The PS3 was a ridiculous machine

The computer hardware landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade. What once was full of custom hardware are now consolidating into a few standards.
The PS3 was one example of such custom hardware. It was so different from everything else that it found use in the scientific field. Unfortunately that very same reason eventually bought about its downfall.
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0:00 Intro
0:34 Economics of PS3
2:44 Unique architecture of PS3
3:20 How the CPU & GPU works
4:23 Rise of CPU parallelization
5:44 Cell CPU & How it works
7:32 The fall of the Cell & PS3
8:38 Use in scientific field
10:44 Removal of OtherOS
12:32 Future developments
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
Further Reading
There is in fact a project that uses more PS3 than the condor cluster[0]. It’s not included in the video since it’s not very well known.
More details of the architecture of the PS3 could be read in this excellent analysis[1].
Original NVIDIA video of CPU vs GPU demonstration[2].
[0] www.hpcwire.com/2013/03/07/jo...
[1] www.copetti.org/writings/cons...
[2] • Mythbusters Demo GPU v...
#technology #technologyexplained #playstation #playstation3 #supercomputer #cpu #gpu

[@nightadmin283]

PS3 is the technical marvel at that time. RPCS3 is the miracle software for PS3 emulation.

[@NBWDOUGHBOY]

Yep. It's amazing the state that it is in. It still has a long way to go but, It's really, really good for where it is.

[@ThePreciseClimber]

I mean, it's an emulator. And it's been 16 years since the PS3 came out. The PS3 emulator is 11 years old. Seems like a pretty standard course of events to me. Much more powerful hardware + continually updated emulator = good emulation.

[@jovieasyrof2017]

@@ThePreciseClimber wait, ps3 was 16 years ago??? wow...

[@samschoendorf4279]

@@ThePreciseClimber yeah but this doesn’t take into account how odd and different the architecture is for the ps3, its a marvel they even have a working emulator

[@mackenziebullied4900]

@@ThePreciseClimber it wasnt that simple for RPCS3, you see, for a very long time they could barely get anywhere, couldn't get more than a few homebrew games to boot and even then it was like horrible...this was until DirectX 12 came out, and it just took off from there.

[@mindphaserxy]

If the PS3 had 1GB of unified RAM it'd be killer for homebrew and such.

[@vagnertufo]

1 GB of unified RAM, 10 Gbps Ethernet and SATA 3 interface. USB 3 and 5 GHz WiFi as a bonus.

[@unknown_codec_404]

@@vagnertufo Anything else? Maybe cleaning itself automatically? Making sandwiches before you play?

[@smb2267]

@@unknown_codec_404 he forget to mention the pci-e m2 slot

[@ryans413]

PS3 did have 1gb of Ram but it was shared by the OS. So only 500mb was available for games. The system almost needed 2gb of ram then the UI wouldn’t be so slow a buggy.

[@vagnertufo]

@@ryans413 Where did you find this information? PS 3 only has 256 MB for games and 256 MB for video. If it had 512 MB for games it would be the same as Xbox 360.

[@arcadebumstead3143]

Regarding the PS3 being sold at a loss I think it's also worth noting that it was getting Blu Ray players into homes at a time when a HD format war for home video was ramping up

[@GlorifiedGremlin]

Yeah consoles really did seal the deal on blu-ray didn't they? I remember thinking it was so fancy that my Xbox could read blu-ray movies lmao

[@crzyces1693]

@@GlorifiedGremlin The Xbox 360 couldn't play Blu rays unfortunately. It chose the high def DvD's standard. It could also play regular DvD's and CD's though, which was certainly a good thing. What made the PS3 a no-brainer at launch was the fact that the majority Blu-Ray players cost just as much, and often *more* money than the console! Both were incredible consoles which held up for, 7 years? Lol, I believe they sold new 360's all the way through 2016 which is just absurd. Companies will not take a hit like that anymore. Both Sony and Microsoft have made money on their last two generations of disc supported consoles at launch, though it does of course take time to recoup research and development, prototypes and dev kits etc etc.. Do to their insistence by shareholders taking a loss past year one on anything is basically out of the question now, making the odds of our seeing a console that takes a PC more than a year to catch up after launch is slim to none. Never mind the PS3, which if used correctly would have almost been on par with the PS4.

[@forbiddenera]

​@@crzyces1693hd DVD was an add on for 360 heh

[@CaptainBlaine]

I wonder how differently things might have gone if Xbox had supported HD-DVD

[@forbiddenera]

@@CaptainBlaine ..without the add on, you mean?

