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What the PS2 can do
tsumake - Oct 23, 2004

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  tsumake Oct 23, 2004
I'm really curious as to what exactly is under the hood of the PS2. I know it has something like an "emotion chip", but what exactly is so special about it?

In terms of graphics, I tend to notice that a lot of PS2 titles like to use some kind of "sparkle" effect, where the light seems to shimmer off everything, hiding bland textures, like in FFX. It looks pretty specific to me, because when they try to do the same thing on computer games, it becomes resource intensive. Also, a lot of games love to use that distance "shimmer" effect as well. And, a lot, I mean a lot, of games also use a "slo-mo" function, apparently to hide a frame rate drop I guess. It's all speculation to me.

Now, I've heard that programming for the PS2 is a major pain in the ass, but you can do some amazing things with it, as in the case with MGS2. What's so special about it?

I'm asking about the PS2 on this board because I've read a lot of really technical discussions about the Dreamcast and the Saturn, and I'm really curious as to what the PS2 can do. A guy at Gamestop told me (ok, like I can trust him) that Sony plans to release games for the PS2 until at least 2008, meaning that they plan to capitalize on the hardware even after the PS3 is released. I find it interesting the MGS3 is being released on the PS2, instead of waiting for the next-gen system. Well, if the PS3 isn't coming out until 2006, ok so I'm not so surprised, but nowadays I have the feeling that a next-gen system is coming soon (it seems about the right time for me for some reason).

Bleh, I leave this thread to the technically-proficient.

 lordofduct Oct 23, 2004
Eh, should of been posted in the 'new consoles' thread.

Also, yeah it feels about time for the PS2, it was released way before the GC or Xbox. Why, just to screw up my beloved DC. GRRRRR!

 antime Oct 24, 2004
Google for "ps2 architecture". The SCEA... and SCEE... sites also have plenty of interesting presentations and papers.

 Des-ROW Oct 24, 2004

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by tsumake@Oct 23, 2004 @ 10:48 PM



I'm really curious as to what exactly is under the hood of the PS2. I know it has something like an "emotion chip", but what exactly is so special about it?



In terms of graphics, I tend to notice that a lot of PS2 titles like to use some kind of "sparkle" effect, where the light seems to shimmer off everything, hiding bland textures, like in FFX. It looks pretty specific to me, because when they try to do the same thing on computer games, it becomes resource intensive. Also, a lot of games love to use that distance "shimmer" effect as well. And, a lot, I mean a lot, of games also use a "slo-mo" function, apparently to hide a frame rate drop I guess. It's all speculation to me.



Now, I've heard that programming for the PS2 is a major pain in the ass, but you can do some amazing things with it, as in the case with MGS2. What's so special about it?



I'm asking about the PS2 on this board because I've read a lot of really technical discussions about the Dreamcast and the Saturn, and I'm really curious as to what the PS2 can do. A guy at Gamestop told me (ok, like I can trust him) that Sony plans to release games for the PS2 until at least 2008, meaning that they plan to capitalize on the hardware even after the PS3 is released. I find it interesting the MGS3 is being released on the PS2, instead of waiting for the next-gen system. Well, if the PS3 isn't coming out until 2006, ok so I'm not so surprised, but nowadays I have the feeling that a next-gen system is coming soon (it seems about the right time  for me for some reason).



Bleh, I leave this thread to the technically-proficient.  




[post=121520]Quoted post[/post]


I would talk about the PlayStation2 architecture, the Emotion Engine and the Graphics Synthesizer for hours, but I will make it easier for you -

Here... you have a very nice and technical article that compares how a standard PC works to how the PlayStation2 architecture functions.

- and here... you have a technical overview of the PlayStation2's main processor, the wonderful Emotion Engine.

I hope you get the answers to your questions.

 Cloud121 Oct 24, 2004
*Reads on in comfusion, completely lost by what the articles are saying*

:huh mg:

It's late, maybe I should read 'em later....

 Alexvrb Oct 24, 2004
The emotion engine isn't that impressive, and really they could have done more if they had built-in texture decompression in the GS. Their biggest feat was the massively parallel buses.

 Des-ROW Oct 24, 2004

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by Alexvrb@Oct 24, 2004 @ 09:23 PM



The emotion engine isn't that impressive, and really they could have done more if they had built-in texture decompression in the GS. Their biggest feat was the massively parallel buses.




[post=121598]Quoted post[/post]


-NOW- it is not THAT impressive, but the moment it got released (March 2, 1999), it was an amazingly powerful and complex beast.

 Alexvrb Oct 25, 2004
It was never THAT impressive. Early PIIIs on the market. Jam a couple of those in a board and you're off. Sony knows what it's doing, but they're not process-defying gods.

