Havok 4.5. Enjoy ALL your SPUs in FULL, PS3

[Pumpkin Head]

Havok announces that its flagship middleware engine, used on many a PS3 (e.g., MotorStorm), Wii, and Xbox 360 game (not to mention PC, of course) is now at v4.5. "Havok 4.5 allows game developers to scale game content to thousands of dynamically-driven game objects and characters, harnessing the full power and speed of next generation architectures."

Now for what puts the .5 in 4.5, so to speak: Havok also revealed that this version is fully optimized for the PS3, capable of harnessing the FULL power of ALL the SPUs. "Havok architecture now scales strongly across all SPUs and runs between 5 and 10 times faster than Havok 4.0 for a typical game scene on the PS3."

If you're trying to get the vague idea of what Havok 4.0 on the PS3 looks like, we invite you to click on this backlink, to be whisked away to last year's article about Havok 4.0 at CEDEC. The highlight there was that, according to a presentation slide, Havok 4.0 on a PS3 Cell ran comparable to a triple-core PC. Now, if Havok's PR is to be believed, multiply that by 5 to 10.

Now if we only had a video, that would make our day.

[frosty]

w00t. can't wait.

[Pumpkin Head]

Finally 1000 post:salute:

[Epix]

+ rep, nice find. (link?)

Save some SPU's for us Havok - PS3 developer.

[VG Aficionado]

Sounds good :hugegrin: Can you envision MotorStorm 2? =-o

[GTAce]

Great post nr. 1000. +rep!

[makeitlookreal]

This is really the key to getting maximum performance out of the SPEs. You must break down all the tasks into thousands of small tasks and stream them across all the SPEs. Very few developers are doing this right now. Every time I hear about a developer reserving an entire SPE for a specific task I want to scream.

[curryking1]

Great, now put it in a game and show it to me lol. Cool find!

[Siraris]

15-30 core PC, huh? :dazed:

The only thing I'm curious about is what happens if you need to run something else on the SPU's? You can't run physics on all 7 and not have anything else for... well... anything else...

[mokmok]

Has it been confirmed that Motorstorm actually uses Havok? This is the first time I have seen it mentioned anywhere!

[Siraris]

Has it been confirmed that Motorstorm actually uses Havok? This is the first time I have seen it mentioned anywhere!

It's been mentioned quite a few places I believe.

[BruceWayneIII]

15-30 core PC, huh? :dazed:

The only thing I'm curious about is what happens if you need to run something else on the SPU's? You can't run physics on all 7 and not have anything else for... well... anything else...

Not 15-30 core PC. Because that would speed up the system even more than 5-10 times. It's 'only' 5-10 times faster than the previous version.

The Havok system scales - so it's up to the developer to decide how many SPUs to reserve for physics. The scaling can even be done dynamically.

@Pumpkin: do you have a link? Great post.

[Siraris]

Not 15-30 core PC. Because that would speed up the system even more than 5-10 times. It's 'only' 5-10 times faster than the previous version.

The Havok system scales - so it's up to the developer to decide how many SPUs to reserve for physics. The scaling can even be done dynamically.

@Pumpkin: do you have a link? Great post.

http://ps3.qj.net/Havok-4-5-Enjoy-ALL-your-SPUs-in-FULL-PS3/pg/49/aid/80351

Considering they said it was the equivalent of a 3 core PC, 5-10 more (or 15-30) would seem logical based on their comparison. I know it's not the case, and was mostly tongue in cheek.

[BruceWayneIII]

http://ps3.qj.net/Havok-4-5-Enjoy-ALL-your-SPUs-in-FULL-PS3/pg/49/aid/80351

Considering they said it was the equivalent of a 3 core PC, 5-10 more (or 15-30) would seem logical based on their comparison. I know it's not the case, and was mostly tongue in cheek.

:) alright. I just wanted to point out that the 'journalist' did some interpretation, asking us to multiply the cores by 5-10. I really doubt Havok would nod to that :)

[makeitlookreal]

The best thing to do is avoid reserving cores for anything.

You break ALL OF YOUR PROCESSES including animation, physics, sound, and even vertex work into THOUSANDS if tiny threads or tasks. Then you stream them across all the SPEs. By doing so you fully utilize all of the SPEs and you can keep more of them active at all times.

[xone_4]

know what?
i think the game delays we are witnessing these days is linked some how to these?

if these is the case it will worth it :)

[VG Aficionado]

C'mon MILR, don't speak as if you knew how these things actually work. If it really was so simple, nobody would be stupid enough not to take advantage of these processors in the ways you just mentioned.

I think you need to take a look at what cpiasminc has to say about these things (http://psinext.e-mpire.com/index.php?categoryid=4&m_articles_articleid=153).

The game code is usually not something that multi-threads well because games are not really parallel.