[@yawn1025]

anyone familiar with PS3 emulation know just how intensive PS3 games were. Granted we're decrypting the data as we go but it's still crazy CPUs coming out a decade later can't smoothly recreate some games.

[@aninfinitemindofmusicandreams]

The PS3 never had the makings of an easily emulated system

[@gamingkekse1969]

The team over at RPCS3 make it possible to run games on your Computer. It‘s still hard to run games like TLOU

[@turdpeterson73]

havent had any issues running ps3 games on RPCS3 on a 13700k, some games require certain settings though to avoid visial glitches

[@yawn1025]

@@turdpeterson73 you have a 12 core CPU. No shit you’re not having issues

[@turdpeterson73]

@@yawn1025 24 core actully

[@ryans413]

Naughty Dog was able to use the CPU in Uncharted 2 to render graphics at the same time the RSX was rendering graphics this helped the team save on ram and have more things happening on screen. I thought that was pretty cool.

[@zenbyo]

Yeah they were able to use the CELL to implement MSAA on God of War 3 too

[@b3at2]

@@zenbyo LMAO i remember those days... I use to make fun of Ponys "SONY WILL UNLOCK THE POWAAAAAA OF THE CELLLSSSSS" hahahah

[@MrViper7121]

Blu-ray's high capacity allowed texture streaming as well

[@MrDarkSephirot]

​​@@MrViper7121 Blu-Rays had a high capacity, but reading speeds were actually slower than for the DVD's used by the Xbox 360.

[@MrViper7121]

@@MrDarkSephirot that's being picky at that point

[@oskarpetersen962]

4:30 watching this soldering attempt actually made me experience physical pain

[@catsaregovernmentspies]

That was something I wish I could unsee

[@comtruceno8929]

Solder of pain

[@hehotbros01]

Lol

[@jan5504]

Lol he should've just cut the boulder on edge and restarts with clean solder.

[@oskarpetersen962]

@@jan5504 but why is he trying to tin a pin in the first place? while sat in an Uno? Why is he trying to dribble the solder onto it? It's just wrong on all levels.

[@benmcreynolds8581]

I loved my PS3 and I remember feeling so cool being able to play online and use online features for free and with WiFi back when WiFi wasn't available yet for the Xbox 360 & online modes required a expensive membership fee per month. I really enjoyed the look and the feel of how the games played on the PS3 as well.

[@emadtheman]

​@@Username-2 it may have been like that at release, but there were early updates that enabled group chat on PS3.

[@animeknowledge5048]

@@emadtheman he just crying because he had to pay to play online xD

[@OtakuBenny2210]

I still play PS3 it's awesome my ps5 just feels like a waste of money

[@crzyces1693]

It certainly was far ahead of it's times. I remember the first time I played Deus Ex: Human Revolution and was stunned by how sooth it ran and how quick the loading times were on my giant PS3. Lol, besides thinking that the machine may fly off at any moment do the the fan going full attack helicopter, the games like Deus X or Mass Effect 3 which used the CP correctly could result in some stunning gameplay and visuals. It's too bad more developers couldn't make the most out of what Sony had to offer, but as hundreds of programmers have said, _"It's incredibly powerful but a nightmare to code games on."_ Even now, with our 900+ Gigaflop CPU's and 83+ traditional teraflop GPU's, there are still some games that haven't been ported from teh PS3 to the PC. Or any other platforms including Sony's for that matter because they did such a great job coding for the Cell Processor you would literally have to make the entire game from scratch for it to run on a modern system. It's pretty crazy to think that in 2006, the Playstation 3 had a CPU that was on par with a Ryzen 7 1600X which was release a decade later. That is absolutely insane, and is yet again, an example of how far the Cell tech was at the time. I can only imagine where they would be if they continued to manufacture and refine code for the architecture.

[@OtakuBenny2210]

Awesome info Ty great read I'm actually playing the last of us on PS3 and it is crazy how they pulled this off what a technical feat PS3 is a beast still lol.

[@jkidd7608]

The PS3 will always be one of my favorites. I have 2 in different rooms. 1 to use as a Blu ray and media player and the other is connected to a 3D TV for 3D movies. I have movies and full seasons of tv shows on the hard drives. Any time I used to buy a music CD I would pop it into the PS3 and save the songs on there. Plus the awesome games. It was such an amazing console.

[@tracyclements1467]

Same with my cousin. He has a Huuuuge collection of movies,music, and tv shows on both of his PS3's that he still has to this day. Now he uses flashdrives and has tons of those.

