IBM-Sony PS3 details

[R420]

http://www.ps3insider.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=110
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Few New Cell Details Emerge

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted on Tuesday, May 11 @ 14:58:28 EDT by scott
[Article Topic: News]

E3-2004: Before the curtains closed on Sony's press conference, SCEI's
CTO, Shinichi Okamoto was introduced to provide further details
regarding Sony's use of Cell technology.

No striking revelations were released as expected; however the notion
of distributed possessing among multiple Cell devices was reaffirmed.
Specifically, the mention of devices from Entertainment Systems, to
PDA's, to PC's which are all interconnected and the notion that a user
no longer utilizes a singular system, instead one "jacks in" to the
Cell fabric, is the way of the future.
He continued on, to discuss some of the new breakthroughs this
technology will usher in. Breakthroughs in AI; where 100,000 solders
could be independently controlled via an algorithm to make each NCP
unique, all in real-time. Advances such as these will create game
worlds with more life and realistic atmosphere.

Mr Okamoto then announced that the first Cell based product, a
graphics workstation, would be released in the 4QT of this year (2004)
with an "Entertainment System" (PS3) to follow in the near future.
Sony continued detailing their vision of a graphics workstation which
would combine multiple functions onto a single system, to form a super
computing platform. The key functionality objectives Sony outlined
are:



Rendering
Modeling
Behavior
Physics
Facial Expressions
3D Sound
Database
Simulation
Algorithms
Test & Analysis
Visual Effects
Modeling


It is important to note that Sony attempted to release a graphics
workstation just before the PS2 was announced. This GSCube comprised
multiple CPUs interconnected on the same I/O board. Due to lack of
market demand and high cost the GSCube was officially terminated.
However Sony claims to have learned from its mistakes with the GSCube
and brought forth its concepts to create the Cell architecture. It
remains to be seen if Sony can successfully release another graphics
workstation. Expect more details to emerge regarding Sony's Cell
architecture and therefore the PS3 in the near future.
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AND

http://www.siliconstrategies.com/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=20300452&_requestid=112809
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Content creation tool to be first Cell processor app
By Peter Clarke
Silicon Strategies
05/11/2004, 2:49 PM ET




LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- A digital content creation environment is the
first software application planned for the Cell processor, a processor
under development at Sony Corp., IBM Corp. and Toshiba Corp., Sony
Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) said Tuesday (May 11).

Sony Corp., Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) and IBM Corp.
expect to build the first prototype Cell-based workstations in the
fourth quarter of 2004.

IBM is set to develop the Cell-based workstation while Sony and SCEI
are leading the development of the Cell-based operating environment by
providing the architecture, algorithms, middleware and data
structures.

The combination would support the creation of digital content for
movies and computer entertainment applications, SCEI said.

"Cell has enormous power for creating broadband content," said Ken
Kutaragi, executive deputy president and chief operating officer of
Sony Corp. and president and group chief executive officer of Sony
Computer Entertainment Inc., in a statement. "Today, movies and games
are sharing the same world and characters on a common database. Within
a few years, both forms of entertainment will be fused and become
indistinguishable, offering a seamless experience in the home.
Together with IBM, the three companies aim to offer technology that
will accelerate the paradigm shift in digital entertainment."

"The Cell-based workstations we are creating with Sony and SCEI will
deliver scalable, supercomputer-like performance to the media,
entertainment and video game industries," said John Kelly, senior vice
president and group executive, IBM Systems and Technology Group, in
the same statement.

SCEI said that within a couple of years, large numbers of floating
point calculations would be necessary to perform physics simulation
for the digital characters during digital content creation.
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AND

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/05/11/news_6097277.html
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Sony gives glimpse of PS3 processor at E3

Sony's CTO outlines the functionality of the Cell processor, which
will be at the heart of Sony's next-gen console.
At the end of its E3 conference today, Sony gave viewers an oblique
glimpse into its next-generation console plans. Towards the end of the
press conference, Sony Chief Technical Officer Masa Chinati took to
the stage to talk about the Cell Processor, the next-generation CPU
Sony is developing with Toshiba and IBM. The Cell processor is
expected to be at the heart of Sony's next generation console, the
PlayStation 3.

