4Ghz Playstation 3 'Cell' chip

[Azazel]

I am interested to see exactly what they can actually do.

[HyperionX]

I'm expecting it to be maybe twice as fast as the XBox 2 (assuming they're going with the single G5 rumored). I'm more excited about the Cell's application in Macs than in the PS3.

The only feasible application a Cell processor would have in Macs would be as some sort of dedicated media processor for high-end workstations. You won't be seeing Cell-based PowerMacs.

Um...why is this? The chip is SCALABLE, remember?

Only for vector processing, not for anything else.

And it's not the PowerPC 970, it's a brand new core. This new Power core is apparently an in-order chip and very narrow (just 2 pipelines?). So don't excited, even a P4 would laugh at this things low IPC.

[Praxis]

The only feasible application a Cell processor would have in Macs would be as some sort of dedicated media processor for high-end workstations. You won't be seeing Cell-based PowerMacs.

Um...why is this? The chip is SCALABLE, remember?

Only for vector processing, not for anything else.

And it's not the PowerPC 970, it's a brand new core. This new Power core is apparently an in-order chip and very narrow (just 2 pipelines?). So don't excited, even a P4 would laugh at this things low IPC.

It's supposed to go in PDAs, TVs, PS3s, and high end servers. That's what I meant.

It's a new core (65nm), but its supposed to be based off the 970 IIRC.

[HyperionX]

Um...why is this? The chip is SCALABLE, remember?

Only for vector processing, not for anything else.

And it's not the PowerPC 970, it's a brand new core. This new Power core is apparently an in-order chip and very narrow (just 2 pipelines?). So don't excited, even a P4 would laugh at this things low IPC.

It's supposed to go in PDAs, TVs, PS3s, and high end servers. That's what I meant.

Not in PowerMacs as the original poster stated. And I'd doubt you'll find it in servers: weak integer performances makes that unlikely. I'd doubt you'd find it in PDA's either unless you want to watch movies on them, in which something more dedicated would be more likely because of better power consumption. I'd doubt you'll find it in TVs unless you have a DVD player in that TV, which I would think would be cheaper if it had a dedicated DSP decoding the movie. Frankly, I don't really see it being used outside of the PS3 much at all.

It's a new core (65nm), but its supposed to be based off the 970 IIRC.

No it's not, it's a completely new chip design.

[Praxis]

Only for vector processing, not for anything else.

And it's not the PowerPC 970, it's a brand new core. This new Power core is apparently an in-order chip and very narrow (just 2 pipelines?). So don't excited, even a P4 would laugh at this things low IPC.

It's supposed to go in PDAs, TVs, PS3s, and high end servers. That's what I meant.

Not in PowerMacs as the original poster stated. And I'd doubt you'll find it in servers: weak integer performances makes that unlikely. I'd doubt you'd find it in PDA's either unless you want to watch movies on them, in which something more dedicated would be more likely because of better power consumption. I'd doubt you'll find it in TVs unless you have a DVD player in that TV, which I would think would be cheaper if it had a dedicated DSP decoding the movie. Frankly, I don't really see it being used outside of the PS3 much at all.

It's a new core (65nm), but its supposed to be based off the 970 IIRC.

No it's not, it's a completely new chip design.

You're right, it's based on POWER5. Sorry. It'd probably become a G6 *if* Apple used it.

As for being used...Toshiba and Sony have already stated it will be used in HDTVs next year, and IBM will put it in high-end workstations.

[The Kernel]

You're right, it's based on POWER5. Sorry. It'd probably become a G6 *if* Apple used it.

You're not getting this are you? For desktop applications, the Cell is an oversized waste, only applications that use highly parallelized code are going to have any use for it. Apple might have use for it as an accelerator, but for 90% of the applications people used, Cell isn't going to provide much of a performance boost. This is the same reason using GPU's for general processing tasks has been mostly stillborn outside of render farms--worse in the case of cell since you are devoting millions of transitors to logic that will almost never be taken advantage of, regardless of how much you optimize the code.

[Praxis]

You're right, it's based on POWER5. Sorry. It'd probably become a G6 *if* Apple used it.

You're not getting this are you? For desktop applications, the Cell is an oversized waste, only applications that use highly parallelized code are going to have any use for it. Apple might have use for it as an accelerator, but for 90% of the applications people used, Cell isn't going to provide much of a performance boost. This is the same reason using GPU's for general processing tasks has been mostly stillborn outside of render farms--worse in the case of cell since you are devoting millions of transitors to logic that will almost never be taken advantage of, regardless of how much you optimize the code.

I *am* getting that, but I disagree that it would never be used. There are programs like iMovie and iDVD that ship with Macs free, and pro apps like Final Cut Pro, or 3d modelling apps, GAMES, etc. This would be a big boost for multimedia. It's not going to make Microsoft Word run any faster, I realize that, but for games and pro apps...it could make a big difference.

[The Kernel]

I *am* getting that, but I disagree that it would never be used.

Which I never said.