[@retrocomputing]

@@tracyclements1467 flash drives is almost the least reliable way to store data.

[@tracyclements1467]

@@retrocomputing how is that?

[@retrocomputing]

@@tracyclements1467 flash drive cells and SSD cells can lose data when not connected to power for long periods of time

[@maciejprokop2001]

​​@@retrocomputing only if you don't know how to prevent it. Most people don't. The thing is due to quantum nature of electrons, some of them are draining out of memory cells by passing through an "isolator" (it's a dielectric), so theoretically speaking memory cells lose their charge over time. If you properly format the whole drive you can reset them and re-write to those cells again making them "fully recharged" So.... If you were to copy, format and then paste the files into the flash drive every 5 years (or more, idk for how exactly long) you would have no risk of losing them due to the effect you mentioned. TLDR the files won't disappear if you delete them, format the flash drive and then paste them back in every 5 or so years (or even longer) but most importantly *HAVE A BACKUP MEMORY IS CHEAP*

[@acardenasjr1340]

The PS3 was at a time where internal groups homebrewed their own architectures.

[@rubidium1948]

2:24 The Steam Deck really isn’t meant to compete with the Switch. It targets a completely different audience inherently because of its nature as a portable PC and not a game console. Valve also has other reasons and methods for the pricing choice than typical consoles as users aren’t locked into buying games on Steam.

[@LetrixAR]

For the general public, it is a Switch competitor.

[@ad.i]

This was a beautiful video, I knew about the cell processor before but watching this video made me really appreciate this architecture and comprehend how it worked in a much better way. Thank you for this! I really hope you post more video essays in the future if you are interested in doing so, I seriously loved this and really appreciate the effort and knowledge you shared with us!

[@static-san]

The PS3 was probably the last console with a unique architecture. And we're just starting to see how powerful the Cell chip really was, if devs could grasp the very different way of programming that it required. I've seen it implied that the PS3 could always do more raw computation than the PS4 could. Maybe a lot of what held the PS3 back (other than the parallel programming the Cell chip needed) was the graphics chip they added late in development. If Sony had gone for a PS3 Pro with merely faster graphics chip and then just added a few more SPEs, could we have had a console considerably more powerful than the PS4 we did get? This feels very possible.

[@Ehal256]

That would likely be a lot slower than the PS4, as one of the major issues with the system was the slow PPC chip (same with the 360). More SPEs would simply make it harder to use effectively and even more bottlenecked.

[@mrpopo5097]

The ps3 would never be able to be more powerful than a ps4 at all. There was not one game from the ps3 that has better graphics than infamous second son

[@q1337]

while I see what you're saying , the fact is that development time for PS3 games was unnecessarily long due to it's unique architecture. At the end of the day the goal is to make a game , sell it and let the consumer play and enjoy it and this results in profit. PC architecture is as you can see by newer generation consoles much easier to develop for and is one of the main reasons for the success of the new Playstations

[@cemsengul16]

I understand releasing the games in that broken state on PS3 back in the day since there was a learning curve but the console had a hard disk and internet connection. The developers should have given us patched builds of games we own optimized for the cell later on like they do with modern consoles.

[@chamber_hiro256]

@@cemsengul16 This is near impossible to pull back then due to limited internet speeds and hard disk space. Extra disk space would only result in a more expensive console which wouldn't help with it's insane price back then along with being impractical to then's standards.

[@Uejji]

Cell PPE was *not* dual core. It was a dual-threaded single SMT core.

[@ryans413]

Single core with 7 secondary cores well 8 but one those secondary cores was used for the UI. The main core would do most the tasks and the programmers could off load tasks to the secondary cores if needed free up core space to do more tasks. Programmed right this can be very beneficial in what gets touched on first. For example say you have a very intense action scene gun fire things exploding NPC characters running around smoke fire everywhere. Programmers can split all that up and say SPE 4 works on the fire SPU 3 on the smoke SPE 2 on the NPC characters SPE 1 on the explosions why’ll the main core takes the input and dedicates the workload to separate SPEs. This is why the Cell was the most powerful CPU at the time.

[@69rickart]

@@ryans413 As far as I remember only 6 of those 7 secondary cores (or 7 of those 8) were utilised and could be used, because many cell cpus were samples which had a faulty core due to manufacturing tolerances, which could not be sold as regular cell cpus for the server/workstation market. Same as AMD did with Phenom 3 Core Processors.

[@sjuric2435]

One SPU is deactivated due to yield, one is OS reserved, 6 remain usable for games. And that PPU is single core dual tread. It's a shame that Cell wasn't out-of-order CPU that way he would be much stronger. Anyway powerful and exciting processor with innovative design.

