but running around 500MHz. This is already old technology if you compare those GPU against the latest graphic card for PC. I think an ATI 1950 or Geforce 8800 run at 1Ghz now. Yet, when you run Folding@Home on one of those beast, you don't see that PC being 4 times better than a PS3 (that would be YOUR theory). I admit the code for the PC has to work with all kind of hardware, while it has been optimized for the PS3 It also has to get Windows going, which is bigger than the PS3 operating system. But having mainly two type of chipset for GPUs (ATI and NVIDIA), you would expect the code to be pretty efficient dealing with those. On top of that, when you have an expensive card, you normally have the CPU matching it. Yet, PS3 are still doing much better than today's PC. And with a graphic card half as fast as those PCs....
Anyway, like I said, we will never know because Microsoft will not let it happen.
Plan B would have been to boot into Linux, and run Folding from there, but again, it's another thing that Microsoft will not let happen...
So sadly, we will never know!