CELL

[Gunhead]

Is it just a vision of Kutaragi; or is there actually a plan of what it should do and what it should be like?

What'll be radical about it (besides the Teraflop (cl)aim)?

Personally, despite everything, I'm not positive Ken is in total control of each and all of his faculties. His CELL talks are just too far out... I'd be hippy to be proven wrong, tho.

 

[Saem]

Well, considering, Sony, Toshiba and IBM have formed an alliance to build it, I'm guessing the have a plan.

As for what it's all about? Well, it seems to me that they take many simple MPUs, put them together to make a more powerful MPU and in the greater MPU feed them with GOBS of bandwidth a la embedded DRAM, then it's all about some whacked out interconnect/communication technology which allows them to string a whole butt load of these together and make a super duper game console, well computer.

I personally, am really keen on the idea. I've always thought about why there has been sooooo much emphasis on stupid ass MPUs that just do one thing at a time. I have considered it and am of the thinking that having small simple MPUs, interconnected with a powerful data transportation network, all working together or individually on tasks is the way to go. I don't believe fast MPUs are needed merely ones that don't have to continually need to change focus all for the sake of emulating simultaneous computing.

 

[Gunhead]

Well yeah I've learned too that it's that trio at it, so i'm already salivating...

BTW, WTF is a MPU? Media PU? VPU was already heavily in the YABA category, IMHO.

WTF is a GOBS?

OK, seriously. CELL kinda looks like Fuzion, doesn't it?

 

[Saem]

MPU is Micro Processor Unit.

GOBS = lots

If by Fuzion you mean Pixel Fuzion, then I'd say no.

 

[Gunhead]

Well yeah, I meant PixelFusion's "Fuzion" architecture, especially the ~80 million transistor "Fuzion 150" chip design. The specs (at 0.25 micron) talk about a programmable bicus dicus SIMD array of 1536 processing elements, performing over 1.5 Top/s or 3 Gflop/s, and having 24 Mbit (3 MB) of eDRAM with a 600 GB/s bandwidth...

That's specs only, of course; but some crude conceptual similarity would appear to be there, no?

 

[Saem]

That's specs only, of course; but some crude conceptual similarity would appear to be there, no?

Wouldn't that broad a definition allow for nearly anything?

 

[Gunhead]

At least the breadth is on par with Kutaragi's CELL definition

Seriously though, a vast array (or "grid") of generic processing elements, that is to be microcode-programmed for specific tasks... Isn't that quite opposed to current hardwired, highly pipelined 3D accelerators? (Well, maybe P10 and DX9/10 parts are approaching the concept, but selectively, not as all-out efforts...)

So I'd say that at least Fuzion's description does not allow for the PC 3D hardware we have today.

And Fuzion 150 is, if nothing else, at least a verified chip design, not some fantasy hodge-podge of specs. With that in mind, I actually don't think the description/definition was so very broad!

[Of course, PixelFusion is dead now, and I don't know how the follow-up, ClearSpeed, is doing out there. Maybe Fuzion's planned "image based rendering" just wasn't a survivor, and maybe Number Nine wasn't the partner to get the Fuzion design working right and succeeding in the marketplace, even with more mundane rendering methods.]

 

[Gunhead]

Hey, I knew "gobs" by the way. Was just making (poorish) fun of the acronymic look there.

Apparently ATM there isn't anything else known about CELL/Grid/whatever. If they someday make a general purpose CPU out of the design (vision, really, or is "apparition" even more appropriate?), maybe we'll have a consumer Celleron version to test out...

 

[|)U(|0F|)3@TH]

There are plenty of sites on the net about GRID computing, the design philosophy behind the CELL. Here are a few; a Google search will turn up plenty more:

http://www.gridcomputing.com/
http://www.gridcomputingplanet.com/

Download a GRID SDK here:

http://www.globus.org/

It's a promising computing paradigm, imo, for such things as scientific research, in which the computation can be broken up and parts can be sent to other "nodes" on the GRID network. However, the problem I see with applying this computing philosophy to Playstation 3, is that this network is going to be the Internet. Even with a broadband connection, there is too much lag to make that processing power instantly available to the local console. If it is to be used to calculate any real-time graphical, AI, or physics effects in the game being played on the local console, then I do not see how such a laggy system could realistically be used to calculate such instantaneous effects. That's not so much of an issue in scientific computing, but any time-sensitive application - anything from real-time stock-market modelling/forcasting to 3D gaming - will depend on the latency of the GRID network it relies on. Anyone have any thoughts on just how a game console can make use of a network of GRID devices?