[@hanrinch]

@@ryans413 most complex cpu maybe but definitely not the most powerful for sure, ibm power7 was the most powerful processor at the time. Hell, cell with all core enabled couldn’t beat an 1.8ghz e6300 and its PPE is slower than 1.5ghz pentium 4. Cell is so useless while under performed that it literally discontinued soon after the end of ps3 lifespan.

[@Thelango99]

@@sjuric2435 Which was a weird choice given that even the Gamecube CPU (PPC 750CXE) was capable of out of order excecution.

[@MyCp9]

I still use the PS3 to play with The Last of Us, hearing the sound of the fans that TRY to make the Cell cooler 😅

[@the-np4mr]

The mid of us

[@johanbire3296]

@@the-np4mr ok gaycube fans

[@PennyEvolus]

I still play NFS most wanted

[@the-np4mr]

@@johanbire3296 Lmfao what? Did anyone like the gamecube???

[@johanbire3296]

@@the-np4mr ok gaybox

[@SharpMaxwell]

looking forward to the future of this channel, very high quality video

[@al3xb827]

This is a really nice video for such a small channel keep up the good work bro. It was an interesting Video.

[@zann]

Very informative! The PS3 was indeed well ahead of its time.

[@LorenzoVujade]

I see the video with a very enthusiasm because this "myth" of the supercomputer made with ps3 was very popular at the time and now i know all the retrospecting and the technalities around this. Thanks a lot for this video, i loved it and now i'm very pround for having owned in the past this spetacular and particular console for gaming. Nice video bro, you're the best. 😉

[@AK-vx4dy]

As i know the matter quite deep (CELL architecture), very nicely and accessible explained, good work ! One thing missing is interconnect architecue inside chip this was revoultionary then also, but maybe is to specific for this kind of content. Bravo !

[@jcaseyjones2829]

GREAT video btw. Fascinating. Can we have some more please??

[@Unprotected1232]

For it's time it was advanced. The issue is that such quirky architecture makes multi-platform development on the system a nightmare. I also doubt every type of computation scales well with this architecture. Multi-threading was still in it's dual and quad core era. Even to this day multi-threading can pose a challenge. Not to mention the split memory configuration. Crytek was particularly annoyed with this when developing Crysis 2. Hopefully you can still find design and development documents online. It's a fascinating read if you're into game development.

[@42crazyguy]

I guess it's a little like an old V10 engine. Ridiculous and powerful for the time, but compared to a modern twin turbo V6 it's seems archaic in comparison. Yet if a modern V10 was given the same love it could still wipe the floor with that V6.

[@Momi_V]

12:55 Just a small sidenote: ARM and RISC-V are not the only Architectures with Vector Extensions. x86 and x64 have various iterations of SSE and AVX. Even IBM Power and to my knowledge s390x have SIMD and vector extensions. It has been a thing for a very long time (even before the PS3), MMX was introduced in 1997. The reason ARM and RISC-V are used in GPU less supercomputing is that companies can design chips with strong vector engines and very stripped down general purposes cores, which Intel and AMD don't offer (any more, Xeon Phi was souch an architecture)

[@kunalguleria9617]

Hey Great Quality Video !! But why so less subscribers !!?? No worries. I really liked your content. You are like an underdog . Would like to see and support you all the way to the top !!!

[@cssplayer91]

I still use my launch model fat PS3 and refuse to buy the ps4 or ps5 because of lack of backwards compatibility. The PS3 will forever be an amazing multimedia machine!

[@catsaregovernmentspies]

My PS3 is my Blu-Ray player. I bought the remote for it when I bought the console.

[@classicmgammer]

@@catsaregovernmentspies I use my PlayStation 3 system to play games and look at Blu-ray Discs since I do not have a Blu-ray player in my basement where my PlsyaStation 3 is!!!

[@divinitygaming8673]

Sure but your PS3 can't play PS4 and PS5 games so...

[@classicmgammer]

@@divinitygaming8673 I know that PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games are not supported on PlayStation 3.

[@divinitygaming8673]

@@classicmgammer well the great thing is if you buy a PS5 you can play the entire PlayStation library on two consoles.

[@aadipie]

really well documented and explained, well done and thank you

[@tanmoymridha5002]

Nice documentary man.💜

[@s1l3nttt]

How the heck is this channel so small. The quality is unmatched

[@mac10forlife]

Great video! Thanks for the quality content.

