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Mark Cerny speaking on stage about the PS4

W

WORLDTree

Member
Gaming Nostalgia said:
I agree with a lot Sony is doing but software for the launch lineup is not one. I think they blew too much on PS3 this year and should have saved some games for PS4. The Last of Us or GT6 would have been great at launch. Thought for sure we would get at least a cross platform announcement.
Click to expand...

But the entire launch lineup hasn't even been revealed yet.
 
G

guch20

Banned
Gaming Nostalgia said:
Yes I did listen to what he said and yea when he was describing to the two methods they considered for bandwidth he was speaking to graphics capabilities. We're you listening? Also no I was not at E3 but in terms of what I saw I was not overly impressed. Not so much visually but from a performance side many of the games were lacking dropping below 30fps frequently.
Click to expand...

Then I guess it's a good thing most of those games are damn near alpha, and most devs were shocked in February to discover the PS4 would be getting 8GB GDDR5 RAM, since they had been coding for much less.
 
Y

Yawnier

Banned
Gaming Nostalgia said:
I agree with a lot Sony is doing but software for the launch lineup is not one. I think they blew too much on PS3 this year and should have saved some games for PS4. The Last of Us or GT6 would have been great at launch. Thought for sure we would get at least a cross platform announcement.
Click to expand...

I agree with you here that their launch lineup for the PS4 isn't the greatest either in terms of exclusives, but I guess that there is still Gamecom and TGS for them to reveal a couple more games for that time period.
 
M

Mifune

Mehmber
Holy god, it's never wise to judge a game's technical performance based on E3 demos. I was at E3 in 2001 and Halo was practically a slideshow. And Kameo looked smooth and beautiful on the Gamecube! And two years ago Prey 2 was my Game of the Show!

E3 demos are great for giving you a rough indication of how the game will play and what the developer is going for, but that's really about it.
 
S

stryke

Member
Gaming Nostalgia said:
Yes I did listen to what he said and yea when he was describing to the two methods they considered for bandwidth he was speaking to graphics capabilities. We're you listening? Also no I was not at E3 but in terms of what I saw I was not overly impressed. Not so much visually but from a performance side many of the games were lacking dropping below 30fps frequently.
Click to expand...

You dissatisfaction with design choices and priorities and progress made by developers has little to do with the philosophies Cerny discusses in the creation of the PS4. So GG are going with 30fps, Drive Club aint performing well 4/5 mths out of launch. Don't pin that on Cerny. There are already other threads to voice for premature concerns.
 
G

Gaming Nostalgia

Banned
guch20 said:
Then I guess it's a good thing most of those games are damn near alpha, and most devs were shocked in February to discover the PS4 would be getting 8GB GDDR5 RAM, since they had been coding for much less.
Click to expand...
This is my hope. I just keep going back to Knack and scratching my head though.
 
G

Gaming Nostalgia

Banned
stryke said:
You dissatisfaction with design choices and priorities and progress made by developers has little to do with the philosophies Cerny discusses in the creation of the PS4. So GG are going with 30fps, Drive Club aint performing well 4/5 mths out of launch. Don't pin that on Cerny. There are already other threads to voice for premature concerns.
Click to expand...
Definitely not trying to pin anything on Cerny. I'm just more confused than anything considering this amazing "tool" they've been given and the progress and design choices that have been made.
 
P

Peace Tea

Member
Almost done with the video. It really is an interesting presentation.

So far the most interesting tidbit, if i understand correctly, is that Sony engineers used Cerny, a Quantum mechanics student at Berkeley by age 18, to benchmark broad Programmer competence (in the States?), during the very early stages of PS3 development.
 
GribbleGrunger

GribbleGrunger

Dreams in Digital
Gaming Nostalgia said:
Definitely not trying to pin anything on Cerny. I'm just more confused than anything considering this amazing "tool" they've been given and the progress and design choices that have been made.
Click to expand...

I think you are taking for granted the fact that Knack can grow bigger and that every single piece that makes him bigger has it's own physics. And don't forget, all those pieces have to work together perfectly to create a realistic animation. That's for the tech heads though. As Cerny said himself, he wanted to make sure that the family had something to play too, and let's face it Nintendo prove that the family don't really care about impressive tech, just FUN
 
Schrade

Schrade

Member
This was sublime to watch and listen to. I was watching it at work and I just had to keep going. He is so easy to listen too.

Love this kind of stuff.
 
M

Minigo

Member
I just finished watching it, beautiful, however I didn't understand the "less is more" part with the numbers, I guess I am going to have to take his word for it, he seems to know a thing or two.
 
B

babyghost853

Member
ChorusLindarr said:
eDRAM wouldn't have meant a more expensive APU at all, nor would it have implied a weaker one. The point being that you cannot currently manufacture eDRAM on a 28nm process node, as nobody does it. The smallest node for eDRAM currently is 32nm which would have implied a daughter die like the 360 setup - perhaps with the GPU ROPS on the daughter die also.

