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Cell Architecture Explained

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the closer-looks dept.

IdiotOnMyLeft writes "OSNews features an article written by Nicholas Blachford about the new processor developed by IBM and Sony for their Playstation 3 console. The article goes deep inside the Cell architecture and describes why it is a revolutionary step forwards in technology and until now, the most serious threat to x86. '5 dual core Opterons directly connected via HyperTransport should be able to achieve a similar level of performance in stream processing - as a single Cell. The PlayStation 3 is expected to have have 4 Cells.'"

3 of 570 comments (clear)

  1. Cool! by Jacco+de+Leeuw · · Score: 4, Funny
    85 Celcius operation with heat sink

    Well, perhaps "cool!" is not the correct response...

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    Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
  2. Re:This is beginning to sound more like by goodbadorugly · · Score: 4, Funny

    a DBZ reference: "Part 4: Cell Vs the PC"

    The 45 episode saga in which:

    Bill Gates becomes a cyborg and summons the forces of evil.

    A new Cell is constructed out of unsold Itaniums (Not to be confused with the Cell built by Sony, which is a friendly robot that is found out to be good. ( Until he is found out to be evil when the heroes notice he is under the control of the cyborg Bill Gates who has been behind the charade the entire time) and challenges the world to a rematch of earth shattering proportions

    Second string characters have meaningless conversations that take up entire episodes

    There is hilarious comic relief from common citizens in various towns as their cities crumble around them

    Krillin dies

    The dragon is summoned

    Goku gets a haircut ...Good lord I should have my anime viewers license revoked for knowing all that crap.

  3. Nicholas Blachford is an idiot. Please don't read. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nicholas Blachford is an idiot. Do not read any of his articles. Just to give you the best of Nicholas, read his antigravity article and visit his web site:

    http://www.blachford.info/quantum/gravity.html

    Also, look at the nose pictures of him ;)

    http://www.blachford.info/other/me.html

    Seriously, the guy has burned most of his sane braincells.

    For serious laugh, read his article series 'building the next generation' from osnews. I really got good laughs from that 4 part series.

    Also, it didn't take long to spot a totally idiotic statement from todays slashdotted article:

    > Parallel programming is usually complex but in this case the OS will look at the
    > resources it has and distribute tasks accordingly, this process does not
    > involve re-programming.

    Here Nicholas misses the core problem of parallel programming. The program algorithms _always_ have to made parallel. The OS can't do it.