Cell Processor!

Kernel

I wonder when these CELL multicore processors will filter to the PC market... they sound sweet! There was one estimate on gamespot that they would be adapted to PC in the summer?!

Also, they seem to perform well at high clock speeds, to such an extent that IBM say the desired voltage supply of the manufacturers will be the limiting factor clock-speed-wise.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4242447.stm
http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-15015-1483-x-x-x

jessy

Kernel wrote:

I wonder when these CELL multicore processors will filter to the PC market... they sound sweet! There was one estimate on gamespot that they would be adapted to PC in the summer?!

Also, they seem to perform well at high clock speeds, to such an extent that IBM say the desired voltage supply of the manufacturers will be the limiting factor clock-speed-wise.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4242447.stm
http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-15015-1483-x-x-x

To say it preforms well is an understatement. One cell chip will be literally 1000's of times faster than intels best.

astrofool

it'll never be used in pc's.

In fact if used in a pc it would stink up the place. They've basically simplified the chip, to allow high clock speeds, and are going to try and do alot more on the code/compiling side. This is a route intel took with both the p4 (high clocks via simple pipeline stages), and the Itanium (compiler's being the key to performance).

It's kinda like a graphics chip with multiple texturing units. It also could be a dog to program for. If this wasn't sony doing this chip, it would probably die a Saturn like death (which was v. difficult to write for). Luckily for Sony, they are number 1 in the games market, so don't really have to worry too much about bending publishers arms to write code for their hardware.

It'll be interesting to see how this is going to work together with an nVidia graphics chip, and if said chip will utilise the Rambus memory Sony are using.

padraigf

Astrofool did you even read any of the articles? IBM is designing and manufacturing the chip. Sony is merely using it in the PS3.

Also I think this is all just a load of hype surrounding the Cell. Sure, it's a nice innovation, but 1000s of times faster than current chips? If you're going to believe that I assume you also believed that the "emontion engine" used in the PS2 was amazing aswell? The amount of hype that surrounded that before its launch aswell!

If it really was 1000s of times faster than the best that Intel and AMD could do why would the even be bothering with a graphics chip?!? It could software render 1600x1200 with all the eye candy turned on! Come on people, honestly, does anyone really believe that it's that amazing?

IBM don't have an amazing track record with such things anyway. There were meant to be 3ghz PPC processors out by now and theres no sign of them.

Ciaran500

Did you read the articles? Sony, Toshiba and IBM designed the chip and Sony and IBM are manufacturing it. :rolleyes:

EDIT:

Sony, IBM and Toshiba, who have been working on the Cell processor for three years,

IBM will produce the processor using a 90nm manufacturing process in East Fishkill, New York, and Sony will manufacture the chip at its Nagasaki, Japan, fabrication plant using an advanced 65nm process.

Gilgamesh

Sony isn't just interested in teh chip for their PS3, it is just a side effect.
Sony's desire with Cell is to implement it into everything that can take the power requrements, e.g TVs Home entertainment systems etc.
IBM and Toshiba are interested in it as the system will be built into Workstations and Supercomputers, or at least can be built in.
The main issue with bringing an entirely new generation of Chip like Cell, whicih works differently then any other chip, is that the Software will have to be specifically programmed to actually use these features.
Also, this Chip is not 1000 time faster than a P4, the 4.66 GHz is a Marketing gag from them to give people an idea where the chip lies compared to a P4 or Athlon
it is a bit more complex than people are puttign it here, but also the PS3 will have the same problem as the PS2 at the start. It took develoopers up to now to actually program games, or even be able to program games which can actually use the full potential of the Emotion Engine, in the PS2.
plus, the other issue will be, that programs that will be able to use the Full performance of it (PS3 will alegidly have 4 Cell Chips!) will be so big, that they will have to go over the full capacity of one Blue Ray disc.
the Biggest game I know sofar on the PC is 6 GB, Blue Ray Stores a total of approx 92GB!
so you can see how much development will be required

gline

padraigf wrote:

Astrofool did you even read any of the articles? IBM is designing and manufacturing the chip. Sony is merely using it in the PS3.

