Using Cell as a GPU

msmalls74

msmalls74

msmalls74

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Just saw a good article on hardocp about IBM using 3 PS3 to Render real time ray tracing using the Cell only (no access to the RSX under linux)

Link to video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLte5f34ya8

An IBM tech shows off how you could turn a sub-$2,000 investment in PS3 hardware into a real time Ray-tracing workstation running Linux. Here's what the shaky engineer had to say about his little weekend project:
IBM Interactive Ray-tracer (iRT) using three Sony Playstation 3s to render a model that is 75x more complex then those used in today's games. Ray-tracing is the rendering technique used by the film industry and is considered to complex for today's game systems. The code was written using IBM Cell SDK 2.0 on Linux. The iRT is totally scalable and only requires one Cell SPE to run. More PS3s = More SPEs = Higher client frame rates. All images are at least 720p 4x multi-sampled, with dynamic light sources, procedurally generated atmosphere, and dynamic shadows.

Maybe Sony was not to far from the truth about the cell as the GPU in the PS3, Perhaps the PS4 will consists of a load of higher clocked Cells and no "GPU"?
 
There is no chance of ray tracing being used in real games for a very long time.

Contrary to popular belief ray tracing isn't widely used in cinematic effects. Where it is used it is normally only used for small parts of the scene in a hybrid algorithm. Pixar used ray tracing for the 'reflective bits' in Cars and this delayed the release by about 6 months (they wern't going to use it at all, but they didn't think the end quality was good enough).

Film makers find it works much better just to use normal rendering with insane polygon counts and a lot of tricks for lighting etc. Games have a long way to go in this direction before they can even consider ray tracing.

Virtually the only place where ray tracing is widely used is advertising, both for still images and short animations.

Ray tracing is very hard to implement in hardware, so a GPU wouldn't be of any use anyway! There are a few specialist vendors of ray tracing hardware, but they are expensive / targeted at the animation industry.
 
melchy said:
Wasn't ray-tracing fairly common place back in the Amiga days ?
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That was ray casting I think. Pretty different things.

If the Cell can be used to assist the GPU in rendering graphics then it could give it a significant edge over the 360. After all Sony was originally planning not to have a GPU and have the Cell's SPEs handle rendering. But they then realised that wouldn't cut it and included a GPU.
 
lol, if i spent 2 grand on that set up i wouldnt be pleased, it doesnt even look that good, and whats this about the lighting being 75 times better than currently available? theres plenty of good looking lighting effects, and theres no way thats 75 times better :\
 
Efaws said:
lol, if i spent 2 grand on that set up i wouldnt be pleased, it doesnt even look that good, and whats this about the lighting being 75 times better than currently available? theres plenty of good looking lighting effects, and theres no way thats 75 times better :\
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Of course if it actually said "75 times better", your statement would at least be partly correct.

The fact that it actually says "75x more COMPLEX" kinda negates what you've said.


I don't think people in here totally understand what they are doing and showing in that video.

Shame really.
 
Ray tracing is infinitely better than any other lighting effects used in games. This is because it behaves more or less exactly like real light would instead of simply using clever simulations and litle calculations like we seen in games today.

Basically it's totally foolproof lighting, rays actually being simulated from the source and boucning off everything at exactly the right angle taking their texture into account. Much more effective than just "put shadow where this actor (light) can't see".
 
Memphis said:
I don't think people in here totally understand what they are doing and showing in that video.

Shame really.
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Indeed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_tracing

For those who don't know why that video is actually something quite special.

Also...

Lagz said:
Games have a long way to go in this direction before they can even consider ray tracing.
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That Wikipedia Article said:
On March 16 2007, a breakthrough in ray tracing, which allowed computer games to be rendered with ray tracing without intensive resource usage, was revealed by University of Saarland.
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Originally Posted by That Wikipedia Article
On March 16 2007, a breakthrough in ray tracing, which allowed computer games to be rendered with ray tracing without intensive resource usage, was revealed by University of Saarland.

Right, so that stole the thunder from needing to use 3 PS3s for ray tracing...
 
Well the original video wouldn't have been using the new algorithms so would still be using the older methods that normally take a farm of computers a week to produce a short video clip...

And those new Algorithms, while better, were demonstrated by running Quake III at about 20fps, in 512x512 with a cluster of 20 XP1800 Athlons...
 
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