Whats the deal with cell processors?
I'm going to be buying one of the new consoles coming out soon (xbox 360 or ps3), so I've been reading about them to see which one will buy. Anyway I've been reading that ps3 is using a cell processor, but I have no clue what that is.
According to this source GameSpy They say.....
"Cell, scheduled to hit the market in late 2004 or early 2005, differs notably from current processors. This finely crafted chunk of silicon will contain multiple chips within a single unit, and will be able to perform in excess of one trillion mathematical calculations a second. Put into perspective, that makes it approximately 100 times more powerful than a 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 CPU! "
it also says "Cell computing will also facilitate a distributed style of networking that performs computing tasks in much the same way a cell phone network routes calls. Thus, for example, the PlayStation 3 will be able to use its broadband Internet connection to draw additional computing power from idle processors across the Internet". Kinda reminds me of trusted computing.
Ok so if it really can do 1 tirillion calculations per second why aren't all computers using cell processors. That doesn't make any sence, over 100 times more powerful than a 2.5ghz p4. If its so powerful then why arent we using them? makes no sence. Could somebody please tell me what a cell processor is and how it generally works?
thanks
According to this source GameSpy They say.....
"Cell, scheduled to hit the market in late 2004 or early 2005, differs notably from current processors. This finely crafted chunk of silicon will contain multiple chips within a single unit, and will be able to perform in excess of one trillion mathematical calculations a second. Put into perspective, that makes it approximately 100 times more powerful than a 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 CPU! "
it also says "Cell computing will also facilitate a distributed style of networking that performs computing tasks in much the same way a cell phone network routes calls. Thus, for example, the PlayStation 3 will be able to use its broadband Internet connection to draw additional computing power from idle processors across the Internet". Kinda reminds me of trusted computing.
Ok so if it really can do 1 tirillion calculations per second why aren't all computers using cell processors. That doesn't make any sence, over 100 times more powerful than a 2.5ghz p4. If its so powerful then why arent we using them? makes no sence. Could somebody please tell me what a cell processor is and how it generally works?
thanks
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Comments
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/cell-1.ars
And it will only be as fast as they claim if you code is super effcient and uses 100 threads +.
They are like the variable array or the processor world. I know one of the main engineers on the cell processor.
bah not true.
Ok I may over exaggerated a bit on the 100+ threads its accuraly 8 + threads.
But its still painfull to code for.
No devloper in there right mind will waste the time and money on devloping a game that runs on the cell the main reason being becuse if they want to port it to anything else they will have to complettly recode the engine.
Code that runs on the ps3 will not run effciently on ANY other platform.
Edit: Not to mention it will be priced higher then the xbox 360.
So how's that differ all that much from porting any game console to PC? Look at Halo for ****s sake! When it was released so many people had issues with performance. And to be frank, if they would have just BUILT it for the PC, then it would run a hell of a lot better period cuase it doesn't need as much power as it seems to take.
I personally think the PS3 will be a big hit, and it's already looking like it has a hell of a game lineup.
Actually I read a few articles saying many developers started making games for 360, and when they heard about PS3's hardware they completely scrapped their projects and changed over to ps3 to release the game on. I'll find some of the articles.
All you have to do is recompile the binary to port things from one platform to another.
However in the case of the cell it involves rewriting the whole engine.
its been described as a supercomputer on a chip. i think that it will do well.
i mean. if people want good graphics and smart ai, the the developers will code for it. i mean this country is ran off of supply and demand. if there is a high demand for the games. then there will be a supply for them, if they didnt code for it then that would be bad market strategy and they would be loosing money.
(Why limit your self to one console that will probably be #2 in market share when you can have code that will run on 5 platforms*Xbox 360,Nintendo revolution,mac os x,linux and good old windows*.) In the past all you had to do to port something recompile it and do some mild debuging. (Also sometimes change the rendering api from direct X to open gl)
From an engineering perspective, Cell has a lot to offer for tasks that lend themselves well to massive parallelization like matrix operations. Since all physics algorithms and graphics manipulations are matrix operations (eg Navier-Stokes stress-strain relations for material deformations, direction cosine matrices for orientation of bodies in space, etc.) you're looking at a highly efficient physics processor. With Cell's superscalar nature if you don't have enough power to handle your operations in real time just add more Cells to your LAN.
The reason we don't use them now for everything is because they're too new and because there aren't enough of them out there for Microsoft to code an OS for them. Luckily if Sony keeps their word Linux will pick up the ball and run just fine on Cell (even on the PS3) whereas Microsoft will do their best to prevent you from running Linux and Nintendo seems to only be in the business of making toys these days.
-drasnor
learned some stuff that i didnt know yet.