PS3 has same amount of bits as Dreamcast

A tech guy from Sony disclosed this information under the direction of Sony PR boss Dave Karakker, says a report from website, insert credit. The info? Picture this – if the PS3 has 128 bits and my Dreamcast has 128, doesn’t that make them just as powerful? Apparently, bits aren’t in vogue anymore and aren’t an accurate measure of the power of the system.

According to the tech guy:

Most single pieces of data fit in 32 or 64 bits. The benefit of 128 bits is that you can operate on 4 pieces of 32-bit data at the same time, which is called SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data). This is only useful for data that needs the same operation on all 4 pieces, which is common in games for things such as 3D graphical transformations, physical simulation, collision detection, etc. 128-bits is the “sweet spot” of price and performance, so that is what everyone seems to have settled upon.

To get more power, people have instead now been moving to more processor cores. (PS3 has 8, Xbox 360 has 3, Wii has 1, PS2 had 1 + 2 special-purpose, Xbox had 1, etc).

This revelation may put this age old “bit” argument to rest, but to be honest…I doubt it. There will always be players out there who will scream, “my system has more bits than yours”. Now you can smile at him, comfortable in the knowledge that size doesn’t matter, it’s the number of processor cores you have running.

A tech guy from Sony disclosed this information under the direction of Sony PR boss Dave Karakker, says a report from website, insert credit. The info? Picture this – if the PS3 has 128 bits and my Dreamcast has 128, doesn’t that make them just as powerful? Apparently, bits aren’t in vogue anymore and aren’t an accurate measure of the power of the system.

According to the tech guy:

Most single pieces of data fit in 32 or 64 bits. The benefit of 128 bits is that you can operate on 4 pieces of 32-bit data at the same time, which is called SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data). This is only useful for data that needs the same operation on all 4 pieces, which is common in games for things such as 3D graphical transformations, physical simulation, collision detection, etc. 128-bits is the “sweet spot” of price and performance, so that is what everyone seems to have settled upon.

To get more power, people have instead now been moving to more processor cores. (PS3 has 8, Xbox 360 has 3, Wii has 1, PS2 had 1 + 2 special-purpose, Xbox had 1, etc).

This revelation may put this age old “bit” argument to rest, but to be honest…I doubt it. There will always be players out there who will scream, “my system has more bits than yours”. Now you can smile at him, comfortable in the knowledge that size doesn’t matter, it’s the number of processor cores you have running.