Cell Explained

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-01-21 05:04pm

phongn wrote:
Ace Pace wrote:Actully it did mention, and as I see it(and IIRC) nVidia is providing the chip, and some technical help, leaving implementation to Sony.

Whats intresting is what happens when someone reprogramms the PS3 into a PC or linux box, think of the power?
Methinks you need to start learning about how a computer actually works. Sure, the Cell will probably have a huge number of vector units but most work on the PC side is done by integer and floating point operations. SIMD/vector operations are not as common, especially because such things are hard to do.

Okey, my mistake

Then not using a PC, I would still be intrested in seeing how fast this thing runs some of the more complex stuff in the PC side, big media stuff, games maybe.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2005-01-21 05:13pm

Ace Pace wrote:
phongn wrote:
Ace Pace wrote:Actully it did mention, and as I see it(and IIRC) nVidia is providing the chip, and some technical help, leaving implementation to Sony.

Whats intresting is what happens when someone reprogramms the PS3 into a PC or linux box, think of the power?
Methinks you need to start learning about how a computer actually works. Sure, the Cell will probably have a huge number of vector units but most work on the PC side is done by integer and floating point operations. SIMD/vector operations are not as common, especially because such things are hard to do.
Okey, my mistake

Then not using a PC, I would still be intrested in seeing how fast this thing runs some of the more complex stuff in the PC side, big media stuff, games maybe.

Vector processing is nowadays used in some of the large number crunching machines, because they are quite good at it.
But programming for vector systems is quite tricky, a point I guess why they are not very popular or widely used nowadays.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-01-21 05:18pm

Destructionator XIII wrote:Is the PS3 going to have a built in hard drive?

Nope, and neither is the XBox 2.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-01-21 05:23pm

Praxis wrote:
Destructionator XIII wrote:Is the PS3 going to have a built in hard drive?

Nope, and neither is the XBox 2.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19615

Actully there appears to be atleast 2 basic packages, one with, one without a HD.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-01-21 05:33pm

Oh no. Not that article again.

Firstly, the HD version would be more expensive, the basic model would still not have a HD.

Secondly...let's see how many impossibilities I can spot in that article....

one of which is a fully functioning PC.

Here we go, with the first impossibility. Let's see what else they say about this, to make sure I'm right:

Xbox Next PC is, according to the presentation, an entry-level PC that runs Windows and all standard PC software.

BZZT! WRONG! The XBox Next runs on a PowerPC processor. So tell me now, HOW can it run standard x86 binaries? The only possibility I can think of is emulation, but it'd run like a low-end Pentium 3 in terms of speed.

Could this be what they mean? Maybe they're right, and MS is using emulation? Nope, because something else they say is even more wrong:

The device will also play most available PC games.

Nope. Even IF Microsoft managed to whip up some kind of background emulation so you could run all Windows software, it would go so slow there'd be no way you could play current PC games. VirtualPC can't even use the GRAPHICS card of the host system currently! And even if it did, the processor would run as slow as heck.

So, three times they emphasize that it is a full fledged Windows PC, can run all Windows software and current Windows games.

No WAY.

So they're DEFINITELY WRONG on that. And because of that, I can't really take that article seriously.

Besides, even if they're half right and there will be an XBox Next HD, you will have to fork over extra money for it. The normal XBox Next will NOT have one.

After all, you can buy a PS2 hard drive for a little extra money, so by that logic technically the PS2 has a hard drive too

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-01-21 06:04pm

Xbox Next's emulator might be fast enough to run Xbox games, OTOH. By the time it is out Microsoft may have tweaked VPC enough to get the speed neccessary, as well as direct GPU calls properly.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-01-21 06:09pm

phongn wrote:Xbox Next's emulator might be fast enough to run Xbox games, OTOH. By the time it is out Microsoft may have tweaked VPC enough to get the speed neccessary, as well as direct GPU calls properly.

POSSIBLY XBox games. But XBox is only a 700 mhz P3 (or Celeron, difference sources conflict on that).

