Sonys new chip

[Peter]

PlayStation 3 processor unveiled
Cell
The chip has been many years in development
The Cell processor, which will drive Sony's PlayStation 3, will run 10-times faster than current PC chips, its designers have said.

Sony, IBM and Toshiba, who have been working on the Cell processor for three years, unveiled the chip on Monday.

It is being designed for use in graphics workstations, the new PlayStation console, and has been described as a supercomputer on a chip.

The chip will run at speeds of greater than 4 GHz, the firms said.

By comparison, rival chip maker Intel's fastest processor runs at 3.8 GHz.

Details of the chip were released at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.

The new processor is set to ignite a fresh battle between Intel and the Cell consortium over which processor sits at the centre of digital products.

The PlayStation 3 is expected in 2006, while Toshiba plans to incorporate it into high-end televisions next year.

IBM has said it will sell a workstation with the chip starting later this year.

Cell is comprised of several computing engines, or cores.

A core based on IBM's Power architecture controls eight "synergistic" processing centres.

In all, they can simultaneously carry out 10 instruction sequences, compared with two for current Intel chips.

'Multicore' chips

Later this year, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices plan to release their own "multicore" chips, which also increase the number of instructions that can be executed at once.

The Cell's specifications suggest the PlayStation 3 will offer a significant boost in graphics capabilities but analysts cautioned that not all the features in a product announcement will find their way into systems.

"Any new technology like this has two components," said Steve Kleynhans, an analyst with Meta Group.

He said: "It has the vision of what it could be because you need the big vision to sell it.

"Then there's the reality of how it's really going to be used, which generally is several levels down the chain from there."

Mass market

While the PlayStation 3 is likely to be the first mass-market product to use Cell, the chip's designers have said the flexible architecture means that it will be useful for a wide range of applications, from servers to mobile phones.

Initial devices are unlikely to be any smaller than a game console, however because the first version of the Cell will run hot enough to need a cooling fan.

And while marketing speak describes the chip as a supercomputer - it remains significantly slower than the slowest computer on the list of the world's top 500 supercomputers.

IBM said Cell was "OS neutral" and would support multiple operating systems simultaneously but designers would not confirm if Microsoft's Windows was among those tested with the chip.

If Cell is to challenge Intel's range of chips in the marketplace, it will need to find itself inside PCs, which predominantly run using Windows.



CELL SPECS
Faster than 4 GHz
256 billion calculations per second
2.5MB of on-chip memory
Able to shuttle data to and from off-chip memory at speeds up to 100 gigabytes per second,
234 million transistors



...all i can say is awesome


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4242447.stm

[*NoN*Da]rY*]

but will they be able to use it to its full potencial....... i think not :D

(sorry bout spelling Eoin, im fondeling my donut at the same time :) )

[kyzen]

Seriously...

[Peter]

but lets just say they could get 5 or 6 Ghz out of it... that would be awesome, and check out the size of it, it is tiny...... you could fit it in a mobile phone/PDA, it looks like about the size of a sim, mmc/sd card sized..... imagin.... a 6Ghz phone :D

[*NoN*Da]rY*]

its not about the clock speed, when will people learn :)

(once again sorry, and sorry to you K, love the pic. tho :D )

[Bento180]

pffft PS3! i've already got my PS4 off Ebay. I figure why go with outdated hardware *opens box* Ohh... its a box of spoons...

[Eoin]

Originally posted by *NoN*Da]rY*
but will they be able to use it to its full potencial....... i think not :D

(sorry bout spelling Eoin, im fondeling my donut at the same time :) )

As long as you're sorry. :P

[*NoN*Da]rY*]

:D i was trying to eat a donut i found in the fridge :) it was cold and the sort, so in my juggling spelling took a back seat :) i think we can all understand the love a fat man shares with his donut

[mudgie]

I love it how they refer to their products as 'super computers', when they don't come within a millionth of the speed.

Marketing people suck balls.

[*NoN*Da]rY*]

phft, i was told that Sony actual had a legal battle over the title "computer entertainment system"

they are all a bunch of dickheads, i dont think the PS3 will be that great after a while anywho. Dual core CPU's are still pretty unstable ATM they might of been able to juice 'em up alittle but i doubt it very much.

[Joshu]

Heehee :D I love it.

[citizen-X]

rofl

yeah noticed that too joshu

i was lookin at that goin..hmm i dun remember a guy stickin his tongue out in the original footage of that..then i had a closer look and noticed it was liam lol

didn't know spot was a nam veteran :P

front row seat to wang chung getting shot in the head

[radass]

The entire future of computing is dual core. going higher gigahertz wise is stoopid with current technology because it just generates too much heat, much smarter to have a collection of slower cpus and a new programming paradigm (not that tricky anyway, especially now people are used to to vertex and fragment shaders).

And why you think they wont be able to harness the power i'm at a loss, dairy :|

[*NoN*Da]rY*]

im not saying that they cant, im saying that havent yet.

Ofcourse they are going to someday mainly becasue as you say, heat, and that they cannot keep slamming more capacitors in future.

no doubt we will see quad core CPU's and who knows what else. But i still think that its earily days for dual core, much like PCI express.

[Joshu]

Originally posted by *NoN*Da]rY*
they cannot keep slamming more capacitors in future.
You mean transistors?

I reckon that there'll be less of a focus in the future of doing things in parallel, with seperate GPUs and stuff, and having an image passed through different systems (such as shaders are now... as far as I know)

Also, I reckon something PCs might want to do is have their own distributed computing system - PCI cards with a few CPU sockets on them so that large tasks (image/video editing/compression) that would take longer than a few seconds on the main CPU(s) would have chunks of the task pushed down the PCI bus to the "expansion" CPUs.

