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Ding Dong, The Cell is Dead

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  • 23-11-2009 3:54pm
    #1
    Overheal
    Registered Users Posts: 83,302 ✭✭✭✭


    http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16530/38/
    The Cell processor which IBM once flogged as revolutionary is now officially dead in the water. German website Heise Online quoted IBM's VP of Deep Computing, David Turek, that the planned successor to the current PowerXCell-8i processor, slated to have two PowerPC processors and 32 SPEs, will not be released.

    Some of the development work will crop up in other projects but effectively this means that Big Blue is terminating its Cell processor line and the PowerXCell 8i the last one out the factory door. Cell was supposed to be IBM's big white hope even if it was slightly slower on most things.

    Sun's Niagara at 1.4GHz was more than 13 times faster than the 3.2GHz Cell at long string pattern matching for example. If the working set is tiny, then the 3.2GHz Cell CPU is roughly 50 percent faster than the 1.4GHz Niagara.

    The Cell inspired both Intel and AMD to create the Larrabee and Fusion respectively. In other words, one or more general purpose cores fused with a number of stream processing units.
    This means the PS4 wont be an awful stupid monster to code for. Viva La Simplicite!


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    #2
    Gummy Panda
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,919 ✭✭✭✭Gummy Panda


    Overheal wrote: »
    http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16530/38/

    This means the PS4 wont be an awful stupid monster to code for. Viva La Simplicite!

    Not true.

    IBM just won't be using it in their future products. Toshiba and Sony are still invested in the technology. IBM will still make the chips for them


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    #3
    leninbenjamin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,983 ✭✭✭leninbenjamin


    As a processor the Cell died a long time ago tbh. It's main uses today are for HD video transcoding and that, where it's still very competitive, however in the future it's more likely to be seen as an expansion card.

    As for the PS4, nobody knows. Specifically, this recession has hit Sony bad and everything said previously now has the context of a major corporate losses hanging over them. Everything could change in an instant. They did sell their stake in the Cell manufacturing facility though, so it's unlikely to be cell based imo.


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    #4
    Gummy Panda
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,919 ✭✭✭✭Gummy Panda


    Most processor rumours now are about the DS2 and PSP2. There was an interesting thread on Neo GAF about it.


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