PC games on Sony PS3 using Game Streams: bad for Xbox 360

[wwl36]

http://www.product-reviews.net/2007/...-for-xbox-360/



So if you got new game releases like FIFA 08 and BioShock on your PC, you may soon be able to play these PC games on your Sony PS3 thanks to “Game Streams”.

According to a new “free-to-join website” called Streammy Game, you will be able to play PC games on your PlayStation 3 via IPTV channels called Game Streams and if this happens it could revolutionise the gaming industry.

The CEO behind this venture is called Richard Faria, the members of Streammy Game will get a free plug-in that converts games into the IPTV channels and will let the gamers play remotely by sending it over a home network.

This is then received by a second PC or laptop which then plays the game, now the first thing I thought was “LAG” but they are claiming there will be none.

If this works and indeed there is no lag, I would have to agree this could not only revolutionise the gaming industry but could help the Sony PS3 win against the Xbox 360.

Q4 of 2007 will see a Linux version released that enables PC games to be played on the PlayStation 3 and it does not stop there, as they also claim the games can be played on other devices like mobile phones, media devices, set top boxes and DVD players.

This is going to be amazing .

[evo_dadi]

nice!!something to look forward to

[Guinness7]

This should be something to keep your eye on fo sure.

[Sonny]

I LOVE new TECH

[joeorc]

this is one of the very reason's why SONY had put in a streaming processor into the playstation 3...

[jorg]

yo this is asome and so possiable and since the ps3 is a completly sucure system developers liek this idea

[Icemage]

If this becomes reality, the PS3 is going to demolish the competition. Still sounds rather vaporwarish to me, though.

[reiella]

Originally Posted by Icemage

If this becomes reality, the PS3 is going to demolish the competition. Still sounds rather vaporwarish to me, though.

I don't see my home computer being able to both render the gameplay at 720p,1080i, or 1080p, and encode it to a codec that the PS3 can play back in a timely manner.

[ps3andlovinit]

Originally Posted by reiella

I don't see my home computer being able to both render the gameplay at 720p,1080i, or 1080p, and encode it to a codec that the PS3 can play back in a timely manner.

I assume this could only work if its more akin to something like remote play on the PSP or Citrix/Terminal Server in the PC World.

[richieb1971]

This is pointless imo. For starters you would only want to do this if your PC was more powerful than your PS3 or if the said game was not available on console formats. Then whats the point of the PS3?

Just because you can, doesn't mean you will.

Or am I reading this wrong?

[TheEnd187]

Wonder how the XboTs will put a spin on this? [XboT Comment]NO WAY IT CAN WORK SINCE TEH 360 CAN'T DO IT[/Xbot Comment]

[joeorc]

here this may give you an idea why this is good function for the playstation 3

example: this is a very good paper on the functions of the Cell processor

Steam Processing

A big difference in Cells from normal CPUs is the ability of the SPEs in a Cell to be chained together to act as a stream processor [Stream] . A stream processor takes data and processes it in a series of steps.

A Cell processor can be set-up to perform streaming operations in a sequence with one or more SPEs working on each step. In order to do stream processing an SPE reads data from an input into it's local store, performs the processing step then stores the result into it's local store. The second SPE reads the output from the first SPE's local store and processes it and stores it in it's output area.

This sequence can use many SPEs and SPEs can access different blocks of memory depending on the application. If the computing power is not enough the SPEs in other Cells can also be used to form an even longer chain.


Stream processing does not generally require large memory bandwidth but Cell has it anyway and on top of this the internal interconnect system allows multiple communication streams between SPEs simultaneously so they don’t hold each other up.

also:


So you think your PC is fast...

It is when the SPEs are working on compute heavy streaming applications that the Cell will be working hardest. It's in these applications that the Cell may get close to it's theoretical maximum performance and perform an order of magnitude more calculations per second than any desktop processor currently available.



On the other hand if the stream uses large amounts of bandwidth and the data blocks can fit into the local stores the performance difference might actually be bigger. Even if conventional CPUs are capable of processing, the data at the same rate the transfers between the CPUs will be held up while they wait for chip to chip transfers. The Cell’s internal interconnect system allows transfers running into hundreds of Gigabytes per second, chip to chip interconnects allows transfers in the low 10’s of Gigabytes per second.



While conventional processors have vector units on board (SSE or VMX / AltiVec) they are not dedicated vector processors. The vector processing capability is an add-on to the existing instruction sets and has to share the CPUs resources. The SPEs are dedicated high speed vector processors and with their own memory don't need to share anything other than the memory (and not even this much if the data can fit in the local stores). Add to this the fact there are 8 of them and you can see why their potential computational capacity is so large.



