Sony discovers Cell+RSX rendering technique

According to this report which is linked in this article in PSU:

http://www.psu.com/Cell-and-RSX-work-together-for-best-results-News--a0001332-p0.php

And if you're PSU-agnostic:

http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

PSU gives a good summary though so I'll post it here:

"The idea is that Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) of the Cell/BE can use the chip's DMA list feature to gather "irregular fine-grained fragments of texture data" generated by the RSX graphics chip, returning shading textures in the same way.

This means that the many small SPEs can apply shading on top of the work that the GPU does to texture the game world, shunting some of the workload to the (potentially underused) Cell/BE. The end result is that more work can be done while maintaining a high framerate.

The example code used for the research achieved an 85 Hz frame rate at 720p resolution. The report states that although numbers like that are unlikely to show up in actual games, progress has been made to at least utilise this method to improve graphics and frame rates in game."

What's truly interesting about this is that it proves that the Playstation 3's Cell processor can, in fact, help with graphics processing....to such a degree that it's helping shade segments of textures! That, and the benchmarks are impressive, even if we know hardly anything about them.

Also, this from the PDF: "The shading computation ran at 85Hz (FPS) at HDTV 720p resolution on 5 SPEs and generated 30.72 gigaops [sic?] of performance. This is comparable to the performance of the algorithm running on a state of the art high end GPU."

Perhaps more significant: "We have explored the potential of Cell/B.E. for accelerating graphical operations in the Playstation 3 computer entertainment system. This system combined the Cell/B.E. with a state of the art GPU in a unified memory architecture. In this architecture both devices share access to system memory and to graphics memory. As a result they can share data and processing tasks."

Let it be known that in this particular experiment, these tasks were performed....admirably. Carmack be damned. Apparently we were all wrong.

According to this report which is linked in this article in PSU:

http://www.psu.com/Cell-and-RSX-work-together-for-best-results-News--a0001332-p0.php

And if you're PSU-agnostic:

http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

PSU gives a good summary though so I'll post it here:

"The idea is that Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) of the Cell/BE can use the chip's DMA list feature to gather "irregular fine-grained fragments of texture data" generated by the RSX graphics chip, returning shading textures in the same way.

This means that the many small SPEs can apply shading on top of the work that the GPU does to texture the game world, shunting some of the workload to the (potentially underused) Cell/BE. The end result is that more work can be done while maintaining a high framerate.

The example code used for the research achieved an 85 Hz frame rate at 720p resolution. The report states that although numbers like that are unlikely to show up in actual games, progress has been made to at least utilise this method to improve graphics and frame rates in game."

What's truly interesting about this is that it proves that the Playstation 3's Cell processor can, in fact, help with graphics processing....to such a degree that it's helping shade segments of textures! That, and the benchmarks are impressive, even if we know hardly anything about them.

Also, this from the PDF: "The shading computation ran at 85Hz (FPS) at HDTV 720p resolution on 5 SPEs and generated 30.72 gigaops [sic?] of performance. This is comparable to the performance of the algorithm running on a state of the art high end GPU."

Redfingers

Good news, but we wanna see it in real time.bad82man82

Okay, buck-a-roo! Saddle up! You're going to Sony's first party development studios to witness this experimental technique in action! In fact, because this demonstration has only been performed behind closed doors, implementing it in a game will essentially be the breakthrough application of the entire operation!

Congratulations, chief!

[QUOTE="Redfingers"]

According to this report which is linked in this article in PSU:

http://www.psu.com/Cell-and-RSX-work-together-for-best-results-News--a0001332-p0.php

And if you're PSU-agnostic:

http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

PSU gives a good summary though so I'll post it here:

"The idea is that Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) of the Cell/BE can use the chip's DMA list feature to gather "irregular fine-grained fragments of texture data" generated by the RSX graphics chip, returning shading textures in the same way.

This means that the many small SPEs can apply shading on top of the work that the GPU does to texture the game world, shunting some of the workload to the (potentially underused) Cell/BE. The end result is that more work can be done while maintaining a high framerate.

The example code used for the research achieved an 85 Hz frame rate at 720p resolution. The report states that although numbers like that are unlikely to show up in actual games, progress has been made to at least utilise this method to improve graphics and frame rates in game."

What's truly interesting about this is that it proves that the Playstation 3's Cell processor can, in fact, help with graphics processing....to such a degree that it's helping shade segments of textures! That, and the benchmarks are impressive, even if we know hardly anything about them.