It'd still be very difficult, since XBox 1 uses NVidia cards and XBox 2 uses ATi, and I'd be very surprised if games weren't specificly optimized to use the exact card in the XBox.

It's still a possibility. But either way, running current PC games would be completely out of the question, because you aren't going to be running current PC games on a P3

So I still think the article is wrong on the XBox Next PC front.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-01-21 07:20pm

The Xbox's CPU is a 733MHz Coppermine-core Pentium III with half the cache disabled. It is not a Celeron. While games may be optimized for the NV22, any ATI GPU is likely to be more than powerful enough to overcome that difficulty.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-01-21 08:31pm

How is a 733-mhz P3 anything BUT "entry-level"?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-01-21 08:34pm

SPOOFE wrote:How is a 733-mhz P3 anything BUT "entry-level"?

I considered an entry-level P3 to be a low-end P3; the 733MHz one was about midrange for that line.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2005-01-21 10:20pm

Emulation for the Xbox Next might seem absurd at first glance, but this is not a third party making an emulator. This is Microsoft, the owner of the operating system and 3D API. With these resources on-hand, the biggest speed bottleneck is x86 assembly execution in the emulator. Not that I know much about Xbox development, but I can't imagine that Xbox developers spend a lot of time writing things in assembler.

Microsoft could easily write a PowerPC implementation of the subset of the Windows NT API they have on the Xbox. That right there takes care of a lot of compute operations. Throw on a PowerPC DirectX implementation, and your emulated GPU calls are sped up considerably. The worst part would be dynamically recompiling the code, but once that's done, the functions themselves do not need to be emulated; all Microsoft's emulator would have to do is translate a call in x86 binary to PowerPC binary.

Full-speed emulation for Xbox games on the Xbox Next is well within Microsoft's capability.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-01-21 11:03pm

There have always been rumours that Microsoft continued to maintain the PowerPC port of the NT line long after they officially cancelled it. If that is true they could work off that, especially seeing as the Xbox essentially ran a modified W2K OS.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2005-01-22 01:15am

Microsoft might have had custom instuctions added the the CPU's instruction set, or had it directly handle little endian instead of PowerPC's default of big-edian, either of these would make a big difference for emulation speed

Thats the biggest issue with emulating x86 code on PowerPC, the ednian-ness. Also they do have JIT compiler technology which can on-the-fly compile psuedo-code into native stuff, so it wouldnt be that suprising if the Xbox2 JITed chucks of x86 code into native code.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-01-22 12:14pm

Durandal wrote:Emulation for the Xbox Next might seem absurd at first glance, but this is not a third party making an emulator. This is Microsoft, the owner of the operating system and 3D API. With these resources on-hand, the biggest speed bottleneck is x86 assembly execution in the emulator. Not that I know much about Xbox development, but I can't imagine that Xbox developers spend a lot of time writing things in assembler.

Microsoft could easily write a PowerPC implementation of the subset of the Windows NT API they have on the Xbox. That right there takes care of a lot of compute operations. Throw on a PowerPC DirectX implementation, and your emulated GPU calls are sped up considerably. The worst part would be dynamically recompiling the code, but once that's done, the functions themselves do not need to be emulated; all Microsoft's emulator would have to do is translate a call in x86 binary to PowerPC binary.

Full-speed emulation for Xbox games on the Xbox Next is well within Microsoft's capability.

I'm not saying thats absurb, I'm saying that the article's claim that it could run Windows/x86, all Windows/x86 software, and current Windows games, is absurb.

I don't doubt that it's possible to emulate fast enough the XBox 1. I DO doubt that it's fast enough to emulate a full fledged Windows XP PC capable of running current 3d games as the article quoted above stated.

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2005-01-22 02:01pm

A) 'Entry-level' is about the 2ghz range. I don't even HAVE chips to make those at work anymore.

B) TheInq is about as reliable as a Bush Administrator press release.

C) If you believe the Xbrick will be a fully-functioning PC, I've got stock in Infinium Labs that I can sell you, cheap.