Thought it seemed like a footnote coming after the raptly received PSP
demonstration, Chinati's brief presentation did offers some insight
into Sony's next-gen master plan.

First, the company will manufacture a high-end workstation using the
Cell CPU. Planned for release at the end of 2004, the workstation will
use the CPU's capabilities to provide users with the tools for complex
rendering, physics, modeling, behavior, rendering, and analysis.

In outlining how the Cell works, Chinati provided a glimpse of the
PS3's CPU. He mention's the Cell's parallel processing and floating
point capabilities which will allow for "massive data bandwidth."

Second, the Cell workstations will be marketed directly to the game
and special-effects industries. The labor in their creation will be
divided between Sony and IBM. SCE will develop middleware and other
and tools for game development and film effects. The Cell chips
themselves will be manufactured by IBM, who will also work on the OS.

By Tor Thorsen -- GameSpot
POSTED: 05/11/04 03:39PM PST
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AND

[snipped non-related stuff]

http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php?id=320581080&fp=2&fpid=1

E3 - Sony details PSP, cuts price of PlayStation 2
GamePro staff, GamePro

12/05/2004 12:00:34

Despite the swirl of rumors and the bustle of fanboy fantasies, no
next-generation platforms like the PS3 or the Xbox 2 materialized at
the annual wave of E3 press conferences, but Sony Computer
Entertainment kicked off its announcements with the kind of practical
news that will gladden gamers' hearts: The price of the PlayStation 2
has dropped US$50 to US$149.


But as expected, the PSP was the focus of the spotlight's glare,
though Sony also touched vaguely on some changes to online play and on
its PS3 plans by outlining a broad picture for how Cell technology,
the underpinnings of the PS3, will work -- and it's downright cool.
First the PSP No price points were announced, but Sony's entry
into the portable gaming market will be launched first in Japan in
late December. It will follow in the U.S. and Europe in March 2005,
and lastly in Korea in summer 2005.


In a peek into the future, Sony also laid out in more details its plan
for Cell technology, which will form the backbone of the PS3. The
company's goal is to make a common development environment for movies
and games. Movie studios could then use it to create assets like
special effects or rendered scenes for films, then those exact same
assets could be used by game developers -- the goal is to make games
look as good as movies.

Since this technology will rank at the supercomputer level, Sony plans
to make plenty of middleware and other tools, and it's aiming to
release a prototype to developers by fourth quarter 2004. All in all,
details were vague beyond this broad outline. But Sony also added that
once Cell technology is out, gaming consoles and workstations will
create a network via broadband, a "cyber world" that people can "jack
into" via their consoles -- Masa Chatani, the chief technology officer
for SCEI, called it "the future of broadband entertainment."

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AND

http://www.forbes.com/technology/newswire/2004/05/11/rtr1367501.html
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Sony, IBM partner for digital media workstations
Reuters, 05.11.04, 2:31 PM ET



LOS ANGELES, May 11 (Reuters) - Sony Corp. <6758.T> and IBM Corp.
(nyse: IBM - news - people) on Tuesday said they would work together
to develop computers for creating movies and video games, running the
secretive "Cell" processor they have jointly designed.

In a press conference at the annual E3 video game industry trade show,
Sony said "Cell"-based systems would be the main tool developers would
use to make video games for its next generation of hardware.

Sony also said the first prototype computer workstations using the
"Cell" chip would be built in the fourth quarter of 2004.

Relatively little is known about "Cell," on which Toshiba Corp
<6502.T> is also a partner, other than it is intended to use
cutting-edge production techniques and be far more powerful than
anything on the market today.

Most have speculated that "Cell" would power the PlayStation 3, Sony's
next game console, expected to launch in 2006. Sony's PS2 has a
commanding share of the global game hardware marketplace.