Also, this from the PDF: "The shading computation ran at 85Hz (FPS) at HDTV 720p resolution on 5 SPEs and generated 30.72 gigaops [sic?] of performance. This is comparable to the performance of the algorithm running on a state of the art high end GPU."

muscleserge

Reading comprehension FTW. Lack of reading comprehension FTL. He says that the shading computation (which is performed 100% by those 5 SPUs on the Cell processor) runs at 85Hz with 30.72 gigaops of performance.

[QUOTE="Redfingers"]

According to this report which is linked in this article in PSU:

http://www.psu.com/Cell-and-RSX-work-together-for-best-results-News--a0001332-p0.php

And if you're PSU-agnostic:

http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

PSU gives a good summary though so I'll post it here:

"The idea is that Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) of the Cell/BE can use the chip's DMA list feature to gather "irregular fine-grained fragments of texture data" generated by the RSX graphics chip, returning shading textures in the same way.

This means that the many small SPEs can apply shading on top of the work that the GPU does to texture the game world, shunting some of the workload to the (potentially underused) Cell/BE. The end result is that more work can be done while maintaining a high framerate.

The example code used for the research achieved an 85 Hz frame rate at 720p resolution. The report states that although numbers like that are unlikely to show up in actual games, progress has been made to at least utilise this method to improve graphics and frame rates in game."

What's truly interesting about this is that it proves that the Playstation 3's Cell processor can, in fact, help with graphics processing....to such a degree that it's helping shade segments of textures! That, and the benchmarks are impressive, even if we know hardly anything about them.

Also, this from the PDF: "The shading computation ran at 85Hz (FPS) at HDTV 720p resolution on 5 SPEs and generated 30.72 gigaops [sic?] of performance. This is comparable to the performance of the algorithm running on a state of the art high end GPU."

muscleserge

[QUOTE="Redfingers"]

According to this report which is linked in this article in PSU:

http://www.psu.com/Cell-and-RSX-work-together-for-best-results-News--a0001332-p0.php

And if you're PSU-agnostic:

http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

PSU gives a good summary though so I'll post it here:

"The idea is that Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) of the Cell/BE can use the chip's DMA list feature to gather "irregular fine-grained fragments of texture data" generated by the RSX graphics chip, returning shading textures in the same way.

This means that the many small SPEs can apply shading on top of the work that the GPU does to texture the game world, shunting some of the workload to the (potentially underused) Cell/BE. The end result is that more work can be done while maintaining a high framerate.

The example code used for the research achieved an 85 Hz frame rate at 720p resolution. The report states that although numbers like that are unlikely to show up in actual games, progress has been made to at least utilise this method to improve graphics and frame rates in game."

What's truly interesting about this is that it proves that the Playstation 3's Cell processor can, in fact, help with graphics processing....to such a degree that it's helping shade segments of textures! That, and the benchmarks are impressive, even if we know hardly anything about them.

Also, this from the PDF: "The shading computation ran at 85Hz (FPS) at HDTV 720p resolution on 5 SPEs and generated 30.72 gigaops [sic?] of performance. This is comparable to the performance of the algorithm running on a state of the art high end GPU."

muscleserge

The idea that the Cell processor is as capable as a GPU at rendering GPU optimized code is not new, nor is it unsupported.

http://gametomorrow.com/blog/index.php/2005/11/30/gpus-vs-cell/

"I thought it would be interesting to port this Nvidia CG code to the Cell processor, using the public SDK, and see how it performs given that it was ideal for a GPU. First we directly translated the CG code line for line to C + SPE intrinsics. All the CG code structures and data types were maintained. Then we wrote a CG framework to execute this shader for Cell that included a backend image compression and network delivery layer for the finished images. To our surprise, well not really, we found that using only 7 SPEs for rendering a 3.2 GHz Cell chip could out run an Nvidia 7800 GT OC card at this task by about 30%. We reserved one SPE for the image compression and delivery task. Furthermore the way CG structures it SIMD computation is inefficient as it causes large percentages of the code to execute in scalar mode. This is due to the way they structure their vector data, AOS vs SOA. By converting this CG shader from AOS to SOA form, SIMD utilization was much higher which resulted in Cell out performing the Nvidia 7800 by a factor of 5 - 6x using only 7 SPEs for rendering."

And you have an Nvidia 7900 GT? Kay. It outperforms the 7800 GT at a margin of 30% on GPU optimized code and by a factor of 5/6 on optimized code. I would assume that's feasibly over 2x, possibly 3-4x the raw graphics processing capabilities of the 7900 GT. Also, the Sony report penned today says that 5 SPEs (there are 7 SPEs in the Playstation 3, 1 reserved for the OS, and a PPE...in the Cell processor itself there are 8 SPEs and one PPE) ran comparably to a state of the art GPU....meaning 8800/2900, presumably.

psu, the site that faked the interview with Valve :lol:Burnout_Player0

I gave you the report itself, no nonsense. Read it, if you like.

