PS3 Vs Xbox2. Simultanious Launch...

[Garf13ld]

Padlock, interesting articles but I think you may be misunderstanding the term 'network' in those contexts. While numerous Cell processors can be 'networked' together, I think this means in the context of a single machine/mobo like in IBMs forthcoming workstations. I don't think it means that Cell groups in different items can work together to share processor load on intensive applications like games, although they could communicate to a certain extent e.g. to establish compatability for certain features a la plug n play.

There's a good little article in this month's EDGE on it. It seems that the Cell is in fact one major core (a power PC naturally) coupled to eight mini-cores (Like the vector units in the PS2). The XBox 2 is actually three, properly dual core G5 processors. Reading stuff about Cell previously, I thought there may be a gulf in performance between the two systems but now I'm not so sure. Although Sony claim to the contrary, the difficulty of programming for multiple Cells may mean that there are only one or two Cell processors in a PS3. Previously, before we knew as much about Cell, people were saying 'wow PS3 is going to have eight processors!' Well, as above, that's not likely to be the case.

I think Ninty's strategy is the most interesting and by far the most risky. As said in a recent Eurogamer article, they really are 'betting the farm on finding new markets'. It could be boom or bust for them, but its a bold strategy and they appear to be going into it with their eyes open.

[johnnie walker]

it probably will be as you say, but the networking i was referring to was sharing processor loads etc. i dont know if it will actually happen, i suspect not, but that was the original idea. (see the quotes from 'ware next)

kutaragi said he wanted ps3 to be able to connect to the "playstation network" which was people ps3's sharing the load (due to lag, it would probably be for servers and the like, i cant see users playing gran turisimo 6 with someone across the street providing some of the processing power to display the graphics.)

ill need to get a hold of this months edge, that sounds like an interesting article.

i dont think the ps3 will be as hard to get to grips with as the ps2, as it will be using c/c++, opengl and Cg (high end graphics programming language from nVidia)

it may be a revolutionary design, but i think sony have listened to the gripes of developers and made the programming front end closer to pc programming.

the fact that it has multiple proccessors / cores shouldn't be a problem, i would imagine the ps3 would manage that (im assuming it runs on linux again) so that the programmers would just need to create a multi-threaded program and the ps3 decides which processor core does the work.