Such a large performance difference may sound completely ludicrous but it's not without precedent, in fact if you own a reasonably modern graphics card your existing system is already capable of similar processing feats:



"For example, the Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra, recently released, has been observed to reach 40 GFlops in fragment processing. In comparison, the theoretical peak performance of the Intel 3GHz Pentium4 using SSE instructions is only 6GFlops." [GPU]



“GPUs are >10x faster than CPU for appropriate problems” [GPU10]



The 3D Graphics chips in computers have long been capable of very much higher performance than general purpose CPUs. Previously they were restricted to 3D graphics processing but since the addition of vertex and pixel shaders people have been using them for more general purpose tasks [GPGPU] , this has not been without some difficulties but Shader 4.0 parts are expected to be even more general purpose than before.



Existing GPUs can already provide massive processing power when programmed properly but this is not exactly an easy task. The difference with the Cell is it will be cheaper, considerably easier to program and will be useable for a much wider class of problems.

http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell2_v2.html

[SixAxiS]

Wouldn't M$ be pissed off about this? With copyright issues and so forth.

[joeorc]

Originally Posted by SixAxiS

Wouldn't M$ be pissed off about this? With copyright issues and so forth.

Why this about offering a service for developers to stream their content from a server without haveing to store the game on a client.its perfect for Disc less Content distribution. its the very idea of:

PAY TO PLAY

esp. through Microsofts window's games being only on server and in order to play the game its a ONLINE client ONLY..., NO DISC NEEDED...

[ToonyLoons]

This is interesting, but I would only see it as being a semi-win for Sony if it were indeed possible for this to work on the PS3. While it would be nice to be able to play PC games via streams to the PS3, it would hurt the PS3 on a software level. It is good to sell systems and get the PS3 hardware out there, but if no one is supporting the software, Sony and in turn the Dev's would not be making money and may turn away software support. It is already well known that Sony is losing money on each system sold. How much they are losing may have changed since the launch a year ago, but I doubt that they are making a profit yet.

Also for multi platform releases that also appear on PC's might hurt over all console software sales. PC games do not have a nice "Next Gen" price tag to tack on the extra $10 bucks like PS3 or Xbox360 games. Some would buy the cheaper PC version for play on their PC and streams to PS3.

[joeorc]

Originally Posted by ToonyLoons

This is interesting, but I would only see it as being a semi-win for Sony if it were indeed possible for this to work on the PS3. While it would be nice to be able to play PC games via streams to the PS3, it would hurt the PS3 on a software level. It is good to sell systems and get the PS3 hardware out there, but if no one is supporting the software, Sony and in turn the Dev's would not be making money and may turn away software support. It is already well known that Sony is losing money on each system sold. How much they are losing may have changed since the launch a year ago, but I doubt that they are making a profit yet.

Also for multi platform releases that also appear on PC's might hurt over all console software sales. PC games do not have a nice "Next Gen" price tag to tack on the extra $10 bucks like PS3 or Xbox360 games. Some would buy the cheaper PC version for play on their PC and streams to PS3.

yup..and that is still why Sony put a streaming processor into
the playstation 3..its because of things like this:

IBM gets chips to wirelessly transmit HD videos
Trendwatch
By Mark Raby
Monday, October 22, 2007 11:20

Yorktown Heights (NY) - IBM announced this weekend that it has formed a joint initiative with MediaTek to create a new chipset that can wirelessly send a high definition movie to another source almost immediately.

The two companies hope the new standard will eliminate the need for countless, cumbersome wires that almost all set-top boxes require. The technology is built off of millimeter wave radio signals. IBM claims the bandwidth in its chipset is more than 100 times higher than current Wi-Fi standards.

According to the chip maker, the new technology allows users to send a 10 GB file in under five seconds, ahead of the Wi-Fi speed of around 10 minutes.

Users could, for example, send a high definition video to their TV from their iPod wirelessly in about the same time it takes to push a button. Alternatively, it could be used as the new standard for syncing devices to a computer, getting both devices up to date without the need for a docking station, and in a fraction of the time it currently takes.

IBM has four years worth of mmWave research, and this has the potential to be its biggest use of the technology to date.

"This will enable a world where you can have your entertainment when you want and where you want it," said IBM research VP Dr. TC Chen.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34474/113/

just incase digital downloads get here sooner than later...
like a boyscout...Be prepared!

[docjan_uk]

urrr, if I had the game for PC already, I'd just play it on the PC... if I really needed it on the big screen, I'd just have the PC connected to the big screen.

[SixAxiS]

Originally Posted by docjan_uk

urrr, if I had the game for PC already, I'd just play it on the PC... if I really needed it on the big screen, I'd just have the PC connected to the big screen.

Yea I do that too. lol But my PC lags a lot.

[xtop]

Originally Posted by Icemage

If this becomes reality, the PS3 is going to demolish the competition. Still sounds rather vaporwarish to me, though.

vaporware indeed. i'd be surprised if a beta ever reached the market. we'll never hear from them again.

but i hope not, sounds interesting enough

[mainman]

And this thing can't be done on the 360?

It can be done on the Wii (look at picture), so why not 360?