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."

Comments

Cell

[ryanmfw]

Cell processors could really dominate. With how cheap they arespeculated to be, their distributed processing, and their all around speed, the could take over a significant part of the computer marketshare. If Cell processors also have the Power4 processors in them, this could be a replacement for x86. Could be. As other articles have pointed out, x86 has had superior competition in the past, and has been able to weather it. We shall wait and see. Cheers

Re:Cell

[hattig]

From http://www.aceshardware.com/forums/read_post.jsp?i d=115121622&forumid=1

CELL is a Multi-Core Architecture
Contains 8 SPUs each containing a 128 entry 128-bit register file and 256KB Local Store
Contains 64-bit Power ArchitectureTM with VMX that is a dual thread SMT design - views system memory as a 10-way coherent threaded machine
2.5MB of on Chip memory (512KB L2 and 8 * 256KB)
234 million transistors
Prototype die size of 221mm2
Fabricated with 90nanometer (nm) SOI process technology

We're talking about a single-core POWER5 design (because of the SMT).

But 221mm^2 ... that's big, bigger than a 130nm Opteron, bigger than a dual-core 90nm Opteron. But wait for 65nm, and you've got something of a manageable size to make a cheaper console. I don't see 4 Cells in a PS3 though, not even at 65nm, unless it is going to cost a boatload. Still, Sony aren't a little company, I'm sure they could sort it out.

Still, I guess this means the next PowerMac G5 will be using processors with SMT finally.

PS3

[clean_stoner]

The Cell is going to be in the PS3, so does that mean that the PS3 will be clocked at 4.6 GHz+? That seems like a big leap considering consoles are normally running a little slower than "good" computers at the time they come out.

We flame Intel for touting speed...

[X43B]

I'm waiting to see how much work it can actually do before making a judgement. At the least it always exciting to have another option. I wonder how difficult it will be to take advantage of the new architecture.

Re:Xbox

[Thu25245]

Thing is, the next Xbox will be using a PowerPC 970. So it will share a common ancestor (POWER) with the Cell.

I wonder, how compatible are the two CPUs' instruction sets? Will Microsoft be able to drop a Cell into a future revision of the Xbox2 and maintain backward compatibility? Could someone theoretically hack a PlayStation3 to run Xbox2 games?

Re:Speed isn't everything

[MBCook]

That's true. But there are two important things here. The first is that it's at 4ghz. The P4 hasn't been able to reach that (though Intel origionally said it would happen by now). So it's all ready up there.

The second is that it's STARTING at 4ghz. It's one thing to say a chip can scale and run at some speed (again, I'm looking at you Intel), but to debut it running faster than the fastest mass produced CPU in the world is something all together different.

Cell should be quite formidable, and I think it will be quite interesting to see what comes of it. I've held the opinion for a few years that computers would move to having a couple of CPUs each running their own task (like in Cell), with one main (quite possibly slower) CPU controlling them all and running the OS (traffic cop, again like in the Cell). While the individual processing units are not general purpose (they are more vector oriented), it should still be interesting to see what comes of this. After all, most things people use high-end CPUs for are (or can be) vector ops, right? Compression, 3D, etc. Wordprocessing and spreadsheets don't tend to need much power. A large generalization, I know, but still... the introduction of the Cell (especiall the way it should be able to "group" its self with other Cell processors in your house) should prove quite interesting even if it turned out to be a failure (which I SERIOUSLY doubt.)

Power consumption

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you wondering about the power consumption of this thing, perhaps you should note that Sony just licensed LongRun2 from Transmeta. It is a dynamic solution for power consumption and leakage that will probably end up in the 65nm versions coming out next year. google transmeta sony for more.

Once touted as the Intel killer, perhaps Transmeta will finally have its day.