[BruceWayneIII]

Care to elaborate? I mean, in a perfect world, all tiny tasks take up the same amount of processing, thereby making it easy to spread across all SPUs. That perfect world does not exist. The types of tasks interact in a very complex way and require very different kinds of ressources - both in terms of processing capacity and memory. So, I think it makes sense to spread some types of tasks to a dedicated cluster of SPUs and other types to different SPUs. Having no real specific Cell-programming experience, I might be completely wrong - and totally happy about that - if I know why :)

[VG Aficionado]

http://psinext.e-mpire.com/index.php?categoryid=4&m_articles_articleid=29Most of the theoretical computing power of the new CPUs is a result of having multiple processor cores. We have multiple processors, so you can compute multiple independent operations simultaneously. The problem with this is the fact that games are not parallel! It's easy for people who've never seen real game development to think that we can just change that as if it was a simple task, but nothing could be further from the truth. There's a whole lot of codependency and everything is dependent on that which came before it. If there is codependency between parts, you simply can't multithread, because they need to be handled in a specific order. When you can't parallelize, having multiple processors doesn't increase your real-world performance much if at all.I must confess that when I read cpiasminc's editorials, I almost feel as if the next gen systems couldn't do anything a NES can't. It helps keeping my expectations low though, and I am surprised whenever I see a good looking game or one with interesting gameplay that only seems possible with the latest hardware and software development.

[frosty]

^you should visit his homepage and read some of the articles he has posted there. It's in his profile.

[PUNK em 733]

All Your Spus Belong To Me!!

[VG Aficionado]

All Your Spus Belong To Me!!ROFL!

Im in ur Cell keepin ur SPEs busy!

[Garfunkel]

we need a link!

but great post pumpkin, even if i do believe havoks numbers to be very very wrong indeed.

[PUNK em 733]

ROFL!

Im in ur Cell keepin ur SPEs busy!



AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!

Good stuff.:thumbr:

[Garfunkel]

www.thepolygoners.com

^cpi's website

[VG Aficionado]

I wonder how many people here got the references Punkem and me just threw :laugh:

[jaxmkii]

Has it been confirmed that Motorstorm actually uses Havok? This is the first time I have seen it mentioned anywhere!

when you start the demo, the logo appers and disapers quikley before the game starts.

[Garfunkel]

I wonder how many people here got the references Punkem and me just threw :laugh:

i've heard the first on somewhere, but not sure where.

[PUNK em 733]

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



:banana:

[Garfunkel]

wow, one phrase sparking an Internet phenomenon? nerds have no lives!

[curryking1]

Ahh 'All your base belong to us' is classic ahhahaha. Truly stood the test of time.

[jaxmkii]

I wonder how many people here got the references Punkem and me just threw :laugh:

all your base in 1476 http://allyourmedievalbase.ytmnd.com/


I have YTMNDs about them

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Midevil ALL YOUR BASE! http://atb.ytmnd.com/

http://home.nc.rr.com/nctrafficman/tww14/photos/Tdubb3.jpg

[PUNK em 733]

nerds have no lives!



And you just found this out?!!:doh:

[Z]

Havok also revealed that this version is fully optimized for the PS3, capable of harnessing the FULL power of ALL the SPUs.
so the current version doesn't use everything? how many cores did it use?
if Havok's PR is to be believed, multiply that by 5 to 10.
that may not be accurate. they said 5-10 times of a typical game scene. I doubt what Havok showed for the current engine was anything but typical.

in any case, this is good news. what is really great is that the full version of Havok and Agiea are in-built into every single PS3 SKU out there. if this is released, expect updated for all devkits out there. one of the great things about PS3 is that its devkits already come out with a powerful punch out of the box and ready to rock.

PS. when will this new version be released?

[Z]

nerds have no lives!
on the contrary. it is just that they are digital lives. ;)

[rpgamer_2k5]

What Cpi meant by most 'game code' is much of the 'back bone' of the game, which is vectorized processing which at the moment is only applicable to graphics and sound.

However artificial intelligence, even according to Arnaud is heading parallel. Most AI research outside game AI already is but game AI is pretty primitive compared to the rest so it's very likely that's going to change.

Also physics is going to be very parallel. Ageia, ATI, and Nvidia's Physics solutions run in parallel so does Havoc. SMT on Havoc provides huge gains even on the duel/tri-cores.

The rest will probably stay single-threaded as usual, but with AI, graphics, physics and sound benefiting, SMT is pretty positive in the gaming arena in the future.

[section]

Now must copy a few words of wisdom from Deano@B3D:

The army AI in HS is entirely SPU based, its hierarchical with 'battalion' logic (groups of say 200 soldiers) each battalion is running a custom VM programmed in a crude visual programming langauge in our editor. Then a spatial hierarchy breaks up the battlefield into chunks with a number of soldiers in, each chunk is farmed off to an SPU where each soldier runs collision, avoidance and personal AI.
Then afterwards another SPU program, does some work to help sort and farm out work to the renderer... Some of this is done on the PPU more because some of our internal API are PPU based on moving that little bit over to SPU was too much work at the mo.


The effect is that there is high level designer control, but each solider seems fairly intelligent, avoiding things, attacking the player etc.
Its not based on any normal flocking stuff (which i find very uncontrollable) but instead has this two level logic, where my battalion order would have me going/currently at and where my local intelligence has told me to be.

A sign of things to come, multicore processing for the victory. (disliking FTW).