Guden Oden said:
Hm, there are no VU0/1 in the Cell architecture. The sub-processors are called APUs and they're not analogous to the VUs in PS2, though they share similarities. There's 8 APUs per processing element. The PU is PPC-based, not MIPS-based. This was announced ages ago, though nobody outside the involved parties know what flavor of PPC. Probably nothing too fancy, since the PU doesn't deal with the grunt of the workload anyway.
I know that they are called APU. But to demonstrate why I find the scale of a BE so hard to accept, I'm using familiar terms and ideas. The way APU are reduced in size to VU is made up for by the amount of memory and local bussing in each one. So it's my feeling that their dye scale is somewhat alike.
PPC as PU. This makes good sense. Cell is an IBM product and has been referred to as an extension of the Power family. MIPS and IBM both produce RISC cores. So IBM Power could replace MIPS. But I have records of SONY and Toshiba licensing MIPS64 and developing it to at least the expected 1GHz needed of a PU. While people I respect like Panajev have told me this was announced...I didn't get the memo.
Please forward the memo to me. (Link and/or quote)
DS: It is because I believe Broadband Engine to be an MCM that I stand against suggestion of its use in a console.
GO: Well, the BB chip WILL be what powers PS3. Hopefully it will be the "preferred" incarnation described in the patent with 4 PEs and 64MB eDRAM, but who knows. Time will tell...
This isn't the first time someone has suggested 64MB of eDRAM.
Please show me where ya'll are getting this idea. The patents as I've read suggest that 64MB is the preferred amount for each Sony Element. But that it is off chip. The VS has an image cache/eDRAM on chip. But the VS patents describe it as 32MB, not 64. (Please quote the patent # you got this figure from.)
The Origin server line isn't particularly powerful these days, and Origins from several years ago are even less so. Anyway, it was the GSCube which did all the rendering for the demo, the server was just mass storage and for controlling the show.
Though the quote is dated now and SGI might not be a part of the cell vision anymore, what he speaks of is almost without a doubt using these Origins across the internet as downloadable content servers or game-host servers. I'm sure he doesn't mean everybody needs a rack cabinet in each of our homes!
I know what Origin did and what GScube was created to do,
research tiled-rendering.
I know that SGI is not part of Cell or Playstation3, but that it's modular NUMAflex architecture is (in some ways) imitated by Cell.
Even though this machine is out of date, it represents what Sony is working to produce.
My point is that the GScube is representary of a
VS Engine (4x VS). [/b]
The Origin 3000 is representary of the
BroadBand Engine (4x PE).
When given this example you came to the same conclusion that I did.
That such a device would not be in the home. It would be a server that distributes downloadable content (Video on Demand) and/or functions as an online game-host.
David South
