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IBM's Plans For the Cell Processor
angry tapir writes "Development around the original Cell processor hasn't stalled, and IBM will continue to develop chips and supply hardware for future gaming consoles, a company executive said. IBM is working with gaming machine vendors including Nintendo and Sony, said Jai Menon, CTO of IBM's Systems and Technology Group, during an interview Thursday. 'We want to stay in the business, we intend to stay in the business,' he said. IBM confirmed in a statement that it continues to manufacture the Cell processor for use by Sony in its PlayStation 3. IBM also will continue to invest in Cell as part of its hybrid and multicore chip strategy, Menon said."
What business would want to give up guaranteed sales? I mean, a gaming platform is like walking into a bank, depositing one cent and then getting a cent every second until the bank closes.
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
Bring on a 12 core PS4 with raytracing games.
So, shortly:
Cell is a processor with two PPC cores, interfaced with a bunch of auxiliary CPU cores optimized for SIMD, each with its local memory.
Right?
On further reading - not two PPC cores, one core with two threads using a similar (but possibly superior) technology to hyperthreading.
But yeah, essentially your short description there is correct.
Also I've looked at the top 500 list - The cell, though not the variant in the playstation, is in Roadrunner. Roadrunner is the third fastest computer on the planet.
... is that it lies in between ordinary x86-type multicore processors and CUDA/GPGPU, and there's not much room in between.
Of course game developers tend to be a bit more sceptical. The Cell requires a very specific way of programming (don't align your data flow to the processor's capabilities and performance nose-dives), which doesn't go over well with people who have limited time to make their game/engine work on several different platforms, most of which work roughly the same.
I attended the Games Convention Developers Conference 2008. A number of panelists mentioned that what they presented was harder to get working on the Cell due to its unique requirements. It really does require a different approach to every other system on the market.
Add to that the fact that the PS3 doesn't appear to deliver obviously superior performance to the more conventional X360 and the question arises whether the Cell is worth the hassle in the gaming sector. Scientific programming can afford to write system-specific code and jump through hoops to attain maximum performance (after all, 10% faster execution speed may mean their calculations finish a month or more sooner). Game developers, on the other hand, are on a very tight development schedule and might make a better game with a sightly less powerful but conventional platform to develop for.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
...processor is that the company selling it's flagship product decided to lock out people wanting to experiment with it.
Because those people made such progress after having nearly four years to experiment? It's time people around here quit pretending like Sony never gave them the chance to dink around with the PS3.