Also I think this is all just a load of hype surrounding the Cell. Sure, it's a nice innovation, but 1000s of times faster than current chips? If you're going to believe that I assume you also believed that the "emontion engine" used in the PS2 was amazing aswell? The amount of hype that surrounded that before its launch aswell!

If it really was 1000s of times faster than the best that Intel and AMD could do why would the even be bothering with a graphics chip?!? It could software render 1600x1200 with all the eye candy turned on! Come on people, honestly, does anyone really believe that it's that amazing?

IBM don't have an amazing track record with such things anyway. There were meant to be 3ghz PPC processors out by now and theres no sign of them.

I agree it cant be all that good or they would be using it in pcs, also why does the PS3 need to be that powerfull, like what res can a tv display?? LOL , most people will be using it on a tv which can only display at crap res, yeh???

astrofool

well. look at it this way, if people were going to throw out backward compatability, then Itanium would probably be the system to do it on. They've spent 3 years designing cell, Itanium has been developed for over a decade. (not that i'm an Intel fan, nearly all my machines have AMD's )

stakey

This is pretty much the same sort of processor that AMD and Intel intend to release, although in Intel's case they intend to release dual core processors into the market first closely followed by a dual core version of AMD's chip. The only significance of this story is the Cell Consortium got theres out first. Its just a multicore processor, nothing majorly revolutionary there i'm afraid. Intel and AMD will bring out there's eventually when they're finished toying with dual cores. And to make things a little better, Windows and Linux are apparently multicore friendly...

jessy

Ok for the none believers read the link below. And i don’t think company's as accomplished as IBM and Sony would make complete knobs of them self’s saying how good the chip is if it wasn’t as good as they say) who the hell said it cant be used in a pc, why? With clock speeds that fast you can emulate the x86 instruction set.

some more info
http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell5.html

FYI astrofool it will be used in PC's.

Gilgamesh

jessy wrote:

Ok for the none believers read the link below. And i don’t think company's as accomplished as IBM and Sony would make complete knobs of them self’s saying how good the chip is if it wasn’t as good as they say) who the hell said it cant be used in a pc, why? With clock speeds that fast you can emulate the x86 instruction set.

Jessy, they have no intention on emulating an X86 instruction set, this thing is a RISC processor and would only be slowed down by x86 processing as it would create a bottleneck for processing.
I do agree, as allready stated, that IBM aren't in the deal just to produce and manufacture the chip for Sony, they would be nuts.
But as most know, IBM have a lot of super computers on the Market and also some High spec Workstations, where this chip is going to be implemented in.
Also, you should know by now that clock speeds aren't the way of the future

jessy

Gilgamesh wrote:

Jessy, they have no intention on emulating an X86 instruction set, this thing is a RISC processor and would only be slowed down by x86 processing as it would create a bottleneck for processing.
I do agree, as allready stated, that IBM aren't in the deal just to produce and manufacture the chip for Sony, they would be nuts.
But as most know, IBM have a lot of super computers on the Market and also some High spec Workstations, where this chip is going to be implemented in.

Emulating is for software compatibility i.e. will run current software.(I didnt say it was or wasn’t going to happen I just said the chip was fast enough to do it)!

Gilgamesh wrote:

Also, you should know by now that clock speeds aren't the way of the future

I think that’s the whole point of the chip (i.e. it will outperform an Intel/Amd 1000 over with less clock speed)

Dempsey

IBM said Cell was "OS neutral" and would support multiple operating systems simultaneously but designers would not confirm if Microsoft's Windows was among those tested with the chip.

If they didnt test their processor with Microsoft Products and ensure compatability then they would be doing themselves out of profit. Alot of money could be made by Sony, IBM, Toshiba because the architecture used has the potential to exceed anything that Intel or AMD have if they enter the PC market. It would take a couple of years to establish themsleves but if ibm got into direct pc selling like dell is then intel could see their market share reduced alot

Kernel

Dempsey wrote:

If they didnt test their processor with Microsoft Products and ensure compatability then they would be doing themselves out of profit. Alot of money could be made by Sony, IBM, Toshiba because the architecture used has the potential to exceed anything that Intel or AMD have if they enter the PC market. It would take a couple of years to establish themsleves but if ibm got into direct pc selling like dell is then intel could see their market share reduced alot

Good to see the discussion on this topic, I thought that most PC users would be divided on this. First off, IBM recently sold off their PC division to a Chinese manufacturing firm, so I don't think they have any interest in direct PC selling anymore. They could, of course, compete with Intel/AMD, as they have huge microelectronics divisions (and also were the first company to develop a copper core technology, which allowed for higher clock speeds and less voltage).