[QUOTE="muscleserge"][QUOTE="Redfingers"]

According to this report which is linked in this article in PSU:

http://www.psu.com/Cell-and-RSX-work-together-for-best-results-News--a0001332-p0.php

And if you're PSU-agnostic:

http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

PSU gives a good summary though so I'll post it here:

"The idea is that Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) of the Cell/BE can use the chip's DMA list feature to gather "irregular fine-grained fragments of texture data" generated by the RSX graphics chip, returning shading textures in the same way.

This means that the many small SPEs can apply shading on top of the work that the GPU does to texture the game world, shunting some of the workload to the (potentially underused) Cell/BE. The end result is that more work can be done while maintaining a high framerate.

The example code used for the research achieved an 85 Hz frame rate at 720p resolution. The report states that although numbers like that are unlikely to show up in actual games, progress has been made to at least utilise this method to improve graphics and frame rates in game."

What's truly interesting about this is that it proves that the Playstation 3's Cell processor can, in fact, help with graphics processing....to such a degree that it's helping shade segments of textures! That, and the benchmarks are impressive, even if we know hardly anything about them.

Also, this from the PDF: "The shading computation ran at 85Hz (FPS) at HDTV 720p resolution on 5 SPEs and generated 30.72 gigaops [sic?] of performance. This is comparable to the performance of the algorithm running on a state of the art high end GPU."

DivergeUnify

Okay. My enthusiasm is limited. Will look forward to seeing how this affects actual games...and when.Dreams-Visions

Just wait...for 2010

[QUOTE="DivergeUnify"][QUOTE="muscleserge"][QUOTE="Redfingers"]

According to this report which is linked in this article in PSU:

http://www.psu.com/Cell-and-RSX-work-together-for-best-results-News--a0001332-p0.php

And if you're PSU-agnostic:

http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

PSU gives a good summary though so I'll post it here:

"The idea is that Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) of the Cell/BE can use the chip's DMA list feature to gather "irregular fine-grained fragments of texture data" generated by the RSX graphics chip, returning shading textures in the same way.

This means that the many small SPEs can apply shading on top of the work that the GPU does to texture the game world, shunting some of the workload to the (potentially underused) Cell/BE. The end result is that more work can be done while maintaining a high framerate.

The example code used for the research achieved an 85 Hz frame rate at 720p resolution. The report states that although numbers like that are unlikely to show up in actual games, progress has been made to at least utilise this method to improve graphics and frame rates in game."

What's truly interesting about this is that it proves that the Playstation 3's Cell processor can, in fact, help with graphics processing....to such a degree that it's helping shade segments of textures! That, and the benchmarks are impressive, even if we know hardly anything about them.

Also, this from the PDF: "The shading computation ran at 85Hz (FPS) at HDTV 720p resolution on 5 SPEs and generated 30.72 gigaops [sic?] of performance. This is comparable to the performance of the algorithm running on a state of the art high end GPU."

muscleserge

sony knows what there doing when there making consoles and ps3 will show more of its power and that power will come to use which will Make Playstation 3 the most fastest console to date

G80 was the pending name of an 8800gtx like two years ago...
DivergeUnify

More hidden power of the cell claims. The proof is in the pudding! All this "in theory" or "one day" stuff is getting really old. Until you can show me a game that obviously is much better than what can be done on the 360 i'll chalk this up to a marketing ploy.

Dont get me wrong, i believe it thearticle, to an extent. You can find tweaks or advances to every software application after its released. There have been countless amounts of time that i've released software and said "man i should have done it like this. This would have made performance better".

The example code used for the research achieved an 85 Hz frame rate at 720p resolution. The report states that although numbers like that are unlikely to show up in actual games, progress has been made to at least utilise this method to improve graphics and frame rates in game."

So their still figuring out the Cell/RSX but if it doesn't benefit the gamer then why should we care.

DivergeUnify G80= 8800 GTS/GTX. adn my statement was a compliment to the 8800s, because it takes Cell+RSX+ speciall technique just to reach similar performance. But Games won't be seeing this kind of performance because games also need AI and Physics, plus all the other things that make up games that need CPU power.muscleserge

[QUOTE="Redfingers"]

The example code used for the research achieved an 85 Hz frame rate at 720p resolution. The report states that although numbers like that are unlikely to show up in actual games, progress has been made to at least utilise this method to improve graphics and frame rates in game."

