Which console would you rather have?

[alexander]

Considering that these less-that-$500 boxes have FLOP ratings of 15-20 times a good AMD or Intel x86 box, and that these boxes are using at most 2-core POWERPC chips, while a high-end POWER chip is 256-core, my mouth alternately waters at the prospect of getting such hardware on bus on my own PC, and goes dry at the challenge of getting any of my favorite language interpreters to use it. My Math object could be practically oraclular!

you've been reading "how stuff works" havent you? well, its not exactly a PPC based processor architecture, and people that wrote up the article on that website stink, so let me explain...

 

CELL ARCHITECTURE RELOADED (this will be my second movie with less speculative specs source: http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell1_v2.html)

 

A cell processor unlike anything we have seen to date, clocked at about 4GHZ (3.2GHZ on PS3) it is supposed to be capable of doing 256 GFLOPS single percision, 256 GOPS integer percision, 25 GFLOPS double percision, and with a memory access speed of about 25.6 GBytes/sec and an IO speed of about 76 GBytes/sec, cell processor should impress even people who dont know what the specs actually mean. It is made up of several parts, namely:

 

1 Power Processor Element (PPE).

8 Synergistic Processor Elements (SPEs). (7 on PS3)

Element Interconnect Bus (EIB).

Direct Memory Access Controller (DMAC).

2 Rambus XDR memory controllers.

Rambus FlexIO (Input / Output) interface.

 

Estimated power consumption is about 60-80 Watts at 4GHZ, but noone knows it for sure for PS3, because it is clocked lower...

 

PPE

A 64 bit 512K cache POWER/PowerPC based chip custom made by IBM, not G5 or 970 Base. Clock speed is meaningless, once again, it is a completely different architecture that uses a PPC instruction set. However what i find interesting about it is the fact that it is capable of running both POWER and PowerPC binaries, which is neato :cup:

 

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so you say, "Wow, a 4GHZ PowerPC chip, how is it not PowerPC based now?"

well, here is why i say that Cell architecture is not PPC "based": the 4 GHZ processor's only purpose in the architecture is to setup tasks for SPE's, i.e it is nothing more the a "not so simple" controller...

 

SPE (This is what the architecture actually derives its power)

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All that is great, but if that wasnt revolutionary enough, the designers decided to add a little someting called "Strem Processing"

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[half-death]

Hello

For myself, I have to admit I won't care for all the technical things.... My loyalty belongs to Nintendo. I own each Nintendo console from the NES to the NGC.... Also, I just cannot get enough of the games; Mario, Zelda.... PS3 comes second because I just love playing Megaman and the RPGs are always good on those console....

[Southtown]

Good Gosh, Alex! Linx man, linx! :cup:

 

That's the article I read about it, too. Are those the guys that suck?

[alexander]

i cant quite make out what you are saying South...

[CraigD]

you've been reading "how stuff works" havent you?

No – mostly I use howstuffworks for all that clever mechanical stuff I can’t seem to remember for any length of time, like how a Wankel engine works. I’d prefer to have a collection of clear plastic working models of such things, but this is a slow process, since most of them come in the form of kits I can’t seem to find time to assemble before gremlins make off with the pieces :cup:

 

My infatuation with POWER architecture stems from professional experience. In 1992, I worked on migrating applications from that day’s “big iron” – a 6-CPU, true-SRAM IBM ES/9000 – to a gaggle of IBM RS/6000s. These and many new apps remain on RS/6000s to this day. Over the years our RS/6000s have been upgraded – nearly all are now 8-CPU machines. Just this April was I able to actually take advantage of all these CPUs – prior to that, I was just having unix dedicate a CPU to each instance of my apps, and having them talk via Ethernet!

 

One of the joys of being an IBM customer is that their sales staff are usually clueless to what their customers actually do, so will rant at length about their high-end hardware (and pay for your lunch while they do it). My awareness of a 256-CPU RS/6000 comes from such a conversation. Deep Blue was only a 32-CPU RS/6000, so that’s a pretty impressive amout of parallelism for a machine you (meaning, for most of us, your employer) can actually buy.