[@lightyagami3492]

The PS3 should have blown the Xbox 360 out of the water in the console wars. This video proves just how far ahead of its time the console was.

[@bghoody5665]

Yeah but there's not much Sony can do when the devs are too lazy to take full advantage of the console's capabilities.

[@lightyagami3492]

@@bghoody5665 Facts. I agree 100%

[@2022_temporary]

These days, they can't make a game working And GTA 5 graphics in modern games can't be even done with RTX 4090

[@MonstrMash123458943]

@@bghoody5665 a few devs did like rockstar and naughty dog and the killzone series

[@MonstrMash123458943]

@@bghoody5665 but i wouldnt call devs the problem per say in a way you can say that sony was very inconsiderate of the developers why would you give your devs a hard time to make games this is why games on xbox 360 looked better even though the ps3 was stronger it was very hard to program for

[@sliceofbread965]

Amazing quality for a channel of this size! Really well put together, loved it! Although, I would've liked a USD equivalent at 1:55. Other than that, this was amazing and normally something I'd expect from a channel of a much larger size. I hope this blows up, it got recommended to me.

[@SilverXTikal]

160 subs 👀 no kidding

[@exigency2231]

counterargument who cares about america

[@SilverXTikal]

Let’s not make this political bruh

[@sliceofbread965]

​@@exigency2231 USD is accepted as a global currency and is used in many countries outside of the US. you are completely entitled to your opinion if you don't care and I would prefer not to argue if that is the case, but I do hope you understand that it is an important metric, plus logically speaking, the US is the largest (via population) english-majority speaking nation, so it makes sense in that regard too as well to have a USD conversion

[@seanyoung9014]

​@@sliceofbread965 I mean, you can't just do that conversion yourself? Yen to dollar is one of the easiest ones to figure out.

[@satyris410]

I don't know about the Condor Cluster being the most well known science application of the PS3. I remember wondering what on earth Folding@Home was and why it was on my PlayStation. I only let it run for a short while when I wasn't playing on it because I'd just moved out of my parents' house and was paying my own electricity. I hope some good came from the program.

[@jmcd21182]

They used that research to cure death bro

[@MonstrMash123458943]

the fact that sony was about to release a game console without a GPU during its time is so inconsiderate and terrible that would have been disastrous the fact that they even thought about doing that was horrible im so glad they wised up with the ps4 the ps3 was the strongest console of its generation but was extremely hard to program for which is why the xbox 360 ports of games looked better

[@mimimimeow]

the Cell was in a way similar to the EE+VU in the PS2, which is why Kutaragi thought it'd make sense to put 2 of them and I assume also a simpler rasterizer for the video output, just like the PS2. The idea itself is not wrong, people have done it on the PS2, it's just that doing this is basically swimming against the water current when everyone and their moms are used to Hardware T&L and DirectX/OpenGL. Also the fact that Sony was just terrible at tools and documentation.

[@troylollysaf9311]

My PS3 E01 MG still running great!👍 I limited its usage to 3hrs each time i play to avoid overheating. All original never been opened😏👍

[@kevinwillson341]

It's interesting that psn is free on PS3 while they were being sold at such a loss for Sony. It seems like Sony would have turned a profit way faster had they charged consumers for a psn subscription.

[@mineleogamer]

i am the 600th subscriber :D very good video

[@grimgoreironhide9985]

They clawed their money back from the loss on each PS3 via the PSN subscription.

[@Akinwalesegun]

ps3 psn is free

[@grimgoreironhide9985]

@@Akinwalesegun The PS4 and PS5 PSN after it.

[@babaguy04]

i'm a first-year computer engineering student this video was really interesting for me thank you

[@Whaddif_]

expected 1M+ subs honestly, confused as to how you don’t have more

[@Vili69420]

its quite funny but it turns out that u dont need 2 cpus to execute more than 1 instruction at a time, modern cpu's do whats called out of order execution , pretty much the cpu fetches multiple instructions and executes them, it also guesses what will be the next instructioon afterwards and tried to load it at the same time it executes the current one, thats what the brantch predtiction in the cpu is for, sadly CELL was lacking in regard

[@Thelango99]

Even the CPU in the gamecube (PPC 750CXe) supports out of order execution.

[@Vili69420]

@@Thelango99 cool

[@mimimimeow]

yeah i think the PS3 would have a better start if the PS3's Cell has 4 PowerPC 74xx cores at 2GHz + 4 SPEs.. the OOE alone would help a lot with game codes. the 4 SPEs would still deliver an edge for higher budget studios.. plus Toshiba was putting standalone 4-SPE chip into their laptops so it didn't make sense why both didn't just share the same chip.

