Details trickle out on CELL processor...

[j^aws]

I like how the second anyone mentions generality in processing wrt the PS3, the thread immediately becomes the 589th thread we've had about REYES, ray tracing, radiosity, etc.

Well, this is a 3D forum you know! Besides this stuff hardly gets mentioned compared to other topics on this board, *cough* shadow maps *cough*...

But seriously a thread takes the direction of it's participating members. So considering CELL is a clean sheet design with several billions worth of investment into it and your into 3D and a senior member of the project team (Peter Hofstee) mentions the following,

"We've created something that is very flexible," he said. "Having a more generic architecture will allow people to do new things."

PlayStation 3 chip goes easy on developers

<Seriously, please feel free to comment here... >

 

[Inane_Dork]

The GPU in the X2 will be more flexible and allow you to do new things.

Weeeeee. Can we get off now?

 

[j^aws]

The GPU in the X2 will be more flexible and allow you to do new things.

Weeeeee. Can we get off now?

<sigh> It's easy to instigate a flame war but ten times harder to prevent one. I expected this answer by my 'leading' post but I had hoped I would get something constructive. If you have something you need to get off your chest then there are other threads or start one or you can add something constructive here otherwise please troll elsewhere.

I'm buying an xbox2 and a Nintendo Revolution for that matter and armed with the info you've provided, I'll look forward to the potential even more.

Btw, noone was comparing any other console's GPU, as the discussion was about the CELL architecture. If one was trying to compare apples to apples, then you would have to take the whole CPU+GPU chipset/architecture into account and not isolate one component (GPU) as explained to you here... when you tried to make a similar comparison....

PEACE

 

[Spidermate]

Inane wrote:
This is something I've never quite grasped, and maybe you can explain it to me. I seem to hear two things about Cell, and they seem contradictory to me:

1) Cell works great for all device types.
2) The PS3, using Cell, is built for graphics.

It seems to me that one of those two must be in error. Maybe Cell does not work for everything like rumored. Or maybe it does, which means it cannot be focused on graphics performance. And maybe both are true, but only because the mainly graphical parts of the PS3 are not Cell-based.

Is any of this making sense.

I'm assuming you haven't seen this before:

Sony today announced the "QUALIA 005," in their WEGA series of LCD TVs, which is the world's first television to use Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) as a backlight. BUT WHY? According to Sony, this 46" television has the most realistic color reproduction of any set EVER. I'd certainly hope so too, considering it will set you back more than $10,000 USD.

Features on this new set don't stop there, however - Sony managed to cram in their Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer (of PS2 fame) for better image rendering, as well as their "DRC-MFv2" standard-TV-to-HDTV upscaler we reported on just last week. Another bizarro feature inserted in an attempt to justify the 10G pricetag is usage of the "XMB" (Cross Media Bar) GUI, which is currently used on the PSX. I complain about prices a lot, but who am I kidding? I'd get one if I was stinking rich, which I certainly plan to be.

NOW, what would you say that Emotion Engine was orginally designed for? :? Then I would like you to answer me this: was or wasn't the Pentium 3 much more powerful than the Emotion Engine? By no means am I judging the next consoles; I'm just shining a little light on what the Cell may possibly represent as far as its flexiblity and the way it may hold-up to the competiton.

 

[PC-Engine]

Throwing a Pentium 4 or EE/GS chip into a TV to do stuff a cheap $10 ASIC can do doesn't sound too practical.

 

[Spidermate]

Throwing a Pentium 4 chip into a TV to do stuff a cheap $10 ASIC can do doesn't sound too practical.

Not only have you miss the point, but you've practically restated what I have just stated. Inane thinks that because Cell will be applied to other consumer products, it may classify it as not being a dedicated processor for handling the tasks of PS3 or vice-versa, but never the same. When, infact, the Emotion Engine fell in a similiar boat.

Oh, and one more thing, the Pentium 3 is not capable of performing the task of the Emotion Engine. I suggest you not compare the two.

 

[PC-Engine]

The Pentium 4 doesn't need need to do the same amount of work as the EE/GS in a tv since a tv isn't going to be utilizing 100% of the computing ability anyway. Putting that into a tv is overkill unless the tv has controller ports and an optical drive.

 

[Fox5]

I do not see how the PU can be used as TMUs in the general case... even the APUs for that matter: at least when you need texture filtering.

Using micro-polygons does not eliminate the need for texture filtering (it eliminates the need for perspective correction though) although it would certainly reduce it as we would perform some sort of filtering while belnding micro-polygons together.

Having a L1 cache shared by the APUs would help the APUs to work with textures (fast and low latency random access to texture memory is something that really helps).