 

As Alexander notes, while Cell architecture uses POWERPCs, it’s adds quite a bit more. Before being overly impressed, it’s interesting to compare the Cell to some 20+ year old architectures – for example, “the ability of the SPEs in a Cell to be chained together to act as a stream processor” is precisely what the “programmable vector processor units” on 1980s ES mainframes allowed, although they were managed by the operating system, not the application code.

 

Still, unlike really exciting architectures like RAW chips (420 K .pdf), Cell processors really exist, and should be available cheap. Hence my lust to have one, or even the Cell-less POWERPC chips from an Xbox360 :cup:

 

… that’s got me thinking how much I’d really like to have a true RAW chip. But, to date, these are emulated fantasies. :cup:

[alexander]

just to note, I've been noticing the reimplementation of old technologies and combining them into new ones lately, Ajax, Cell.... it seems to be the hot trend.... and after a careful read, it would be more appropriate to say that Cell is based on the Risk architecture rather then PPC really....

[armofreek]

ok I admit that I dont know the hardware of the PS3, I just heard that the 360 hardware was good - 3 dual core processors, and I know most games dont utilise it yet but doesnt that mean it has good potential? Also I like all the xbox games namely halo

 

 

its not 3 dual cores, its 3 single cores... and the 360 was shat out as quickly as possible by microsofts engineering teams.. wait for ps3!!:cup:

[Queso]

oh man i cant wait for ps3-

well actually i guess i can.

its not like ill be able to afford one.

sev, bring yours over to my house, eh!

please? Ø

[Loricybin]

revolution. no doubt.

 

have you seen the way you actually USE the controller? it looks like a TV remote, but its actually got motion sensors and a receiver unit to place on top of the TVset.

 

check out this video for more on it

 

the applications are seemingly limitless, (steering wheel, sword, fishing pole, ETC)

 

nintendo is back to their old innovative selves.

 

nintendo always seems to come up with the revolutionary (pun intended) ideas, which are simply expanded by other companies like sony and sega.

well, not sega anymore, but you get the idea

[armofreek]

oh man i cant wait for ps3-

well actually i guess i can.

its not like ill be able to afford one.

sev, bring yours over to my house, eh!

please? Ø

 

most definatly...

[GAHD]

I'm pritty shure sony'll steal and double-up the nintendo's revolutionary controll ideas, just like they did when they seemed to say 'analog stick? Rumble pack? re-he-heally? We'll stick TWO of each them on our system's next controller...'

[Loricybin]

I'm pritty shure sony'll steal and double-up the nintendo's revolutionary controll ideas, just like they did when they seemed to say 'analog stick? Rumble pack? re-he-heally? We'll stick TWO of each them on our system's next controller...'

 

my point exactly:)

[armofreek]

I'm pritty shure sony'll steal and double-up the nintendo's revolutionary controll ideas, just like they did when they seemed to say 'analog stick? Rumble pack? re-he-heally? We'll stick TWO of each them on our system's next controller...'

hehehe.. i dont doubt it

[Drip Curl Magic]

it's to be expected... everyone inspires off of other humans... I'm sure nintendo has stolen a few ideas here and there from sony.

[Loricybin]

true enough,

 

but i mean, usually the most really groundbreaking stuff is nintendo, always a step ahead, but moving slowly at the same time

[alexander]

oh so there are people that consider something to be more revolutionary and groundbreaking then a completely new processor architecture.... hmmm ....

 

for real though, no doubt that nintendo has always come out with some of the most crazy hardware, but i think that sony, for now at least has revolution beat with their hardware, but there is no info out there available for the revolution, so its still up in the air. no doubt about this though, out of the 3, 360 is the one that is the most "lame"....:cup:

[Turtle]

The round headed kid at my house says," PS3; it just looks cool & has the most games; they got a whole bunch".

___I have followed the thread but as I am ignorant of the nuances I had nothing constructive to add. The opportunity arose to consult an expert ( I asked a kid) & I am passing on that reply. Great discussion; very enlighteneing.:cup:

 

PS Frosty accords Sony with dominating the market in regard for having the most game developers using their platform. Colloquially Frosty says, "basically, they got Japan in their pocket".