John Carmack says iPad 2 is about half the power of PS3?

[Nintendo]

Fair call, I guess.

iPad 2 "About Half" as Powerful as Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Says Man Who Would Know


The iPad 2 is "about half" as powerful as modern games consoles like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, according to graphics genius John Carmack.


In an interview with Tom's Hardware, Id Software's John Carmack—one of the most knowledgeable, influential, and affable graphics programmers of the last twenty years—spoke at great length about the power of mobile hardware (and more) with Tom's Guide.


We have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to mobile development. We have more power than you can afford to take advantage of. We can afford to put all of this optimization effort into the consoles because we know that we're going to make tens of millions of dollars by doing all of this, and while there are a few iOS apps that have made money like that, you don't go into making an iOS app expecting to make tens of millions of dollars, and you also wouldn't want to spend the extra year hyper-optimizing things. But they are so powerful already that you don't need to, and that's obviously going to be getting much better still, where you've got the quad-core CPUs and the crazy graphics hardware. There's been incorrect hyperbole about the power of these devices, where people are saying that they have console-level performance. The iPad 2 has about half the performance power, and that's a ballpark estimate. But that does mean that mobile devices coming out, certainly next year, will be flat out more powerful, and they'll probably be powerful enough where you don't even need the hyper-optimizing, that you could do a fairly easy port-over of your technology and assets. The biggest issue is going to be total distribution and storage space.

http://kotaku.com/5833523/ipad-2-about-half-as-powerful-as-xbox-360-playstation-3-says-man-who-would-know

id Software, circa 1992.


L-R: John Carmack, Kevin Cloud, Adrian Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, & Jay Wilbur.

 

[Exophase]

I hate it when Carmack makes these comparisons (like that the original iPhone is more powerful than the PSP and 3DS combined) without really explaining them. It's hard for me to really justify this claim with any technical metrics.

 

[MWeston]

puff puff pass

 

[fusion_power]

id Software, circa 1992.


L-R: John Carmack, Kevin Cloud, Adrian Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, & Jay Wilbur.

...Gods... B)


Except Romero. Take THIS for Daikatana...and THIS! ...and THIS! :lol:


However, do I understand this article correctly, that Carmack means, the Devices are so powerful today that there is no more need for optimizing the Software?

 

[Nintendo]

I hate it when Carmack makes these comparisons (like that the original iPhone is more powerful than the PSP and 3DS combined) without really explaining them. It's hard for me to really justify this claim with any technical metrics.

In JC's defense...he's probably already secretly developed a PS3 game as well as a full game for iPad 2 in the privacy of his own bedroom.

 

[elwing]

id Software, circa 1992.


L-R: John Carmack, Kevin Cloud, Adrian Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, & Jay Wilbur.

...Gods... B)


Except Romero. Take THIS for Daikatana...and THIS! ...and THIS! :lol:


However, do I understand this article correctly, that Carmack means, the Devices are so powerful today that there is no more need for optimizing the Software?

it's sure you could reprogram quake1 how you want without any optimisation and it will run fine on actual hardware... now for more serious games...

 

[Batou456]

Given Rage is not only Id's newest game but is going to said platforms, I'd tend to say it's relative to that. It certainly isn't against Id's interests to a little marketing spin to encourage more people to buy/use their software either.

 

[sporkbox]

id Software, circa 1992.


L-R: John Carmack, Kevin Cloud, Adrian Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, & Jay Wilbur.

...Gods...

Except Romero. Take THIS for Daikatana...and THIS! ...and THIS!

However, do I understand this article correctly, that Carmack means, the Devices are so powerful today that there is no more need for optimizing the Software?

Software optimization is still very important, and coders who do not try to make their software run better are squandering the abilities of the device they're coding for. As hardware gets more powerful, users are going to demand more impressive things done with it, and the best way to do that is create software that runs on that hardware as fast as possible. Today's extreme detail graphic engines would be better if they were more optimized. Optimization is never a bad thing when it comes to software, especially on lower-level library calls or drivers. Emulators, image editing apps, physics simulators, and many more types of programs need to be as fast as they can get, so weaker hardware can run them and the powerful hardware can make them excel. Optimization is the way to do that.


