🚀 go-pugleaf

Kevin Wilson <gt9532b@prism.gatech.edu> verily spake, saying:

: What's wrong with the PS2 (in relation to the PS1 or DC)?

There's nothing wrong with the PS2 in relation to the PS1.  In fact, your
PS1 games will play on the PS2.  They both feature a MIPS core.  

There are some really nifty features in the PS2.  To make a long story
short, it's MUCH better at doing graphics stuff.  The ``emotion engine''
has a *WHOLE LOT* of power.  Like 10 Floating-Point Multiply-Accumulators,
4 Floating-Point Divide units, etc.  And a lot of the output of the EE
can be sent directly to the processor that takes display lists and turns
them into an image... the architecture is really pretty nice.

Unfortunately, the EE is also very complex, and as it turns out people don't
quite have the knack for programming for it yet.  The compilers aren't very
good, and coding by hand isn't very easy.  This has been a classical problem
for VLIWish systems, and for specialty systems.  Specialty VLIW systems are
really, really bad in this regard.  

So, most PS2 games are not very impressive because they're basically PS1 games
on a DVD disk, with maybe a few extra things thrown in.

The architecture of the PS2 should provide for some really nice 3D games,
however.  But some compiler technology or a good library needs to come 
along first.  But developers will need to (A) develop some nice libraries
and (B) get some experience.

If you're a compiler guy or other low-level programming type, I'm sure that
some game companies would love to hire you to do EE programming!

-- 
Erich           | Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor 
at wreck.org    | and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. 
                | Amen!  Rev 7:11-13