But before the PS3 ever sees the light of day, Sony said the new
workstations would be used to tackle complex digital entertainment
production, providing common software tools to both movie makers and
game developers.
_______________________________________________________________________________


AND FINALLY

http://www.1up.com/article2/0,2053,1590669,00.asp
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SCE CTO Talks PS3 At E3
By David Smith
5/11/2004

Although the focus of Sony's E3 press conference was on near future
developments, specifically the PSP handheld, Sony Computer
Entertainment chief technology officer Masa Chatani concluded the
conference with a series of cryptic, but intriguing comments on Sony's
plans for its next game console.
Sony's alliance with Toshiba and IBM to design the much-ballyhooed
Cell processor will bear its first practical fruit in the fourth
quarter of this year. It's then that Sony, its Sony Computer
Entertainment division, and IBM plan to debut the first prototype of a
powerful workstation based on the Cell. That workstation will
prefigure the eventual arrival of a Cell-based development tool for
Sony's next game console.

The new workstation, Chatani explained, will use a new development
environment created by a collaboration between Sony and IBM. It will
share that same development environment with the game-specific
development tool, incorporating rendering, modeling, visual effects,
facial expressions, physics, AI behavior, testing and analysis, and
many other tasks of content creation and game development into one
environment. Sony will handle the applications, tools, and middleware
for the new platform, while IBM will develop the operating systems and
hardware.



While the workstation will precede the dedicated development tool,
Chatani said it will still play a key role in the development of
games, taking care of intensive tasks like physics simulation and
movie rendering. It's also not limited to game applications -- Sony
and IBM plan to market it for use in digital content creation for
movies and other media.

From these nuts and bolts, Chatani then launched into some rather
grand predictions for the future of Sony's game console efforts.
Movies, games, and other entertainment, he said, will eventually share
a common delivery medium, reaching the user through a network created
by numerous broadband-connected Cell-powered consoles. He called this
network the "Cyber World," claiming that users will one day "jack in"
and "seamlessly navigate" a networked virtual world acquiring whatever
entertainment they choose to look for.

Grand plans indeed, but still very far off in the future. We'll
continue to follow Sony's hints of things to come, though, and update
with more details when they arrive.
_______________________________________________________________________________

 

[myren, lord]

I love the Plan9 like distributed stuff they sometimes throw a couple
words in on Cell stuff.

We've fairly effectively made it easy to distribute processor workloads
across a network. I hope they're smart enough to allow distributed IO
too. Sony & IBM could make some major inroads as the company which
brings computer networks past merely a data stream/processor connector
to a way of making all systems act as one.

Seamlessly usable networked I/O subsystems is (rather, will be) the
first evolution in computing since Xerox. Pointless now but in 30 years
when its everywhere, our children will look back on it like we think of
a world without electricity telephones or cell phones. (took me a while
to remember who to credit for GUI... Windows, no def. not, X, no, Mac?
..... closer. Xerox.)

Still, cell is just a baby step. Network privledges and security will
be very primitive, designed for a home network of appliances.

I still cant picture any good uses for consumer electronics to do
distributed computing. What, "this game requires 4 Ps3's?", yeah right!
The only logical use is to make a system pervasive.

Another rant.
Myren

 

[R420]

here's the Ars Technica article I missed

http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1084391000.html

_______________________________________________________________________________

IBM and Sony unveil Cell processor, workstation details
Posted 05/12/2004 @ 2:43 PM, by Eric Bangeman


Earlier this week, IBM fired a shot across the bow of Microsoft with
the announcement of Lotus Workspace, an enterprise-class alternative
to Microsoft Office. Today Sony joined them in challenging Microsoft
with the unveiling of the Cell microprocessor architecture.
Anticipated to to be the CPU powering the PlayStation 3, the Cell
processor is under development by a partnership of IBM, Sony, and
Toshiba. We originally covered it when rumors hit the street back in
August 2002. From Hannibal's write-up:

So the way that the Cell processor works is that there is a pool of 16
or so of these (probably not completely identical) RISC or SIMD/VLIW
cores on a single die. The system will do its processing by drawing
resources from this pool on a task-specific basis. For instance, the
audio processing subsystem will consist of a set of software routines
that request cycles from the pool for the purpose of processing 3D
audio. The 3D engine will similarly request cycles from the same pool
for rendering, and similarly with the game AI system, etc. The
different processing cores will probably be grouped together
dynamically by software into "teams" in order to complete specific
tasks (i.e. 3D rendering, audio, etc.). Each team's size will scale
dynamically to fit its current workload by either acquiring new cores
from the pool or releasing unneeded cores back to the pool for use by
other processes.

In addition to the PS3, IBM and Sony plan to develop content-creation
workstations, with prototypes appearing in 4Q 2004. IBM will handle
the hardware end, while Sony will provide the operating system and
data architecture for the systems. Along with being used to develop
games for the PS3, the workstations will also be aimed at the digital
content creation market (e.g., films).

IBM has its hands in a number of cookie jars at the moment — they will
be supplying the CPU for the next-generation Xbox, which will be in
direct competition with the PS3 once they both ship. Also, their
PowerPC 970 CPUs power Apple's professional desktop line, which is
targeted at the some of the same markets the Cell workstation will be.
It is beginning to look as though Intel will be shut out of the
console gaming market altogether, and while Intel CPUs (running both
variations of Windows and Linux) will continue to be a presence in
digital content creation and PC gaming, the IBM/Sony workstations (as
well as the Power Macintosh G5 and AMD-powered systems) will put the
squeeze on them.

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

[flekso]

I love the Plan9 like distributed stuff they sometimes throw a couple
words in on Cell stuff.

We've fairly effectively made it easy to distribute processor workloads
across a network. I hope they're smart enough to allow distributed IO
too. Sony & IBM could make some major inroads as the company which
brings computer networks past merely a data stream/processor connector
to a way of making all systems act as one.

Seamlessly usable networked I/O subsystems is (rather, will be) the
first evolution in computing since Xerox. Pointless now but in 30 years
when its everywhere, our children will look back on it like we think of
a world without electricity telephones or cell phones. (took me a while
to remember who to credit for GUI... Windows, no def. not, X, no, Mac?
.... closer. Xerox.)

Still, cell is just a baby step. Network privledges and security will
be very primitive, designed for a home network of appliances.

I still cant picture any good uses for consumer electronics to do
distributed computing. What, "this game requires 4 Ps3's?", yeah right!
The only logical use is to make a system pervasive.

Another rant.
Myren

!!WARNING!!
!!LOONEY RANT BELOW!!

With 1.5Gb/s connection you could stream uncompressed 1024*768*4@60 video
over ethernet, so thin clients could be used everywhere and towns could have
cores of cell blades.
Think about MMO worlds that could be simulated on that kind of processing
power(room/hangar of cell servers), and as you add more cells/ram/bandwidth
*everyone* instantly benefits through better graphics, physics, evolution...
And that kind of system would take a fair number of people to
design/operate, while a user at home/work can just sit back and relax(or use
spare core cycles for his 4th grade protein folding assignment).

Once there was no public transport and now there is(now every 11th citizen
of this planet has access to internet but thin clients could be made real
cheap).
People should evolve beyond private property(body/mind excluded), look
outside your window and tell me how many cars are sitting there in the
parking lot, how many of those are going to be there after 2 hours(what if
everyone left their keys in the ignition, how much more money for hospitals,
schools, r&d projects..)

First monkey finds a banana and kills a hungry female that would like to
share a banana with him, second monkey eats half a banana and gets some
pussy, less cholesterol...

Current alpha monkeys that run this planet, have stretched the word
competition far beyond it useful parameters, i thinks reevalution of words
like sharing/distribution is much needed.

!!RANT OVER!!
!!YOU MAY !CLOSE YOUR EYES NOW!!