Anyone who says optimization is dead has no clue what they're talking about. Including celebrities. Especially celebrities.

 

[Thorium]

id Software, circa 1992.


L-R: John Carmack, Kevin Cloud, Adrian Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, & Jay Wilbur.

...Gods...

Except Romero. Take THIS for Daikatana...and THIS! ...and THIS!

However, do I understand this article correctly, that Carmack means, the Devices are so powerful today that there is no more need for optimizing the Software?

Software optimization is still very important, and coders who do not try to make their software run better are squandering the abilities of the device they're coding for. As hardware gets more powerful, users are going to demand more impressive things done with it, and the best way to do that is create software that runs on that hardware as fast as possible. Today's extreme detail graphic engines would be better if they were more optimized. Optimization is never a bad thing when it comes to software, especially on lower-level library calls or drivers. Emulators, image editing apps, physics simulators, and many more types of programs need to be as fast as they can get, so weaker hardware can run them and the powerful hardware can make them excel. Optimization is the way to do that.


Anyone who says optimization is dead has no clue what they're talking about. Including celebrities. Especially celebrities.

He did not say optimization is dead. He said optimization on a powerfull enough hardware is not economic as it needs a lot of development time. So if your software runs fine without optimizations on your target platform you dont optimize it if you run a business. So you can create the software cheaper and release it earlier both resulting in potential more profit.


For a hobby coder it's a whole other story. I am a hobby coder and i optimize for the fun of it, to see how fast can i make a software run. But i dont need to make a profit.

 

[fusion_power]

Yes, you don't have to over-optimize stuff but it should run at decent speed.


I was disappointed of some Pandora Software, even "simple" stuff sometimes is slow, I wanted to play "Angry Drunken Dwarfs" on my Pandora, not a graphic intense game actualy, but it is unplayable at stock speed. It has horrible slowdowns later in the game, maybe because of the AI or whatever. Pretty bad for a simple Tetris like game IMHO.


Otherwise I can understand, that these Games were never made for the Pandora but for PC, same for the great Bullet Hell Shooter "rRootage": normal Levels plays well at 600MHz but the later levels with insane ammount of bullets on screen are simply unplayable at the Pandora. I guess the Pandora simply reaches its limits here. But I doubt that Angry Drunken Dwarfs reaches the limits of the Pandora.


I whish, some Devs don't throw out so many quick and dirty ports but keep their time to update their work more often, like others do, which really is a great thing. I like updates, it shows, that the Dev cares about his work. I don't like these "fire and forget" releases, just thrown in the repo and done, sometimes not even tested before released.

 

[Thorium]

I was disappointed of some Pandora Software, even "simple" stuff sometimes is slow, I wanted to play "Angry Drunken Dwarfs" on my Pandora, not a graphic intense game actualy, but it is unplayable at stock speed. It has horrible slowdowns later in the game, maybe because of the AI or whatever. Pretty bad for a simple Tetris like game IMHO.


Otherwise I can understand, that these Games were never made for the Pandora but for PC, same for the great Bullet Hell Shooter "rRootage": normal Levels plays well at 600MHz but the later levels with insane ammount of bullets on screen are simply unplayable at the Pandora. I guess the Pandora simply reaches its limits here. But I doubt that Angry Drunken Dwarfs reaches the limits of the Pandora.

I know what you mean. Sometimes i dont get how they can make it so slow. Another good example is Plants vs Zombies on iPhone. I still have a 3G and it's unbelievable slow on it.


And that game is not even near the limits of that device.


It can only be that some people just ignore very easy and well known optimizations. Like precalculate as much as you can befor entering a performance critical loop. It's not uncommon that devs do calculations every iteration of the loop that could have done just one time befor the loop. Good coders do that automaticly, it's not even a optimization for them.