I believe some psone games used micropolygons and they still had perspective problems, just not as bad.

 

[Spidermate]

The Pentium 4 doesn't need need to do the same amount of work as the EE/GS in a tv since a tv isn't going to be utilizing 100% of the computing ability anyway. Putting that into a tv is overkill unless the tv has controller ports and an optical drive.

First of all, who said anything about the Pentium 4? Second, this is why Cell is an architecture design to scale at different levels, inabling its performance to be set to different heights. Third, you are comparing two completely different designs. I highly doubt you could have gotten the same performance from an anverage CPU (or even pulling off the task, period), which is what you seem to be comparing.

 

[Panajev2001a]

I do not see how the PU can be used as TMUs in the general case... even the APUs for that matter: at least when you need texture filtering.

Using micro-polygons does not eliminate the need for texture filtering (it eliminates the need for perspective correction though) although it would certainly reduce it as we would perform some sort of filtering while belnding micro-polygons together.

Having a L1 cache shared by the APUs would help the APUs to work with textures (fast and low latency random access to texture memory is something that really helps).

I believe some psone games used micropolygons and they still had perspective problems, just not as bad.

They sub-divided polygons as they got close to the camera, but I doubt they were subdividing all their geometry down to ~1/4th of a pixel in size (a micro-polygon is smaller than a pixel of course).

 

[PC-Engine]

First of all, who said anything about the Pentium 4? Second, this is why Cell is an architecture design to scale at different levels, inabling its performance to be set to different heights. Third, you are comparing two completely different designs. I highly doubt you could have gotten the same performance of an anverage CPU, which is what you seem to be comparing.

Well I said Pentium 4 because that's what I said in my first post. You brought up Pentium 3 for whatever reason. Anyway like I said in a tv you would not need that much computing power so a traditional ASIC would be just fine. SONY is trying to to use these EE/GS to save money by not buying other companies ASICs or designing their own. A GUI doesn't need that much graphics power.

 

[McFly]

But a smart noise reduction algorithm could use a fast chip or Sonys picture resolution enhancement technology just to name two. If there is more power then there will be a smart mind with an idea how to use it. Just because you don't see an use does not meen that there is no use.

Fredi

 

[Inane_Dork]

I'm assuming you haven't seen this before:

http://www.sony.jp/CorporateCruise/Press/200408/08-0819B/img/KDX-46Q005.jpg

Sony today announced the "QUALIA 005," in their WEGA series of LCD TVs, which is the world's first television to use Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) as a backlight. BUT WHY? According to Sony, this 46" television has the most realistic color reproduction of any set EVER. I'd certainly hope so too, considering it will set you back more than $10,000 USD.

Features on this new set don't stop there, however - Sony managed to cram in their Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer (of PS2 fame) for better image rendering, as well as their "DRC-MFv2" standard-TV-to-HDTV upscaler we reported on just last week. Another bizarro feature inserted in an attempt to justify the 10G pricetag is usage of the "XMB" (Cross Media Bar) GUI, which is currently used on the PSX. I complain about prices a lot, but who am I kidding? I'd get one if I was stinking rich, which I certainly plan to be.

NOW, what would you say that Emotion Engine was orginally designed for? :? Then I would like you to answer me this: was or wasn't the Pentium 3 much more powerful than the Emotion Engine? By no means am I judging the next consoles; I'm just shining a little light on what the Cell may possibly represent as far as its flexiblity and the way it may hold-up to the competiton.

Ever seen Apollo 13? You can get that LEM/Emotion Engine to do things it was not intentioned to do, you know.

If Cell is organized to accelerate media processing, it's going to be worse at general processing (like video cards).
If Cell is organized to handle general loads, it's not going to efficiently render things (like CPUs).

And if Cell is so modifiable to include both (by changing number of APUs, etc.), then saying a product has a Cell processor in it means almost nothing.

 

[PC-Engine]

But a smart noise reduction algorithm could use a fast chip or Sonys picture resolution enhancement technology just to name two. If there is more power then there will be a smart mind with an idea how to use it. Just because you don't see an use does not meen that there is no use.

Fredi

And I didn't say they won't find uses for it. The point is specialized ASICs can do the same job better cheaper. Why don't we have Pentiums in DVD players to decode MPEG2?

 

[McFly]

Maybe because it's cheaper for Sony to have one cheap cell chip that can be used for many different tasks by writing software for it, than have many, many different specialized chips that have to be redesigned for every new task.

