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More Cell Processor Details And First Pictures
slashflood writes "After reading two articles on slashdot about the Cell architecture and another one that criticizes the extensive roundup of the STI patents, I found the first pictures of the Cell core. It seems that at least some predictions were true. Seeing is believing." mtgarden points to this ZDNet article which says that the "first version of the chip will run at speeds faster than 4GHz. Engineers were vague on how much faster, but reports from design partners say 4.6GHz is likely. By comparison, the fastest current Pentium PC processor tops out at 3.8GHz." (More below.)
Hack Jandy writes "Anand Shimpi has some details about the upcoming Cell processor (PS3) in his personal blog. According to Anand, "Rambus announced that the new Cell processor uses both Rambus XDR memory and their FlexIO processor bus. Because Rambus designed the interface for both the memory controller(s) and the processor interface, the vast majority of signaling pins are using Rambus interfaces - a total of 90% according to Rambus." Hasn't Rambus been showing up a lot again recently? The fact that Cell uses XDR has been widely speculated, but the fact that it will also use the Rambus bus signalling is something completely new."
How about HL2 benchmarks?
I believe Sony and IBM and Toshiba are going to produce this thing as a joint venture, calling it "Cyberdyne" also naming the PS3 online game network Skynet, sounds promising...
There isn't much info on this processor yet, but from what I've heard about it, I conjecture that its design is in danger of violating Nakamura's law of quantum molecular finitism, especially as the clock speeds are increased. This could result in an asymmetric shift of the lattice substrate, in which case the transistor conductivity would actually start to skew in the direction of anticonductivity (the inverse of superconductivity), forming insulating barriers. As insulating barriers would form and more heat would be generated, unbounded oscillations the molecular level could cause regenerative superhetrodyning - a cascading effect leading to the processor eventually failing catastrophically while emitting a sound remarkably similar to the Love Boat theme. Or not.