 

[MfA]

I have no doubt as far as gaming is concerned all the computing will be done inside the single console. Grid computing is about widely distributed computing, some principles carry over for on chip parallelism ... but since you have magnitudes more bandwith/operations there they dont share that much.

The only thing with network computing I could imagine Sony would want to get into with PS3 is as a service provider for thin clients ... personally Im not interested in renting software and running it from remote computers wether m$ provides it or Sony though.

 

[V3]

Anyone have any thoughts on just how a game console can make use of a network of GRID devices?

Sony has stated several time that PS3 is not going to be just game, but hub for data deliverance through online preferably. They even have some intention to start with PS2. And they went on to design Cell, so server load can be divided, making sure of QoS.

If not just look at the result of FFXI debacle in Japan. 100,000 people bought the game, and they have registration problem already.

This Cell is created for distribution of data more than anything else IMO.

 

[MfA]

I have asked it before, but what concretely would that mean?

 

[Saem]

I think that means that Sony can be a cheap ass and then distribute their server storage for their online distributed games on ppls' PS3s.

 

[V3]

http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000602S0064

That's an old link.

Kutaragi disclosed a road map for the Emotion Engine last October. The first-generation CPU is at about the same level as a Pentium III, with some 10 million transistors. Emotion Engine 2, with 40 million transistors, is scheduled to be developed in 2002. A third version of the chip will feature 100 million transistors, with a launch date of 2005.

So PS3 is plan to contain a CPU with 100 million transistors, I assume at reasonable clock rate.

Derivatives coming

One possible application cited by Kutaragi is home servers that act as gateways for broadband networks and handle a large data stream, such as streaming video. "There will be enormous data traffic on the broadband network," he said. "Servers and routers should have an enormous processing capability. That's one possibility for Playstation 2 chips."

See that, that's why they need something like Cell, PS2 simply is inadequate.

 

[MfA]

I dont consider a couple of Mb/s large datastreams, and thats the most we can expect at home in the coming years (except for some lucky people living in Nordic countries or on university campus).

He didnt consider it inadequate ... he was promoting an EE derivative for the home after all, not a Cell derivative

 

[Saem]

What's so special about Nordic broadband?

 

[MfA]

Standard broadband? Nothing, I was just under the impression that there were more ethernet based MANs in Nordic countries (not to say theres a whole lot of them).

 

[Basic]

As MfA says, nothing special except that we got it early, and it's quite common. I personally have never owned a modem or similar slower than 10Mbps, and I've been on the net for quite some time. The area I'm living in has 10Mbps TP wall outlets in all apartments.

 

[|)U(|0F|)3@TH]

http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000602S0064

That's an old link.

Kutaragi disclosed a road map for the Emotion Engine last October. The first-generation CPU is at about the same level as a Pentium III, with some 10 million transistors. Emotion Engine 2, with 40 million transistors, is scheduled to be developed in 2002. A third version of the chip will feature 100 million transistors, with a launch date of 2005.

So PS3 is plan to contain a CPU with 100 million transistors, I assume at reasonable clock rate.

Wait a second. Emotion Engine 1 came with the PS2. Emotion Engine 2 is being developed right now, for PS3 which should come in 2004, or 2005 at the latest. Therefore, Emotion Engine 3 should come with PS4 around 2007/2008. So PS3 will have the 40 million transistor EE2, I believe.

 

[V3]

He didnt consider it inadequate ... he was promoting an EE derivative for the home after all, not a Cell derivative

Well Kutaragi did state it in some other article that EE is inadequate for such task. In this article EE was just done, with derivative being tought out.

Therefore, Emotion Engine 3 should come with PS4 around 2007/2008. So PS3 will have the 40 million transistor EE2, I believe.

Hmm, the EE2 was suppose to be for some sort of Graphics workstation not PS3. But according to Fafalada it was scrap. They haven't partner IBM at this stage either.

So what we can expect is CPU in PS3 to have 100 million transistor with reasonable clock speed. This CPU could contain Cell technology or not.