EDRAM at 32MB would have meant a much smaller die area than eSRAM at 32nm. It would have allowed Sony to go up to 64 or possibily even 128MB of eDRAM on the daughter die. Would have been far superior performance wise than MS' current XB1 setup, provided they had double or more embedded memory and in the terabits per second internal bandwidth to the ROPs. Just would have been more expensive.

The thing with eDRAM is that it requires special manufacturing steps and thus cannot be fabbed at every major fab. This ends up making it more expensive in the long run as you'd be exempt from any kind of ability to shop around and get the best deal at the major foundries. MS chose eSRAM because they wanted a solution that would be integrated on die from the offset. A solution which though it makes your APU more expensive to start with, as it will invariably affect yields (i.e. on-die high transistor density eSRAM adds another level of complexity making your APU even more prone defects), it does allow you to cost reduce your embedded memory alongside your main APU as you transition from one manufacturing process node to the next.

The main problem with a hypothetical PS4 that used eDRAM and a big main pool of DDR3 is that it would have meant a more complex system with a greater potential for performance bottlenecks. There would be no real way to get around the slow main memory bandwidth, which could tank performance for any application that cannot find its data in the finite pools of caches and the embedded memory.

I think the GDDR5 solution Sony chose was a good, solid and wise choice. And I think it is a system that will pay off for them in the long term, moreso than any system Sony has designed to date.
Click to expand...

Small correction, the hypothetical PS4 would have used GDDR5 + eDRAM. GDDR5 would have been 128bit bus and not 256bit, as seen here:
ZbyUT5D.png

Lol at everyone trying to turn it into a dig at MS, it's not.


This setup would have been more complected to program for. They just choose to go with the easier to progrom for model, and added a few things that developers would need to explore as time moves on.

capturer9sor.png
 
I

IcyEyes

Member
guch20 said:
They won't. I've literally lost all faith in the American buying public, especially gamers. I'm calling it: Xbone wins NA by a wide margin.

But I'm doing my part. I just preordered Knack on Amazon.
Click to expand...

I hope you are not right, but to be realistic I think you have your point.

Anyway I've already done my part :)
 
JordanN

JordanN

Banned
Cerny's a genius. I enjoyed listening to his work during each gaming generation. I also like how he went to each third party and got their feedback on the PS4 hardware. Very commendable of him for thinking of the developers.
 
M

Mahonay

Banned
Hi there,
Have you accepted Cerny as your lord and savoir? I have some literature I'd like to share with you...

Sincerely,
NeoGAF


Sony putting people like him charge is one of the primary reasons I'm so incredibly pumped for the PS4. I had gone Xbox and then Xbox 360 over this past decade, but the general direction Microsoft has been heading was making me feel super depressed about gaming in general. What Sony is doing is bringing back that old feeling of "I can't wait to see what's coming next". Instead of "oh god, what now?".
 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
God damn. Cerny almost comes off as arrogant at first, but it's clear he has a fairly high IQ and backs up his calm, yet ambitious, personality.
 
K

kittens

Unconfirmed Member
DidntKnowJack said:
Wow that was interesting as hell. I was riveted. And it's kind of refreshing to see a company be so transparent and admit past mistakes.
Click to expand...
Right? I don't think I've ever seen any of the Big 3 be so candid about hardware development.
 
Wishmaster92

Wishmaster92

Member
babyghost853 said:
Small correction, the hypothetical PS4 would have used GDDR5 + eDRAM. GDDR5 would have been 128bit bus and not 256bit, as seen here:
ZbyUT5D.png

Lol at everyone trying to turn it into a dig at MS, it's not.


This setup would have been more complected to program for. They just choose to go with the easier to progrom for model, and added a few things that developers would need to explore as time moves on.
Click to expand...

I know it's stupid to say but i would have preferred the eDRAM setup. It's a challenge but so what? Not as challenging as the cell i bet, and it would have future proofed the system that much more. But i can't deny that in the end the ps4 is a beautifully architected system.
 
E

Einherjar

Member
Interesting stories, perhaps in hindsight they chose the wrong guy to test out the Cell when building the PS3. The average programmer may have raised concerns about the complexity issue.
 
K

kasane

Member
babyghost853 said:
Small correction, the hypothetical PS4 would have used GDDR5 + eDRAM. GDDR5 would have been 128bit bus and not 256bit, as seen here:
ZbyUT5D.png

Lol at everyone trying to turn it into a dig at MS, it's not.


This setup would have been more complected to program for. They just choose to go with the easier to progrom for model, and added a few things that developers would need to explore as time moves on.

capturer9sor.png
Click to expand...

MS is using esRAM right? Is it the same as esRAM? Should Sony have chosen the esRAM setup for supercomputer power?
lol
 
fvng

fvng

Member
Been said over a dozen times already but I'm getting Knack just to support the guy. He's a good dude.
 
X

x3sphere

Member
Einherjar said:
Interesting stories, perhaps in hindsight they chose the wrong guy to test out the Cell when building the PS3. The average programmer may have raised concerns about the complexity issue.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought too. Interesting that Cerny didn't think of this at the time, goes to show that sometimes even the brightest overlook the bigger picture.
 
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