Cell!

Indeed. the Cell seems like its gonna be a crazy piece of technology and if all goes according to plan....*shivers*

btw heres imho a better article : http://ps2.ign.com/articles/585/585865p1.html

Slashdot has several articles referenced

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/07/2310237&from=rss

i have one Q' tho, when its used in computers, how much will the processor cost? cuz i might save up for it, and continue using my crap pc (900mhz) until its released, or buy a 3.4ghz in May for like 300usd

I can't answer your question, but it sounds REALLy expensive.

edit: Oh btw, I don't think it's going to run Windows would it? I read it's going to support Linux though.

Very nice, we shall how the computer industry will handle this change. Hopefully we can finally be rid of this ancient x86 architecture and go forward.

Cell Processor Breakdown

Ok so finally the cell processor is unveiled by Sony, IBM and Toshiba. It will not be running at 4.6 Ghz, and even during internal testing the speeds were in the vicinity of 4Ghz.

Most probably to gain stability the final clock speed is going to be lower according to me :thumb:. Glad to know that the bulk of work on the processor is done. Full story here. Ok so what about the graphics part?

On a side note PS3 will be unveiled BEFORE E3....check here. W00t cant wait so looks like if they put their back into it PS3 might make it by Christmas. :wub:

and i hope that the ps3 have alot of blue ray disc errors cause sony sucks and i bet there will be a problem runing games on it as well.

It is great everyone is posting about the Cell processor, although I do think it is a little bit too much. There is already a post in the Hardware discussion about it here:

http://www.ngemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59967

I suggest a merge of threads, since it is pretty much the same topic. It is about the specs and capabilities of the cell processor, which includes its use in the PS3.

Yeah it would be good to replace the existing hardware. But Cell seems to good to be true. If they are gonna release cell they can't have more than two since no one will code programs to run all of them. Also like most sony consoles the cell will be hard to write games for.

INCA said:

Yeah it would be good to replace the existing hardware. But Cell seems to good to be true. If they are gonna release cell they can't have more than two since no one will code programs to run all of them. Also like most sony consoles the cell will be hard to write games for.

Click to expand...

that's not a isue because sony already said that their main concern is to make it more easy to delope programs for the console, lets hope that tey keep their promise.

I can't answer your question, but it sounds REALLy expensive.

edit: Oh btw, I don't think it's going to run Windows would it? I read it's going to support Linux though.

Click to expand...

I read (I think at theregister.com) that Sony says that Cell will be "OS-neutral", so I'm not sure if that means Windows support or not. My guess is if M$ cant get it easily working under xp, they'll wait till longhorn.

Well I'd imagine that if the Cell makes big enough waves, if MS doesn't give it support, MS are the ones that'll end up screwed, but then again: can Cell make waves without MS behind it?

>I read (I think at theregister.com) that Sony says that Cell will be "OS-neutral",

The OS-neutral is refering to the Cell requiring low-level programming (ASM essentialy) and an app for the Cell would essentialy bypass the OS' hardware abstraction layer.

Kane said:

The OS-neutral is refering to the Cell requiring low-level programming (ASM essentialy) and an app for the Cell would essentialy bypass the OS' hardware abstraction layer.

Click to expand...

Would this mean that our current set of programming language is going to be reduced back to using ASM and current programming language will be out the door?

It just makes me wounder, how much will it cost to build these cells... it sounds expensive, but if they're to be in a console, it can't be that expensive HMM, very interesting indeed.

I have no idea how much it would be to produce the cell processer, but considering at least the PS3 one will be mass-produced, it should be relativly cheaper to produce than a normal desktop processer.

>Would this mean that our current set of programming language is going to be reduced back to using ASM and current programming language will be out the door?

That would be the plan I'd imagine. That's how the best games on the PS2 are made and Sony encourages developers to work like that IIRC.

You aslo have to take into account that the cell processor in the PS3 will most likely be a weaker version than the most powerfull ones, because then it would probably be too expensive, but then again who really knows. We will have to wait and see.

>
"Would this mean that our current set of programming language is going to be reduced back to using ASM and current programming language will be out the door?

That would be the plan I'd imagine. That's how the best games on the PS2 are made and Sony encourages developers to work like that IIRC.
>

LOL, I can assure you that no developer have ever made a commercial game for the PS2 in ASM, good sarcasm Kane, not sure if this guy got it though.

PS2 games are made by programming the bulk of the game code in C or C++, and the most hardcore graphics routines and the transform code for the vector units in assembler. I'd assume that the Cell will be programmed like this too: C/C++ for the main PowerPC core, and specialized assembly, or perhaps something looking like HLSL with luck, for the SPE:s or APU:s or what today's name for the 8 vector thingies is.