Wired article on new consoles

[Murgos]

http://www.filerush.com/linkmania/direct.php?target=that_video.avi

Some of the stuff is new to me but probably not you die hards.

...one interesting idea making the rounds is that Microsoft is rumored to be considering calling its next console the "Xbox 360," rather than Xbox 2.

"I heard they don't want to be seen as '2,' which is less than PS3," said Tabar.

Oh, and architecturally the Cell is going to be a BITCH to code for.  Compilers aren't good at optimizing code for multi-processor systems which means pretty much every program written for the PS3 is going to need to be hand tweaked at the Assembly level.  Probably adding months to development and a lot of cost overhead to every game produced.

[Trippy]

Oh, and architecturally the Cell is going to be a BITCH to code for.  Compilers aren't good at optimizing code for multi-processor systems which means pretty much every program written for the PS3 is going to need to be hand tweaked at the Assembly level.  Probably adding months to development and a lot of cost overhead to every game produced.

Nice FUD. Oh hey the XBOX2 is going to have a 3 core CPU so it's going to be a bitch to code for too right?

People have been writing multiprocess/multithreaded programs for a long time now without having to code in assembly. Now I haven't studied the Cell architecture so maybe it will be a bitch to code for (sort of like how the Saturn was) but the principles of concurrent programming are well understood and is something that is taught in undergraduate CS classes.

[Sky]

Traditionally, Sony's proprietary hardware has been a bitch to write for. I'm not pulling that out of my ass, it's been said in many a postmortem on gamasutra, especially early on in the life cycle. The first guy I heard bitch about it was the cat who did Metal Gear Solid, the first game I thought looked great on the system.

The xbox, on the other hand, was a known architecture, however hobbled. It was something of a dream (except for the hobbling parts) for pc developers to be able to easily code for a fixed platform yet use their x86 coding skills.

Xbox2, all bets are off. But PPC isn't an entirely new technology, whereas Cell is, however many cores anyone is using.

[Murgos]

Oh, and architecturally the Cell is going to be a BITCH to code for.  Compilers aren't good at optimizing code for multi-processor systems which means pretty much every program written for the PS3 is going to need to be hand tweaked at the Assembly level.  Probably adding months to development and a lot of cost overhead to every game produced.

Nice FUD. Oh hey the XBOX2 is going to have a 3 core CPU so it's going to be a bitch to code for too right?

People have been writing multiprocess/multithreaded programs for a long time now without having to code in assembly. Now I haven't studied the Cell architecture so maybe it will be a bitch to code for (sort of like how the Saturn was) but the principles of concurrent programming are well understood and is something that is taught in undergraduate CS classes.

Absolutely.  A three core CPU is going to require more technique and skill than a single core single processor system.

Multiprocess/multithreaded programming IS taught at the undergraduate level.  The programmer still has to manage it though, the compiler doesn't do it.  And massive optimizations can be made at the assembly level to help manage and control data flow between those process/threads.

Here do this, fork two processes that both add to the same counter compile it and have the original process print the value of the counter when it finishes (junior level CS demonstration).  Do this on a single CPU/single core machine and then do it on a multi-processor machine.

Guess what?  The COMPILER doesn't manage it for you (my point) thus adding a HUGE level of complexity to program development.

Most people don't write thread safe apps currently because there has been really no need.  With these new processors everyone will have to start and it is going to be a bitch.

FUD?  No.  Simple reality.

[ClydeJr]

GDC: Sony promises developers an easy ride on PS3

...The PlayStation Portable's comprehensive set of tools and APIs has largely been well-received by developers, but for PlayStation 3, the company plans to go even further - adopting a number of familiar industry standard systems that will give game creators a running start on the platform.

DeLoura told a packed audience that Sony is working with the consortium behind well-known PC graphics interface standard OpenGL to create a specialised version of the library which is optimised for interactive games, by stripping out much of the unnecessary bloat in the library.

The second part of the firm's graphics software will be Cg, a high-level language created by NVIDIA for programming shaders to create advanced graphical effects, which is rapidly becoming the standard way to build these effects on the PC platform...