 Des-ROW Oct 25, 2004

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by Alexvrb@Tue, 2004-10-26 @ 04:37 AM



It was never THAT impressive. Early PIIIs on the market. Jam a couple of those in a board and you're off. Sony knows what it's doing, but they're not process-defying gods.




[post=121651]Quoted post[/post]


Oh, you are right, maybe you should mail the people at Toshiba who designed it, Jon Stokes, Ken Kutaragi and SCEI, and let them know how things should be done.

Anyway -

 Alexvrb Oct 25, 2004
Well there's always early Athlons to consider for solid FP as well as integer performance in that time period too. Either one creams the EE easily on integer performance, the PIIIs have MMX and SSE, the Athlons had MMX and an updated 3dnow!. The EE wouldn't even need the vector units so badly if the GPU was more advanced.

What I was implying was that they are unable to break the laws of physics any more than the other guys, and they are just as bound by the chip production process.

 Dyne Oct 25, 2004

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by tsumake@Sat, 2004-10-23 @ 10:48 PM







In terms of graphics, I tend to notice that a lot of PS2 titles like to use some kind of "sparkle" effect, where the light seems to shimmer off everything, hiding bland textures, like in FFX.


"sparkle effect"? i think you mean the lack of any AA in a lot of the early games (and some recent games as well). its not an "effect" and is pretty undesireable.

 Berty Oct 25, 2004

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by Des-ROW@Mon, 2004-10-25 @ 04:38 PM



Oh, you are right, maybe you should mail the people at Toshiba who designed it, Jon Stokes, Ken Kutaragi and SCEI, and let them know how things should be done.



Anyway -




[post=121659]Quoted post[/post]


Those specs are shit. Remember how every apple is a supercomputer???? maybe toshiba use the same benchmarking program... Biasedmark 200X

Also they were only benchmarking floating point operations, a benchmark made specically for RISC processors. I even would go so far as to say that they have used specific machine commands for the EE.

The emotion engine was good, but it wasnt that good. Don't even start comparing RISC and CISC without showing ALL of the benchmarks.

...

Back on topic,

The emotion engine is a processor speciffically designed for 3d games. As such it has a RISC instructions set with hardware commands made specifically to deal with haze effects etc. This is the reason for the low overheads when doing this on a PS2. However to do this on a PC with a CISC chip takes a number of smaller hardware commands and has to be implemented via software. Think if it this way,

If i was to write "one" using the english alphabet it would only take 3 moves, o-n-e. To find thos characters, i would have to only look through 25 symbols. This is RISC

But if i was to write "one" using the chinese system then it would onlyl take one move but i would have to sort through 30,000 characters. This is CISC and how a PC works.

Furthermore, i could streamline my risc process further towards only outputting numbers. So if i wanted to only display numbers, i would reduce my character set to 10 digits,... 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. So if i wanted to output "1" then i would only have to look through 10 characters and the process would only take 1 step. This is what sony did in essence to tailor the EE towards games, but this comes at a cost. If the EE wanted to do more complex equations outside of games then it would have to use a large combination of its characters where as a CISC chip, even though it takes longer to find the character may have just one that does the same thing.

 ExCyber Oct 25, 2004

  
	
	

		
		

			maybe toshiba use the same benchmarking program... Biasedmark 200X


The first graph is not even a benchmark at all, it is just a naive comparison of the major theoretical numbers. It completely ignores things like cache performance, random read latency, and the need to perform both processing and I/O. IOW these numbers mean next to nothing as an overall performance measure.

The second graph is, as you hint at, illustrating operations that are highly implementation-dependent, and which cannot be usefully evaluated without access to the code, compiler(s), and build scripts.

They look very impressive, but that's about all they accomplish. :beerchug

 yasminkov Oct 27, 2004
[looks blankly at all the technical jargon and faints]

I wont even pretend I understood all of that but heres a thought, why is the system still running when the graphics it outputs often aren't as good as many of the DC's games 3 years ago. Also there seem to be obvious faults with it when you look at say Soul Caliber 2, across systems PS2 had by far the worse graphics and sound. In a bored moment i was playing the original SC on the DC and found that the graphics and sound we better than on the sequal on a better machine. Has the PS2's graphics system been used to the fullest or are developers not bothering to as they think it will sell anyway?

 Des-ROW Oct 28, 2004

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by yasminkov+Wed, 2004-10-27 @ 08:43 PM-->
QUOTE(yasminkov @ Wed, 2004-10-27 @ 08:43 PM)
I wont even pretend I understood all of that but heres a thought, why is the system still running when the graphics it outputs often aren't as good as many of the DC's games 3 years ago.[/b]



No.


  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by yasminkov@Wed, 2004-10-27 @ 08:43 PM



In a bored moment i was playing the original SC on the DC and found that the graphics and sound we better than on the sequal on a better machine.




Neither.