[jlippo]

Originally Posted by jonabbey

I remember reading in the Cell BE documentation that LS was something that was explicitly called out as being subject to expansion in future revisions. Whether semiconductor technology would permit a larger LS to be constructed today with the same timing characteristics that the original Cell had, who knows.

If my memory serves me correctly the limitation was light speed.
So with current technology and change down from 65 nm the increased LS shouldn't be a problem.

[Gubbi]

Originally Posted by jlippo

If my memory serves me correctly the limitation was light speed.
So with current technology and change down from 65 nm the increased LS shouldn't be a problem.

The relative electrical signal propagation speed goes down, not up, as you scale to smaller geometries. The wires themselves become narrower, increasing ohmic resistance, and capacitive coupling goes up because wires are placed closer together.

Cheers

[jlippo]

Originally Posted by Gubbi

The relative electrical signal propagation speed goes down, not up, as you scale to smaller geometries. The wires themselves become narrower, increasing ohmic resistance, and capacitive coupling goes up because wires are placed closer together.

Cheers

Well, that certainly would be a problem.

[Esrever]

Cell was a terrible idea but it worked out in the end. People suggesting that its a good idea because after 5 years people finally can do some gpu algorithms on it needs to look at the larger picture and put it into perspective.

The transistor costs was not worth it. If they went with a smaller budget on the cell and went with something conventional like the 360, they would be cutting the transistor budget down by half. For having 2x the number of cpu transistors as the 360, the increased performance is negligible. This along with the inability for the ps3 to show off its performance advantages until late late into the generation must have made for less ps3 sales. The design for this power to be "locked away" is a bad idea and sony has learned with the ps4 from that.

I wouldn't say cell was a good idea at all but it was just very good programers making use of what they can. I think almost every programer would have preferred a more modern gpu with a bigger transistor budget than what the cell+rsx can provide but they learn to deal with the cell over time. At the time the ps3 launched, if a theoretical chip(s) was given the same number of transistors for cpu and gpu and the same TPD, they could have undoubtedly been able to come out with something more easily programmed and performed much better in gaming (at least earlier on) than what the ps3 provided. The increase production costs from the cell even today probably makes for very little advantages over the 360 if the same amount of development time and skill is used to make a game.

The pros of the cell now came at a huge cost for sony. all the R&D and all the extra development for games. This is compounded on top of not having an obvious advantage over the 360 until recently really hurt the ps3.