[@xxportalxx.]

This is fairly misleading, out of order execution just means fitting future steps into gaps where the cpu would be idle waiting to load in memory (i.e. executing them out of order), thus speading up future operations. A cpu core can only execute 1 instruction at a time, you need more cores to do true parallel processing. Saying it allows a core to do multiple instructions at a time is like saying being thrifty gives you more money, no it doesn't, but it does make your money go further.

[@Vili69420]

​@@xxportalxx. well that is semi correct just like my comment but like u can exeute multile instuctions at once for example if u need a floating poing calculation and an integer one , and the result of those isnt depended on eachother , in that case if u fetch the right instructions u get a speed up so you can deffinetly execute more than 1 thing at a time

[@cooked.gaming]

Nice video man!

[@thedudely1]

Great video!

[@ElixirCNC]

4:36 that soldering clip was torturous to watch. If you ever need to solder something, use flux!

[@karat_mc]

There is solder with flux inside

[@LestarAngel]

Ironic the removal of Other OS because of security......the biggest reason the console was hacked soon after.

[@FzFansa]

Awesome video. Make more like this, please. Subscribed

[@kiddsmoov7]

Amazing video, great job looking forward to seeing more.

[@trenton1190]

The PS4 didn't come close to living up to what the PS3 was. It's a shame that both my PS3s died prematurely though.

[@ministerofjoy]

Fantastic work! Thank you

[@absurdgaming00]

Thank you for the information.... Spasiba! 🍻

[@RomeGoLARGE]

Amazing video I had to subscribe

[@obaolade1232]

bro u need more subs man this vid is cool

[@dangtranhieu1101]

The soldering ineptitude at 4:38 is painful to watch

[@Nightweaver1]

Was quite pleasantly surprised by the sudden Mythbusters demonstration halfway through.

[@theprfesssor]

Looking at the tech industry it's nearly unbelievable how fast it has advanced, that condor ps3 supercomputer was capable of 500 tflops in 2010 making it the 33rd most powerful computing device at the time using 1760 PS3's The current PlayStation console the PS5 could do the same thing with less then 50 consoles.......in about 15 years ( the time between PS3 and PS5 release dates) The computer power increase by nearly 45 times.....and for a cheaper launch price...... incredible Just for fun if you put 1760 PS5 and made a supercomputer it would have over 18 PFLOS of performance...... a petaflop is 1000 tflops

[@Tanzu15]

My favorite console of all time. Still love playing mine. Play it more than my ps5. It’s just so damn fun.

[@Gl-ul6ow]

subscribed because i love this kind of videos

[@KoopaXross]

PS3 was the last console that tried. It even had Linux for a while, but Sony sabotaged the console and removed Linux with an update that hampered a chip in there to an irreversible state. I can imagine clean, not updated first revision PS3s are expensive for this reason. Back when PS3 came out I was just entering middle school so didn't have money for one. I ended up with a Wii which I don't regret since PS3 game support was pretty trash until 2009 or so. Got a PS3 slim in 2010.

[@RetroV2023]

you realize you can downgrade them now and do this installation? via HB

[@DenonGregory]

Spectacular video.

[@bobtheninja8000]

WEIRD AND AWESOME --------------------- > Great Video BT!

[@giljesusseraspe9225]

Amazing content

[@Cptn.Viridian]

The special thing about the PS3, is that it basically used a super computer chip, that being the IBM Cell processor. It was slightly cut down, with 1 of 8 core's disabled to increase yields and manage heat, but at it's core the PS3 was a cell "blade" with controller ports and a graphics chip tacked on.

[@bowiemtl]

What's funny about this is that Sony lost money due to the cluster projects since no games were being run on it. A single console usually will be paired with games where the margin comes into play but a total of 1700+ consoles without a single game paired means an even bigger loss

[@matsnilson7727]

Good video! The PS3 is an interesting machine. My original 60 gig got the YLOD so I bought a 320 gig Slim model, and it's still working perfectly... even if it's not used quite as much now as back in the days before I had a PS4.

[@ToadyEN]

STI is an unfortunate acronym

[@rohankumbhare7548]

Great video

[@rfly-fpv]

4:32 What this guy is doing with his soldering iron and than PIN kills my eyes! :D

[@AtomicEy]

My PlayStation 3 slim was the only console i bought a wrap for (not that it was ugly by default) it deserved something Majestic

[@mrkiplingman]

you got one thing wrong the cells PPE was not a dual core but it was a single core with dual issue meaning it could handle 2 threads at the same time but it is still a single core at heart.