Pro_wrestler

So their still figuring out the Cell/RSX but if it doesn't benefit the gamer then why should we care.

More hidden power of the cell claims. The proof is in the pudding! All this "in theory" or "one day" stuff is getting really old. Until you can show me a game that obviously is much better than what can be done on the 360 i'll chalk this up to a marketing ploy.

Dont get me wrong, i believe it thearticle, to an extent. You can find tweaks or advances to every software application after its released. There have been countless amounts of time that i've released software and said "man i should have done it like this. This would have made performance better".

lhughey

They're benchmarks. You don't have to believe in benchmarks. The only significant limiting factor to their relevance is that they are presumably controlled. But they're significant nonetheless.

What you should really draw from this article is this: the CPU can render textures, or perhaps shade textures the GPU renders concurrently. They also have "unified memory" that allows them to do this, according to the Sony report.

[QUOTE="DivergeUnify"] G80 was the pending name of an 8800gtx like two years ago...
Teufelhuhn

[QUOTE="muscleserge"]DivergeUnify G80= 8800 GTS/GTX. adn my statement was a compliment to the 8800s, because it takes Cell+RSX+ speciall technique just to reach similar performance. But Games won't be seeing this kind of performance because games also need AI and Physics, plus all the other things that make up games that need CPU power.DivergeUnify

DivergeUnify G80= 8800 GTS/GTX. adn my statement was a compliment to the 8800s, because it takes Cell+RSX+ speciall technique just to reach similar performance. But Games won't be seeing this kind of performance because games also need AI and Physics, plus all the other things that make up games that need CPU power.muscleserge

So....all hail the G80 because it can perform comparably at this particular app to 5 SPEs? How....remarkable.

Garsh!

But the CPU has to handle AI and physics, thus in the real world it will be hobbled....okay, well, friend. If the G80 attempted a CPU intensive app (that the Cell is good at), I.E. AI and physics, it would poop its pants.

What you should really draw from this article is this: the CPU can render textures, or perhaps shade textures the GPU renders concurrently. They also have "unified memory" that allows them to do this, according to the Sony report.

Redfingers

[QUOTE="DivergeUnify"][QUOTE="muscleserge"]DivergeUnify G80= 8800 GTS/GTX. adn my statement was a compliment to the 8800s, because it takes Cell+RSX+ speciall technique just to reach similar performance. But Games won't be seeing this kind of performance because games also need AI and Physics, plus all the other things that make up games that need CPU power.Teufelhuhn

The only claim I've ever seen for the RSX in terms of benchmarking is when they said it would be faster than two 6800s in SLI. The 6800 is G60, or something, right? That hardly sounds like comparing it to a G80 to me...

Plus, this benchmark refers to the capabilities of the Cell, not the capabilities of the RSX. If anything, it refers to the GPU in terms of how it relates to the system itself via the memory "link" they say exists and the concurrent rendering technique it allows.

The xbox360 processor isn't a monster as the cell, but i have heard that the GPU inside the 360 hasn't been use to its fullest capabilities yet.-wii60-

[QUOTE="Redfingers"]

What you should really draw from this article is this: the CPU can render textures, or perhaps shade textures the GPU renders concurrently. They also have "unified memory" that allows them to do this, according to the Sony report.

Teufelhuhn

Ah, I gotcha. Thanks. The entirety? The 256 XDR? Is there a performance hit?

And I assume the 256 GDDR3 is entirely locked to the GPU?

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"][QUOTE="DivergeUnify"][QUOTE="muscleserge"]DivergeUnify G80= 8800 GTS/GTX. adn my statement was a compliment to the 8800s, because it takes Cell+RSX+ speciall technique just to reach similar performance. But Games won't be seeing this kind of performance because games also need AI and Physics, plus all the other things that make up games that need CPU power.Redfingers

The only claim I've ever seen for the RSX in terms of benchmarking is when they said it would be faster than two 6800s in SLI. The 6800 is G60, or something, right? That hardly sounds like comparing it to a G80 to me...

Plus, this benchmark refers to the capabilities of the Cell, not the capabilities of the RSX. If anything, it refers to the GPU in terms of how it relates to the system itself via the memory "link" they say exists and the concurrent rendering technique it allows.

According to this report which is linked in this article in PSU:

http://www.psu.com/Cell-and-RSX-work-together-for-best-results-News--a0001332-p0.php

And if you're PSU-agnostic:

http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

PSU gives a good summary though so I'll post it here:

"The idea is that Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) of the Cell/BE can use the chip's DMA list feature to gather "irregular fine-grained fragments of texture data" generated by the RSX graphics chip, returning shading textures in the same way.