There are programs like iMovie and iDVD that ship with Macs free, and pro apps like Final Cut Pro,

Yes, rendering would see quite a boost, but it's not something that enough Mac users do to increase the costs of Apple CPU's by that much, which is why it would make more sense to sell it as an accelerator like Durandal suggested, much like the old x87's.

GAMES,

No, games, especially on the Mac platform, aren't going to see much of a boost from Cell. Most of the parallelized code in a game is in the graphics engine, which is already handled by the GPU. It is concievable that future games will make use of a lot of parallel code for AI and background processing tasks, but game programmers are not going to add such exotic features purely for the Mac market, if they will at all.

etc.

Not much of an etcetera here. Most desktop software outside of rendering simply isn't going to use these vectored FP engines that the Cell offers, no matter how much you optimize it. It's not worth it to add it as a standard feature at this point in time.

This would be a big boost for multimedia. It's not going to make Microsoft Word run any faster, I realize that, but for games and pro apps...it could make a big difference.

Only in VERY select pro applications. Why do you think someone hasn't done this before? Why did the drive to use GPU's for software besides games largely fail? Because it's a lot of silicon that isn't going to be of much use outside of HPC.

[Praxis]

Hm, very interesting.

I have a low-level knowledge of processors (enough to get what people are talking about, but not enough to tell who is right and who is wrong when two sources conflict- basicly, enough to make me look stupid :p ), as you can probably tell by this.

How would you see it being implemented?

[Stark]

Performance aside, have Sony created another chip thats a bastard to code for?

[HyperionX]

Only for vector processing, not for anything else.

And it's not the PowerPC 970, it's a brand new core. This new Power core is apparently an in-order chip and very narrow (just 2 pipelines?). So don't excited, even a P4 would laugh at this things low IPC.

It's supposed to go in PDAs, TVs, PS3s, and high end servers. That's what I meant.

Not in PowerMacs as the original poster stated. And I'd doubt you'll find it in servers: weak integer performances makes that unlikely. I'd doubt you'd find it in PDA's either unless you want to watch movies on them, in which something more dedicated would be more likely because of better power consumption. I'd doubt you'll find it in TVs unless you have a DVD player in that TV, which I would think would be cheaper if it had a dedicated DSP decoding the movie. Frankly, I don't really see it being used outside of the PS3 much at all.

It's a new core (65nm), but its supposed to be based off the 970 IIRC.

No it's not, it's a completely new chip design.

You're right, it's based on POWER5. Sorry. It'd probably become a G6 *if* Apple used it.

No, it is POWER5-based, it is *completely* new, as in "not based on any other chip." And certainly Apple will never use it. It's an in-order CPU whereas all modern PC CPUs are out-of-order. IPC will be crap without gobs of on-die cache (which is expensive) and thus mostly so will performance.

As for being used...Toshiba and Sony have already stated it will be used in HDTVs next year, and IBM will put it in high-end workstations.

There's no point AFAICT to put Cell into any kind of TV (what will it do?). The only high end workstation Cell will be found on will be PS3 devkits and very unlikely anything else. Maybe supercomputing, but IBM already has Blue Gene technology for that so it's not Sony is going to get much push from IBM here.

Tag fixin' -- Phong

[phongn]

HyperionX, Praxis, the both of you had better start consolidating replies and trimming down on the nesting of quotes

Performance aside, have Sony created another chip thats a bastard to code for?

It depends on how good Sony and IBM's developer support is. Certainly multithreading is hard enough, nevermind doing SIMD but it won't be the end of the world.

[Durandal]

I'm expecting it to be maybe twice as fast as the XBox 2 (assuming they're going with the single G5 rumored). I'm more excited about the Cell's application in Macs than in the PS3.

The only feasible application a Cell processor would have in Macs would be as some sort of dedicated media processor for high-end workstations. You won't be seeing Cell-based PowerMacs.

Um...why is this? The chip is SCALABLE, remember?

Ever take a look at the design philosophy of the PowerPC 970? It excels at unoptimized code. The Cell ... excels (heh) at highly parallelized code, in other words, code that was written for it.

Putting a Cell as the CPU in a PowerMac would be akin to putting just the AltiVec from a G4/G5 core as a CPU. It's good at a very limited set of things. That doesn't make it bad or anything, but just because it's "scalable" doesn't mean that it can do everything under the sun equally well.

Why did the drive to use GPU's for software besides games largely fail?

In Tiger, Apple will have moved the entire screen drawing process to the GPU, and Microsoft will have done the same when Avalon is released. And of course, Final Cut Pro uses the GPU for rendering transitions, Motion uses it for just about everything ... I can only imagine Windows developers following suite when Microsoft releases Avalon for XP. I would hardly call the migration of drawing to GPUs a failure.

The reason it's taken so long for any of this to happen is because GPUs with hardware support for ARB_fragment_program have only come along recently.

[phongn]

The reason it's taken so long for any of this to happen is because GPUs with hardware support for ARB_fragment_program have only come along recently.

Also, AGP doesn't have much bandwidth going out from the card (as opposed to going to it) so that hobbled things for quite awhile. PCI-E is full-duplex and it should be much easier to harness the GPU for other purposes now.