Fredi

 

[Spidermate]

First of all, who said anything about the Pentium 4? Second, this is why Cell is an architecture design to scale at different levels, inabling its performance to be set to different heights. Third, you are comparing two completely different designs. I highly doubt you could have gotten the same performance of an anverage CPU, which is what you seem to be comparing.

Well I said Pentium 4 because that's what I said in my first post. You brought up Pentium 3 for whatever reason. Anyway like I said in a tv you would not need that much computing power so a traditional ASIC would be just fine. SONY is trying to to use these EE/GS to save money by not buying other companies ASICs or designing their own. A GUI doesn't need that much graphics power.

O...K

I used the Pentium 3 because the Xbox uses the Pentium 3. What were YOU thinking? :| It only made sense since the Emotion Engine is what had to at least hold well to the performance of the competiton as far as consoles had gone.

Exactly, but you see it still didn't affect the way the Emotion Engine performed its tasks when speaking of its usage.

 

[PC-Engine]

Maybe because it's cheaper for Sony to have one cheap cell chip that can be used for many different tasks by writing software for it, than have many, many different specialized chips that have to be redesigned for every new task.

Fredi

And that's why I said: SONY is trying to to use these EE/GS to save money by not buying other companies ASICs or designing their own.

 

[Spidermate]

I'm assuming you haven't seen this before:

http://www.sony.jp/CorporateCruise/Press/200408/08-0819B/img/KDX-46Q005.jpg

Sony today announced the "QUALIA 005," in their WEGA series of LCD TVs, which is the world's first television to use Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) as a backlight. BUT WHY? According to Sony, this 46" television has the most realistic color reproduction of any set EVER. I'd certainly hope so too, considering it will set you back more than $10,000 USD.

Features on this new set don't stop there, however - Sony managed to cram in their Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer (of PS2 fame) for better image rendering, as well as their "DRC-MFv2" standard-TV-to-HDTV upscaler we reported on just last week. Another bizarro feature inserted in an attempt to justify the 10G pricetag is usage of the "XMB" (Cross Media Bar) GUI, which is currently used on the PSX. I complain about prices a lot, but who am I kidding? I'd get one if I was stinking rich, which I certainly plan to be.

NOW, what would you say that Emotion Engine was orginally designed for? :? Then I would like you to answer me this: was or wasn't the Pentium 3 much more powerful than the Emotion Engine? By no means am I judging the next consoles; I'm just shining a little light on what the Cell may possibly represent as far as its flexiblity and the way it may hold-up to the competiton.

Ever seen Apollo 13? You can get that LEM/Emotion Engine to do things it was not intentioned to do, you know.

If Cell is organized to accelerate media processing, it's going to be worse at general processing (like video cards).
If Cell is organized to handle general loads, it's not going to efficiently render things (like CPUs).

And if Cell is so modifiable to include both (by changing number of APUs, etc.), then saying a product has a Cell processor in it means almost nothing.

I'm not understanding you at all. The Emotion Engine was orginally designed for the PS2, no different from Cell. Inspite of this, however, it was still capable of delivering acceptible performance in other devices and electronics as well as the console after two years. Do you or do you not agree?

 

[McFly]

Maybe because it's cheaper for Sony to have one cheap cell chip that can be used for many different tasks by writing software for it, than have many, many different specialized chips that have to be redesigned for every new task.

Fredi

And that's why I said: SONY is trying to to use these EE/GS to save money by not buying other companies ASICs or designing their own.

Wait ... we agree?














Nah, that just can't be.

Fredi

 

[PC-Engine]

First of all, who said anything about the Pentium 4? Second, this is why Cell is an architecture design to scale at different levels, inabling its performance to be set to different heights. Third, you are comparing two completely different designs. I highly doubt you could have gotten the same performance of an anverage CPU, which is what you seem to be comparing.

Well I said Pentium 4 because that's what I said in my first post. You brought up Pentium 3 for whatever reason. Anyway like I said in a tv you would not need that much computing power so a traditional ASIC would be just fine. SONY is trying to to use these EE/GS to save money by not buying other companies ASICs or designing their own. A GUI doesn't need that much graphics power.

O...K

I used the Pentium 3 because the Xbox uses the Pentium 3. What were YOU thinking? :| It only made sense since seeing how the Emotion Engine is what had to at least hold well to the performance of the competiton as far as consoles had gone.

What does Xbox have anything to do with this discussion?

Exactly, but you see it still didn't affect the way the Emotion Engine performed its tasks when speaking of its usage

And that's why you only see EE/GS being used in niche products or high priced products ie it isn't fit for general usage in many devices. If CELL were to be used in many devices then it would have to be compromised like Inane Dork described.