I thought the article was mediocre at best. Unless I glanced over it, he didn't even mention exclusivity in talking about cpu caches--how, for instance, in some cpus repeating the cache data in L1 & L2 can both slow things down and limit actual onboard cache compared to cpus which do not carry the same data in both L1 & L2 at all times.
I do agree with his overall basic conclusions, though, and found them sane and coherent. Cell is going to be a bear to program for--but hey, console hardware has never been anything but (PS2, etc.)
I'm still troubled by hearing the repeated speculation that the upcoming xBox is going to feature multiple cpus. Has the 3-ppc xBox2 rumor ever been verified that you know of?
Well, sure, but I don't see how that's really an important point in the context of the Cell architecture. Would be more important if you were comparing the Athlon vs. the Pentium 3.
I'm still troubled by hearing the repeated speculation that the upcoming xBox is going to feature multiple cpus. Has the 3-ppc xBox2 rumor ever been verified that you know of?
So I'd say quite it's pretty likely to have this. But, as we all know, specs can change anytime up to official release, and sometimes after (typically if there's a nasty hardware bug).
Do you realize that multicore chips are going to be the default in PC land in about 4 years? Everyone is moving towards multiple processors. You should be worried if MS thought they could keep up with only one processor.
Do you realize that multicore chips are going to be the default in PC land in about 4 years? Everyone is moving towards multiple processors. You should be worried if MS thought they could keep up with only one processor.
And what other choice does MS have? There are not a lot of high performance options available. Look at Intel--2 years ago they release 3.2GHz CPUs. And the fastest chip they offer now? 3.8GHz. CPU makers hit the wall, so at least for the time being the only real solution is going multicore.
And what other choice does MS have? There are not a lot of high performance options available. Look at Intel--2 years ago they release 3.2GHz CPUs. And the fastest chip they offer now? 3.8GHz. CPU makers hit the wall, so at least for the time being the only real solution is going multicore.
Yeah, and if they were smart, they would've known that this wall was a long time coming. Intel only accelerated it by going for clock speed over IPC, too.