[@RetroV2023]

wrong its 9 cores with one gpu 1 ppe and 8 spus

[@DS-tr6xn]

Back in 2007 the ps3 was the best console to play on until the ps4 released

[@miketran4289]

They already did this with the PS2 by running Linux Yellow Dog and Beowulf on it. The PS3 just used the same software but with updates.

[@pvc988]

4:30 Some master soldering skills

[@suilenroc4997]

So basically intel 12th gen is just an extension of what the cell processor was, main power unit with the bulk of the power and some smaller cores for lighter loads. Intel uses this not in the exact same way but it's not that far off.

[@Vili69420]

Not really, intel 12th gen is like copying the mobile space with the big.LITTLE design, pretty much the efficiency cores are almost full cores just with a few instructions stripped down like AVX, running slower and tunned down for low power consumption. The CELL cpu is quite different , it has 1 main core PPE and 8 SPE's one of them disabled by default and another one reserved for the UI of the console so games could effectively make use of only 6 SPE's for games and the SPE isn't really like an actuall core, for example you cant really do whatever you want on it , u can do only some oerations mainly number crunching , so u could offload the game physics or sound processing to the SPE's and even make it render graphics too

[@gogereaver349]

the ps3 cpu can still make new cpu look slow. it was bottle necked of course by limited ram and other factors.

[@gogereaver349]

@@Vili69420 the cell cpu cold do 230 glflops. not even a 18 core xeion can do that. the thing was a beast but nobody could effectually use it correctly. it was not easy to program for. manly due to sony nurfing it with a south bridge to small.

[@Vili69420]

@@gogereaver349 thats wrong in the sense that gflops arent a good mesuing unit for cpus , for example thats the peak floating point operation that the chip can do at some speed , u dont need to run any benchmark to calculate it , plus cell is more like a cpu with gpu extensions , u cant really do general computing just with floating points on its own u need other stuff as well , another way to show u how wrog u are is for example if u compare the gtx 1080ti has 11.34 TFLOPS of fp32 and radeon vega 64 has 12.66 TFLOPS fp32 but the 1080ti is like 20-30% faster even tho it has less tflops , its kinda like comparing and old cpu at 3ghz and iets say the latest i9 downclocked to 3 ghz or evem 2ghz and i bet that it will still be faster than the 10 years older cpu at 3ghz if that makes sense, numbers like that dont have much meaning in te real world

[@gogereaver349]

@@Vili69420 i did say it was limited by its south bridge and low ram. wile the cpu can do these things in theory it cant communicate fast enough with the rest of the system

[@valenrn8657]

Xbox 360's Xenos GpGPU is able to perform a basic pointer swap with the host PPE CPU, but Xenos GpGPU vector width (wavefront) is 16 scalar data elements + 16 32-bit x 3 (for FMA3 operation) data elements wide wavefront that is run on three-way 16 stream processors, hence 48 stream processors PR. Each stream processor is 1 scalar + 1 vector combo duplicated by 16 stream processors hence it has 64 data elements wide wavefront which is similar to GCN's 64-element wavefront. Xbox One's GCN GPU can emulate Xbox 360's GPU with minimal overheads. This wavefront size is reduced to 32 elements with AMD's RDNA and NVIDIA's CUDA. 128-bit vector has four 32-bit data elements. For 128-bit vector FMA3, you would need three 128-bit registers hence a total of 12 32-bit data elements. AVX-512 has 16 32-bit data elements and the vector width is less than Wave64 or Wave32. The pointer swap feature reappeared with AMD Fusion APU and Graphics Core Next. Gaming PC and Xbox 360 have very wide vector co-processors with the GpGPU. Very wide vector co-processors are well suited for very wide pixel arrays.

[@NFSBeast2365]

My absolute _favorite_ console at the twilight era of my childhood. I love the PS3 🥲

[@IkanaMusicBox]

2:16 what game are they playing?

[@Kevz916]

2:18 does somebody know what he is playing?

[@AndyKard84]

PlayStation TREE. Sorry my man I had too! Good Video.

[@jondonnelly4831]

If u plant a tree for every time he says tree you'd have a forest.

[@saintstormcloud1705]

is a nice piece 👍🏼

[@ZxLayER]

Love the move and light gun games. It’s a keeper

[@CraziiDago]

I loved my PS3. It felt so futuristic to the bland 360.

[@Estrav.Krastvich]

Cool topic for the video).

