Can Cell Processor make it into PC's?

[ndoogoo]

PCs have graphic acceleration, why not processing acceleration.

A PCI-E card with 512MB RAM + a few Cell CPUs for processing acceleration.

 

[PC-Engine]

From what i've read, it seems like Cell is going to obliterate any AMD or Intel offerings.

Could someone who knows this kind of stuff tell me whether Cell is really an AMD/Intel killer, or if AMD/Intel are still overall better, faster chips?

Once again, in pure floating point math, Cell kills pretty much everyone. But running Windows, using Word and Excel, floating point math matters as much as hippos.
It really depends on what application you're running. Cell is made for a console, Intel and AMD chips are made for desktop. It also explains why MS is going for neither of them for Xbox2, preferring a PPC architecture, much like what's inside Cell.

CELL having a PPC procressor have nothing to do with MS's cpu using a PPC processor. MS chose a PPC for many reasons and it's not because CELL uses one. The cpu in Xenon is closer to a computer cpu ie the Macs. Also IBM already said the CELL archicture could use ANY kind of core as the PPE from MIPS to ARM.

 

[hoom]

But running Windows, using Word and Excel, floating point math matters as much as hippos.

And just how much power do you need to run Word again? Sweet FA.
A64s do just fine @ 1ghz running that kind of stuff.
So as long as CELL can run Word roughly as fast as an A64 @ 1ghz who cares?

Now, a pro office person who regularly deals with huge spreadsheets, databases etc might want to do better, but they are gonna have Intels from Dell anyway...

 

[akira888]

Most professional applications I've used tend to be I/O limited, anyway.