This means that the many small SPEs can apply shading on top of the work that the GPU does to texture the game world, shunting some of the workload to the (potentially underused) Cell/BE. The end result is that more work can be done while maintaining a high framerate.

The example code used for the research achieved an 85 Hz frame rate at 720p resolution. The report states that although numbers like that are unlikely to show up in actual games, progress has been made to at least utilise this method to improve graphics and frame rates in game."

What's truly interesting about this is that it proves that the Playstation 3's Cell processor can, in fact, help with graphics processing....to such a degree that it's helping shade segments of textures! That, and the benchmarks are impressive, even if we know hardly anything about them.

Also, this from the PDF: "The shading computation ran at 85Hz (FPS) at HDTV 720p resolution on 5 SPEs and generated 30.72 gigaops [sic?] of performance. This is comparable to the performance of the algorithm running on a state of the art high end GPU."

Redfingers

old they used this on Graw2.....

[QUOTE="-wii60-"]The xbox360 processor isn't a monster as the cell, but i have heard that the GPU inside the 360 hasn't been use to its fullest capabilities yet.muscleserge

UT3>Gears of War according to the president of Epic Games.

The xbox360 processor isn't a monster as the cell, but i have heard that the GPU inside the 360 hasn't been use to its fullest capabilities yet.-wii60-

[QUOTE="Redfingers"]

According to this report which is linked in this article in PSU:

http://www.psu.com/Cell-and-RSX-work-together-for-best-results-News--a0001332-p0.php

And if you're PSU-agnostic:

http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

PSU gives a good summary though so I'll post it here:

"The idea is that Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) of the Cell/BE can use the chip's DMA list feature to gather "irregular fine-grained fragments of texture data" generated by the RSX graphics chip, returning shading textures in the same way.

This means that the many small SPEs can apply shading on top of the work that the GPU does to texture the game world, shunting some of the workload to the (potentially underused) Cell/BE. The end result is that more work can be done while maintaining a high framerate.

The example code used for the research achieved an 85 Hz frame rate at 720p resolution. The report states that although numbers like that are unlikely to show up in actual games, progress has been made to at least utilise this method to improve graphics and frame rates in game."

What's truly interesting about this is that it proves that the Playstation 3's Cell processor can, in fact, help with graphics processing....to such a degree that it's helping shade segments of textures! That, and the benchmarks are impressive, even if we know hardly anything about them.

Also, this from the PDF: "The shading computation ran at 85Hz (FPS) at HDTV 720p resolution on 5 SPEs and generated 30.72 gigaops [sic?] of performance. This is comparable to the performance of the algorithm running on a state of the art high end GPU."

LibertySaint

old they used this on Graw2.....

Link me.

[QUOTE="-wii60-"]The xbox360 processor isn't a monster as the cell, but i have heard that the GPU inside the 360 hasn't been use to its fullest capabilities yet.muscleserge

[QUOTE="muscleserge"][QUOTE="-wii60-"]The xbox360 processor isn't a monster as the cell, but i have heard that the GPU inside the 360 hasn't been use to its fullest capabilities yet.-wii60-

Until we see it in games this is useless.xDonRobx

Don't be ridiculous.

First of all, it's relevant in terms of arguments. People have theoretical debates on System Wars all the time. I have people telling me the Cell is hobbled, limited, not designed with games in mind, and completely incapable of helping the GPU render concurrently. I've pretty much dispelled all of those myths by posting that particular article (though, no credit to me, obviously).

The technique, useless? Well, that depends. I just saw someone tell me "OLD! GRAW 2 USES IT!" As far as the technique, we won't see tangible results until they apply it but, like they said, progress is being made (and it's significant) in that particular field.

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"][QUOTE="Redfingers"]

What you should really draw from this article is this: the CPU can render textures, or perhaps shade textures the GPU renders concurrently. They also have "unified memory" that allows them to do this, according to the Sony report.

Redfingers

Ah, I gotcha. Thanks. The entirety? The 256 XDR? Is there a performance hit?

And I assume the 256 GDDR3 is entirely locked to the GPU?

Yes I read that paper a while ago, its very cool stuff. Killzone 2 probably uses some similar ideas for its deferred renderer, but probably only uses a portion of the Cell for graphics stuff.

If anyone likes I can try to explain whats going on in that paper in less technical language.
Teufelhuhn

I know I for one would appreciate it. Perhaps not these goons that come in and just say "TEH HIDDEN POWAH!"

Go right ahead, please.

PSU is a garbage website /threadkevy619