[@HypeLozerInc]

So Very Inspiring for someone like me

[@MrSamPhoenix]

I thought the PPE in the PS3 was a single core CPU with 8 SPEs attached to it.

[@powerpc64]

it is

[@MrSamPhoenix]

@@powerpc64 I thought I was going crazy since the video indicates a dual-core with SPEs.

[@vvgr409]

@@MrSamPhoenix It was. It was single core dual threaded PowerPC based. Xbox 360 had three core PPE so without utilizing SPE Cell had no chances to beat Xenon (X360 CPU). Also PS3 GPU RSX was weaker than Xbox 360 Xenos GPU. Cell was able to do some graphical stuff so that was meant as compromise for weaker GPU. As video stated initially PS3 was set to be released without GPU but with two Cell CPUs. And that is the reason why multiplatform games were almost always running worse on PS3 than on Xbox 360. PS3 needed to have game written in special way (more parallelism and utilizing SPE for some graphic things) while Xbox 360 had more PC-like architecture with powerful CPU and GPU. So, games were often developed for Xbox 360 and then moved to PS3 without significant changes. Many games didn't even utilized SPE and were limited to PPE and GPU that were weaker than on Xbox 360 so games were running worse on PS3 despite it was more powerful in theory.

[@Therizinosaurus]

A**holes complained about it being too expensive when it came out, the fact is, they sold each unit at a loss. Meaning that consumers got to purchase it at cheaper price than it should be. Not only that, the tech they got was worth the price : Blu-ray (this was a new tech back in 2006), built in PS2 machine for backward compatibility (better than emulation since most PS2 games will work), and the cell processor itself which is a powerful machine.

[@2022_temporary]

Bro where is the video at the end ?

[@markusturunen7929]

Only two things held it back, Ram and Cellprosessor coding with multitread architecture was hard, Only few Sony studios managed to utilize it's before it's time cababilities, it was a good concole.

[@jackdotjs]

great video, but i have to mention something. 2:20 this is completely wrong and i really wish people would stop saying this. the steam deck does not compete with the switch in *any way* outside of "portable gaming device". people hyped it up as a switch competitor because the two devices just happen to look similar with the controls on the sides of the display.

[@maartilium]

Whats the bgm

[@powerpc64]

reminder that the CELL still outperforms some cpus that are made now

[@2022_temporary]

So why is CELL architecture not longer needed ? I know it's mentioned in the video but please do explain Ya said it's because cpu and gpu became separate and powerful right ? But is CELL processor still useful ?

[@MultiCarter007]

Because it is madness when you have to write 80+ lines of code to print hello world. Scale it in terms of whole game and you will get it.

[@mimimimeow]

it'd survive into PS4 era if Sony actually provided good enough tools that would make all the low-level PPE-SPE programming a bit more abstract, so devs don't have to micromanage everything. EE+VU (1+2) on PS2 was crazy enough, imagine PPE+SPE (1+6)..

[@KyudoKun]

Cell does not support out-of-order execution.

[@2022_temporary]

@@KyudoKun what's an out of order execution?

[@KyudoKun]

@@2022_temporary You could just Google it. Both x360 and PS3 only support In-Order-Execution which is inefficient and time consuming. Whereas x86-x64 intel/AMD and ARM RISC cpus standardized Out-of-order execution.

[@aryanalfa2444]

Great video doc, anyway before ps3, dreamcast qas ahead of its time

[@jesuschrist2284]

Remember north korea used ps3 in their balistic missiles............... ;)

[@jcaseyjones2829]

I remember reading in a magazine during the buildup to the release of the PS3 that it would somehow be more powerful as it connected to other ps3s over the internet and being baffled. Is this that?

[@Goat0423]

>Supercomputer >Can’t run Sonic Unleashed at stable framerate

[@TheSocialGamer]

I love my original Praystation Tree...!

[@HShango]

This is why i love the deck (long term wise) it has a bright future, it really brings back the nostalgia of PS3, the wii and the DS consoles and now the Switch. Valve will bring in a successor in the future (but not in the immediate near future). Everyweek the deck is the top seller on the steam store.

[@lux4134]

makes me wonder how a ps2 implementation would have been

[@miketran4289]

They already did it. The PS3 cluster is based on the PS2 Beowulf software.

[@jeffreyumeh8580]

there are ARM processors with 128 cores which have been around for years and AMD specifically launched a 96 core processor in November 2022 which would have been available before the launch of this video.

[@tracyclements1467]

I cant count how many times the narrator in this video said "Playstation Tree".