[HN Gopher] Playstation 3 Architecture
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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).
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