With programmers finding it difficult to take full advantage of PS3, tools company Codeplay hopes its new parallelism system will ease the pain.
In many respects, PlayStation 3 is an anachronism. The pinnacle of Sony Computer Entertainment’s decade-old philosophy that focuses on proprietary chip design to gain performance and long-term production efficiencies, it’s been outflanked by Microsoft’s off-the-shelf approach and Nintendo’s control-is-everything attitude. And with its main architect, one-time CEO and the father of the PlayStation Ken Kutaragi, no longer in charge, it’s likely that PlayStation 4 will be a very different beast.
Of course, in terms of the current console war, it’s still early days. PlayStation 3 remains the most powerful gaming device, as well as providing the best future-proofed option in terms of consumer electronics, although cynics might say that at its original launch price it should’ve made the tea, too.
For developers, however, the dilemma is how to make the most of its exotic configuration – notably its CPU. Even now, years after the initial interest in the design has died down, Cell’s configuration of one main processor driving eight Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) via what’s called the Element Interconnect Bus (EIB) makes it one of the most fascinating pieces of silicon coders can get their hands on.
For example, outside of games, researchers at the STI Center of Competence for the Cell Processor continue to publish papers with titles such as ‘Fastest Fourier Transform on Cell’ and ‘On the Design and Analysis of Irregular Algorithms on Cell’, while its use in scientific applications such as Folding@Home, as well as MMOG hosting, demonstrates its potential. One hardware integrator, Mercury Computer Systems, recently released software which enables companies to use retail PlayStation 3s to build high-performance clusters for the analysis of data from financial transactions, oil and gas field exploration, biotechnology and video compression.
Because if there’s one thing Cell is excellent at, it’s handling vast amounts of information as the EIB enables high throughput while the parallelism inherent in the SPEs means tasks can be processed very efficiently. The issue for developers is making sure information is presented in the right way.
With the exception of specific architectures such as Intel’s Streaming SIMD Instructions or PS2’s Vector Units, few game programmers have had much experience of writing well-organized parallelized code. And games aren’t the easiest pieces of software to apply to parallel hardware, anyway.
Do you like witty tshirts?? Well, check out the guys from splitreason.com where they offer all users the chance to design a t-shirt of their own and if popular enough it will become a full-time product on the site and the designer will get some cash.
We will be promoting SplitReason.Com over the next few weeks to see if the HQ community enjoy's the t-shirt, caps, cups and mugs and much more they have on offer.
Get involved in our forum topic here to leave your thoughts and comments on some of the gear they have on offer. If your going to be submitting a design and need some support let us know too.
Xbox 360 RROD T-SHIRT
A clever shirt pondering what would happen if HAL 9000 ran on Xbox 360 hardware. "If you're not careful, your 360 may jettison you out an air-lock. The red ring of death is just the first sign that something has gone terribly wrong and not only will you not be playing any games, your 360 may rebel and simply kill you.
Garage Games have released Five New Torque X Tutorials for XNA Developers.
Five new tutorials are available for Torque X right here! Download the zip file, open it up, and try them out. These tutorials will eventually make their way into the official Torque X documentation, but they can be used today, so here they are!
Torque X Tutorial Overview
No matter how good we think our technology is, if you can't use it then it's no good for you. We hope these tutorials will help you learn how to use Torque X and Torque X Builder, and help give you some knowledge and skills that you can use to work on your own game ideas.
We love feedback! At the end of each tutorial page is a link to a survey that you can use to tell us about your experience with the tutorial. After you've finished a tutorial (or decided that you don't want to finish!) please take a few minutes to fill out the survey. We welcome all feedback, positive and negative, because we want to know what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong. Understanding how people feel about our documentation is a vital part of improving it, so please help us out by filling out the surveys!
Microsoft is set to offer free Xbox Live Gold access to European Xbox 360 owners later this month as part of Xtival 07.
According to CVG, numerous sites affiliated with the platform holder are reporting that, as part of Microsoft’s Xtival 07 online event, Xbox 360 owners will be offered a free weekend of online gaming beginning November 23.
While Silver Xbox Live membership is free, it doesn’t allow players to game online and restricts user access to certain content. All gamers need to take advantage of the Gold Xbox Live access being offered later this month is an Xbox 360 console and a broadband connection.
A full line-up of Xbox Live events, competitions and exclusive downloads is promised for the weekend in European countries only.
The frequent delays multiplatform titles experience before reaching the Sony PlayStation 3 can be credited to "hardware differences in memory and processor," said Midway Games' studio head Mike Bilder who worked on Stranglehold (Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PS3, PC). It took six weeks before the Sony console got served with Tequila (Inspector Tequila, that is), and Bilder blames technical difficulties.
According to Bilder, development of Stranglehold for the Sony PS3 took more time not because they wanted to change anything. He commented, "...part of the reason why we're delaying it, is that we want to ensure that the quality is the same on all platforms."
For Bilder, the case with the Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 is "certainly more of a level playing field." Unlike the previous generation of consoles when "the Xbox was considerably more powerful than the PS2" and developers could just look at the PS2 as main SKU to make a game for before porting to the more capable Xbox, Bilder believes the industry is facing a challenge right now. He explained:
...When we tried to get [Stranglehold builds] game-ready and fitting on the [PS3] disc and fitting in memory, in the end it was an easier endeavor on two of the SKUs and it was a more difficult endeavor on one of them. Just, to be honest, the hardware differences in memory and processor on the PS3 vs. traditional PC and 360, it makes it a challenge, and it's representative.
However, Bilder seems to have a viable solution ready. He went on to say that:
A lot of people and a lot of focus as far as games that we have internally that are going to be multi-SKU are trying to put the PS3 out in front now... I don't think it's necessarily a negative to put the PS3 first. But it does help mitigate some of that risk in framerate, memory, technology, just the hardware differences.
Exclusive downloads, competitions, and online events
Microsoft has announced Xtival 07, a European-only online event taking place next month.
From November 23 to 26, Gold memberships will be free to everyone with a broadband connection who connects to Xbox Live and signs in.
Microsoft promises a line-up of events, competitions, and exclusive downloads to be announced soon on Xbox.com. The company is also promising "headline acts" for existing Xbox Live Gold members.
The event is only taking place in European countries with Xbox Live service.
HQ Network: 8,494 | 
Guests: 4795 |
Members: 0
Of course, in terms of the current console war, it’s still early days. PlayStation 3 remains the most powerful gaming device, as well as providing the best future-proofed option in terms of consumer electronics, although cynics might say that at its original launch price it should’ve made the tea, too.
While Silver Xbox Live membership is free, it doesn’t allow players to game online and restricts user access to certain content. All gamers need to take advantage of the Gold Xbox Live access being offered later this month is an Xbox 360 console and a broadband connection.
According to Bilder, development of Stranglehold for the Sony PS3 took more time not because they wanted to change anything. He commented, "...part of the reason why we're delaying it, is that we want to ensure that the quality is the same on all platforms."
Microsoft has announced Xtival 07, a European-only online event taking place next month.
