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Asher
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Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:17
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quote:
Originally posted by nostromo
That means I guess that the PS3 won't be out 'till Q4 2006.
I admit I don't understand most of the tech mumbo jumbo. They told us the Cell would have 9 cores, whereas the 360 would only have 3 of them. But now they're saying that the Cell only has one CPU, with 7 x SPE @3.2GHz. I don't have the foggiest idea what a SPE is, so... |
Do you know what a vector processor is? In effect, it's a "Single Instruction, Multiple Data" type processor -- SSE, AltiVec, etc. They work on matricies/arrays...for instance, a set of 3D coordinates.
Vector processors are very fast at doing stuff like 3D math, physics, etc. (dumb computation stuff...straight numbercrunching) They're terrible for things such as AI, core game logic, etc. (conditional logic, branching stuff)
SPEs are "Synergestic Processor Elements". It's a fancy name for a tiny vector processor.
The Cell is a regular PowerPC-style processor (AFAIK, a G5/PowerPC 970) and then 8 SPEs/vector processors. The central CPU is more or less the "mother chip", and delegates work to the "daughter processors" to do the processing of vectors.
On the PS3, one of these SPEs is disabled (for economical reasons...lets them use a higher percentage of chips produced), and another is supposedly reserved for operating system purposes, leaving 6 SPEs and 1 CPU available for developers. In effect, they can run 7 different hardware threads at once, 6 of them in vector units.
On the Xbox 360's CPU, it's a 3.2GHz tri-core chip, each of which has a vector unit. However, each CPU can handle two threads of data at once, giving developers access to 6 hardware threads, and all 6 of them can exist in the vector units.
The difference between the two in the real world will be minimial. The PS3 CPU will have a slight advantage in things such as physics and 3D calculations (which is useless, since the GPU does all that these days), while the X360's CPU is more balanced and can perform better with logic, AI, etc.
IMO, the Xbox 360's design is more appropriate for the gaming console.
The reason Sony went with Cell is they originally planned to have more than one Cell on the console, and use that to do the graphics calculations as well. They got scared of MS (in my opinion...) and called on Nvidia at the last minute to make a graphics chip. Hence the off-the-shelf part in the PS3, and the reduced number of Cells in the thing.
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nostromo
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Montréal, Québec
Mar 2002
time: 00:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Asher
Do you know what a vector processor is? In effect, it's a "Single Instruction, Multiple Data" type processor -- SSE, AltiVec, etc. They work on matricies/arrays...for instance, a set of 3D coordinates.
Vector processors are very fast at doing stuff like 3D math, physics, etc. (dumb computation stuff...straight numbercrunching) They're terrible for things such as AI, core game logic, etc. (conditional logic, branching stuff)
SPEs are "Synergestic Processor Elements". It's a fancy name for a tiny vector processor.
The Cell is a regular PowerPC-style processor (AFAIK, a G5/PowerPC 970) and then 8 SPEs/vector processors. The central CPU is more or less the "mother chip", and delegates work to the "daughter processors" to do the processing of vectors.
On the PS3, one of these SPEs is disabled (for economical reasons...lets them use a higher percentage of chips produced), and another is supposedly reserved for operating system purposes, leaving 6 SPEs and 1 CPU available for developers. In effect, they can run 7 different hardware threads at once, 6 of them in vector units.
On the Xbox 360's CPU, it's a 3.2GHz tri-core chip, each of which has a vector unit. However, each CPU can handle two threads of data at once, giving developers access to 6 hardware threads, and all 6 of them can exist in the vector units.
The difference between the two in the real world will be minimial. The PS3 CPU will have a slight advantage in things such as physics and 3D calculations (which is useless, since the GPU does all that these days), while the X360's CPU is more balanced and can perform better with logic, AI, etc.
IMO, the Xbox 360's design is more appropriate for the gaming console.
The reason Sony went with Cell is they originally planned to have more than one Cell on the console, and use that to do the graphics calculations as well. They got scared of MS (in my opinion...) and called on Nvidia at the last minute to make a graphics chip. Hence the off-the-shelf part in the PS3, and the reduced number of Cells in the thing. |
So you're saying that Cell doesn't pwn the 360's CPU. So the 2 teraflops thingie is probably bs. Irc, Sony claimed that the PS2 would be able to render Toy Story in real-time...  Anyway, acccording to Wikipedia, FLOPS is not a very good measure of gaming console's performance:
quote:
FLOPS in isolation are arguably not very useful as a benchmark for modern computers. There are many other factors in computer performance other than raw floating-point computation speed, such as interprocessor communication, cache coherence, and the memory hierarchy.
For ordinary (non-scientific) applications, integer operations (measured in MIPS) are far more common. Measuring floating point operation speed, therefore, does not predict accurately how the processor will perform on just any problem. However, for many scientific jobs such as analysis of data, a FLOPS rating is effective. |
So the ultimate test, I guess, will be the games themselves.
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ixnay
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ACS Staff: 'RoN' Content Editor
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I <3 etna, omg disgaea fag
Jan 1970
time: 22:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Odin
My God, what the hell happened to Nintendo?  It seems they've been going downhill since the N64, which is a real shame since I grew up playing Nintendo games, the first video game I ever played was SMB3 on the NES, when I was 5. Now they are being relegated to handhelds for kids to play Pokemon.  |
I dunno, I'm pretty excited about things.
New online Smash Brothers at launch.
New next generation Metroid, Zelda, and Mario games in the works.
Low Price Point for both the system and the games.
Square-Enix Support, aiming for a near-launch online game in the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles series.
DVD-Movie Playback.
Fully Online out of the box for free.
Backwards Compatible with the entire Nintendo library.
Tiny little system in a sleek, ergonomic design.
Plus the new Zelda coming out this year looks incredibly kick-ass.
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17-05-2005 22:37
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