Sort of from the oldschool maths co-processor idea, but it makes sense when you consider that PCs are designed to be modular anyway, and there are some tasks that work better distributed. Wouldn't work too well for gaming though.

[*NoN*Da]rY*]

yep, i ment Transistors (Moores law wont hold out forever :) )

Its a great idea J. but i fear that alot of peoples wallets couldent handle it :( , That and i think that there would be quite the the bottle neck (not sure tho :) )


Where is the almighty CVT when we need to tap his brain :)

[Bignick]

i hate newish consoles. except my original ps1, that rocked.

who cares if its gunna be wicked awesome fast in 2006? PCs will be 3 times as fast what they claim they're 'special' chips can do by then anyways.

[*NoN*Da]rY*]

well PC's "special" chips are already out for server side Apps. but there not quite upto par as of yet, apparently they still got a few bugs

[Moo]

well i remember when the PS1 came out and the kids that bought them we saying how much faster and better than any pc out.

3 months later Everyones PCs got upgraded, the ps1's where crap again.

hehe.

[*NoN*Da]rY*]

thats about right aswell :)

[Joshu]

Originally posted by *NoN*Da]rY*
i think that there would be quite the the bottle neck
Only if you're going to submit them to tiny tasks. Assigning each processor a semi-monolithic task, like "encode this 10 minutes of my fansub to XviD", or "scan this portion of data for aliens", would be a good use of them.

[*NoN*Da]rY*]

i actual remember on one of my old ASUS P-3 boards that there was a slot that could support a special card that held anouther P-3, fucking weird boad that one was.

[MR_PEA]

Originally posted by Moo
well i remember when the PS1 came out and the kids that bought them we saying how much faster and better than any pc out.

3 months later Everyones PCs got upgraded, the ps1's where crap again.

hehe.

i can see that happening again with PS3 and Xbox2

[SPOT]

the thing is, with consoles having set specs the coders learn more and more.
and after 2-3 years with a single machine, a consoles last gen of games tend to look 10 times better than their launch games.

whereas pc's are constantly changing, so rather than improve exsisting tech, they just make new stuff, and it never really reaches its potential.

take the PS2 v the dreamcast, both consoles 1st gen games were pretty similar, but cause the PS2 didn't die like the DC (a criminal act if there ever was one) their latest bunch of games look hella sweet compared to the first lot.

a good example is on the mega drive with a game called Ranger X,
it was one of the last MD games to come out and the MD was only capable of pushing 64 colors on screen,
thru tricky coding they got a whoping 128 colors on screen and it was one of the best looking MD games available.

so don't count out the consoles before they hatch,
as they will be competing very well with PC's.
if not winning as a higher percentage of games are 'bought' for consoles and therefore worth the investment of making a game in the first place.

[axl_morgs]

well said spot, that post made my dick hard

Originally posted by SPOT
whereas pc's are constantly changing, so rather than improve exsisting tech, they just make new stuff, and it never really reaches its potential.

you see, THIS is what pisses me off about owning a PC primarily for gaming...i can never keep up! and even if i could, whats the fuckin point?

gfx chipset manufacturers keep releasing new cards, probably a revision on a chip every few months and a new chipset every 6-12 months. its fucking stupid. i wonder if the reason why consoles can go from looking good to amazing in their lifetime is because, as spot said their hardware never changes, maybe PC hardware changes are forcing game makers to only focus on the best not the more common gfx cards.

its fucking annoying!

i have always said that it woud be awesome, if not bodacious, if the gfx chipset makers and to a lesser extent CPU makers, would all take a year or two off and not release anything new. this would give game makers a large amount of time to push the best out of their games because they only have to support a set level of hardware.

it will never happen tho.

i say we drink till we cant feel feelings no more! :beer

[radass]

Originally posted by SPOT
the thing is, with consoles having set specs the coders learn more and more.
and after 2-3 years with a single machine, a consoles last gen of games tend to look 10 times better than their launch games.


because of that, and because they're coding to the metal and not through a general purpose operating system, what you can do with a console of a given power vs a pc with the same power is very different. Take xbox for example, it's a celeron(!) 733 with 64MB of ram and a geforce 3ish video card. Even though the xbox is basically a pc, halo runs like shit on a pc of more than twice it's speed ! (and probably uses much of the same code on both versions, the hardware being so similar)

So although it may have happened with ps1 (and even then mainly because of the lack of texture smoothing on it until recently), i dont really think it happened with the xbox.

[dominatrix]

can you upgrade an xbox? would it make any difference if you could?

[*NoN*Da]rY*]

its so true, i mean look @ the Quake 3 engine (me and you Dave gonna play that on net REAL soon ;) ) EA realy unlocked that for Pacific Assualt

[Peter]

lol. Alcohol, the source and solution to all problems ;) i say drink up :beer

[Snoopy]

Originally posted by MR_PEA
i can see that happening again with PS3 and Xbox2
it will, eventually

[radass]

Originally posted by dominatrix
can you upgrade an xbox? would it make any difference if you could?

theoretically yes, but not in practice. And even if you could it would make no difference as the games are coded specifically for a 733 celeron with 64MB ram, and do not scale to the hardware they run on like a pc game does.

It might help with the emulation side of things though if you were running linux on it and playing with mame etc.

[Moo]

http://www.xboxcentral.net/faq.html


Q: What kind of a CPU does the Xbox have?
A: The Xbox uses an Intel Pentium 3/Celeron II hybrid running at a clock speed of 700MHz for it's main processor or the CPU.


http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/system/gameconsoles/xbox/cpu.jpg

I was wondering about the CPU myself... and a mate said it was a p3.

odd.