...However, Sony has at least pledged that the chip will be easy to control with C code, rather than requiring the hand-coding of large blocks of low-level assembler - one of the major difficulties of PlayStation 2 development, which tripped many projects up in the early days of the platform before coders began to specialise in that field.

Sounds like Sony is acknowledging there were issues before when coding on the PS2 and want to address them in the PS3. Whether all this is just marketingspeak remains to be seen though.

[Sky]

That does sound promising, exciting even. I'll shit if I end up buying a PS3 :)

[Trippy]

Oh, and architecturally the Cell is going to be a BITCH to code for.  Compilers aren't good at optimizing code for multi-processor systems which means pretty much every program written for the PS3 is going to need to be hand tweaked at the Assembly level.  Probably adding months to development and a lot of cost overhead to every game produced.

Nice FUD. Oh hey the XBOX2 is going to have a 3 core CPU so it's going to be a bitch to code for too right?

People have been writing multiprocess/multithreaded programs for a long time now without having to code in assembly. Now I haven't studied the Cell architecture so maybe it will be a bitch to code for (sort of like how the Saturn was) but the principles of concurrent programming are well understood and is something that is taught in undergraduate CS classes.

Absolutely.  A three core CPU is going to require more technique and skill than a single core single processor system.

Multiprocess/multithreaded programming IS taught at the undergraduate level.  The programmer still has to manage it though, the compiler doesn't do it.  And massive optimizations can be made at the assembly level to help manage and control data flow between those process/threads.

Here do this, fork two processes that both add to the same counter compile it and have the original process print the value of the counter when it finishes (junior level CS demonstration).  Do this on a single CPU/single core machine and then do it on a multi-processor machine.

Guess what?  The COMPILER doesn't manage it for you (my point) thus adding a HUGE level of complexity to program development.

Most people don't write thread safe apps currently because there has been really no need.  With these new processors everyone will have to start and it is going to be a bitch.

FUD?  No.  Simple reality.

Focusing on the compiler is a red herring. What's going to be important is how much of the low level semaphore manipulation and other synchronization tasks the game developers are doing to have to do and how much will be handled by the provided libraries. I'm going to assume that all the low level APIs are going to be thread-safe and reentrant so the main question is how "developer-friendly" the higher-level libraries that Sony is providing are going to be. With the original PS Sony did a great job of providing high-level libraries for developers to use since many of them were new to 3D programming. As the developers gained experience with the platform they started writing code closer and closer to the hardware to eek out as much performance as possible. When Sony was getting ready to release the PS2 they looked at what the PS developers were doing at that time (writing a lot of low level code) and decided to release the PS2 without much higher-level library support, seemingly forgetting what they had done originally for the PS. That decision of couse caused a lot of problems for PS2 developers. If Sony does what it did with the PS for the PS3 (which is what it sounds like they are doing from ClydrJr's post) and releases some nice libraries that minimizes the amount of low level concurrent programming stuff a developer has to do I think things will be fine. If they do the same thing they did on the PS2 then yes, I agree things are going to be very painful for the PS3 developers.

[Murgos]

The Cell processor is basically 8 parallel processors each with thier own memory space.  There are absolutely good valid techniques for writing optimized code that take full advantage of that sort of hardware structure.  Very few of those tools are automated.  Parallel processing is largely the domain of scientific computing and very large buisness apps (and recently MMOG's).

I still think that moving to this new style is going to cause huge increases in cost and time of development.  I also still thing there will be a great call for assembly level work because those libraries you mention just don't exist and that sort of thing takes years and years to develop one layer at a time.

[Margalis]

PS2 games and good PS1 games were written in large parts in assembly, as are many GBA and handheld games. Nothing new to see here.

[Strazos]

Assembler is still a bitch though.

[Cuular]

Actually once you've written a few programs in assembly language, it becomes second nature.  You just have to retrain your mind to think in a different way, then the high level programming languages train you to.

Once you get used to it, it flows easily.  it's just untraining all the "bad" stuff that the high level languages entice you into doing.