I definitely think that RISC based processing is the way to go, and that RISC is much more powerful than x86 technology. Remember the Amiga? That ran at 6-8mhz (if memory serves me correctly), but used a RISC processor, and certainly outperformed the faster clocked PC's of the day (although some of that could be attributed to the custom chipsets - ala consoles). I think it could also be a case of delaying deployment of RISC processors until the current generation of processors have been used up as much as possible - performance wise (and Intel are already saying that they are at the limits of CPU power for the technology tehy are using). Multicore makes sense, just as dual RISC processors are used in powerful servers, a multicore RISC chip should be able to toss a lot of numbers around.

Gilgamesh - regarding the comment on the blu-ray discs, it is also worth noting that the capacity of the disc will not be the limiting factor as to how much of the chips power will be used, it all depends on the code routines put on the disc. A small program can use all that processing power, depending on the calculations you are intending to use.

Phew, and finally, the screen resolution of a normal TV will be out by then, as HDTV compatibilty will be a must, and any processing for the pixels should be largely done by the GPU. I wouldn't dwell too much on the clock speeds tho, I'm more interested in the kickass architecture improvements of the technology. Well, here's hoping!

Gilgamesh

I like the info you gave Kernel, except for one thing, and another I have to correc ton my behalf.

IBM only sold their Workstation Production. Supercomputers and Server systems are still going to be produced.

In relation to the Blue Ray statement on my behalf, I agree that a small App can max out the chip, but I meant more in the sense of the PS3 in terms of Length of game these days, with max performance quality which the PS3 can offer.
the Size factor for Texutre information rendering processing and all other parts of game production will soar.
also , Sony want's Cell for the TVs which will display real HDTV with the maximum amount of lines available. the amount of Data hichi has to be processed can't be presented on a currently mass produced chip in a TV.

ressem

Sorry Jessy, won't be a thousand fold performance increase. Your link and a few other theorise a 10 fold increase for tuned apps using the APUs in series as a pipeline.

Pretty much like a cleaned up dual core chip of next year + 8 SSE pipelines that could be chained together in theory.

So performancewise comparable or slower than a PC's GPU at time of release, but more capable?

For running typical, APU unfriendly (branches everywhere) code, looks like the (trimmed?) Power PC dual core will be the baseline performance.

Probably will make its way onto a PCI express card aimed at multimedia pro's if it and IBM's compiler turns out to be good enough.

Peteee

Certainly looks interesting. If its cheap to produce (which its gonna hve to be if Sony are puttin 4 of these in a PS3) then it'll be everywhere!

Interesting how IBM sold off their PC business, and now this! Could revolutionise computing, especailly in parrallisable (sp?)tasks, and even if the task isnt, its still a fast chip to not even care.

I for one would get one for video encoding and the like

Kernel

Gilgamesh wrote:

I like the info you gave Kernel, except for one thing, and another I have to correc ton my behalf.

IBM only sold their Workstation Production. Supercomputers and Server systems are still going to be produced.

Of course, I never said otherwise.

They will continue to focus on i-Series, p-Series and z-Series (although with flexible service processor, the products are converging... the choice of OS is almost the only difference now) servers. Latest IBM servers still use SMP, but then, I wouldn't expect they could use the cell technology before Sony (due to licencing reasons etc).

The fact that they ditched the PC division is just an indication that the PC market has declined drastically in the last 5 years, and the companies that concentrate on PC development were always cheaper (in fact, many older 'IBM' PC's were in fact cheap Taiwan made Acer PC's, rebadged and overpriced. IBM are more interested in developing their own proprietary technology and even OS (AIX, OS/400) and using it in their own machines, rather than selling on boxes comprised of Abit/Asus/Nvidia/Intel/AMD parts and flogging them on for a few sheckles.

They aint the innovators they were when they invented the hard disk, but maybe the cell processor will prove to be a good piece of technology, or maybe, another emotion-engine!