Go on the record & predict CELL performance

[Kolgar]

I just love how sooner or later, EVERY thread gets polluted by console/brand bias. And it's the usual suspects every time.

How... boring.

 

[cthellis42]

Oh yeah, like THAT'S a difficult prediction.

 

[London Geezer]

I just love how sooner or later, EVERY thread gets polluted by console/brand bias. And it's the usual suspects every time.

How... boring.

It's not that bad! YET!

 

[Acert93]

I am cheating some.

Key quotes:

We've managed to glean some inside tidbits. A single Cell chip is expected to be capable of surpassing 250 billion floating point operations, or 250 gigaflops, per second, rivaling the best mid-1990s supercomputer. In flops, it is six times as fast as Nvidia's new graphics chip.

Sony and IBM have announced plans for a workstation combining multiple Cells that, acting in concert, will reach 16 trillion flops, ranking alongside the world's top ten supercomputers. It will be aimed at engineers and Hollywood animators. This figure is "probably a p.r. exaggeration," the Cell engineer says, but future workstations containing racks of 32 chips will be able to attain this speed.

32 chips for 16TFLOPs. That is 500GFLOPs per chip. Note that the CELL engineer says "This figure is "probably a p.r. exaggeration," but "future workstations containing racks of 32 chips" will likely reach 16TFLOPs.

So my guess is that 500GFLOPs CELLS are the future but not the present. This connects very well with the comment that current chip are is in the 250GFLOPs range.

So my guess is that the first CELLs that are in the PS3 are going to be on the 65nm process and perform 250GLFOPs and that a shrink to 45nm will bring about 500GFLOPs chips that will make up the 32chip 16TFLOPs workstations.

PS3 CELL = 250+ GFLOPs

In my book this is exciting (better physics and AI woot!), but I am sure some of you are dissappointed based on past comments and expectations. While not official, if this does end up being true I can already see it now:

Blind Sony Hater: "Hahaha No 1TFLOPs?! CELL sux0rs!!!!!!11"

Blind Sony Fanperson: "Crap-Box 2 is sux0rs more with half the power!!!!1111"

You all just know that is going to happen... and again, looks like CELL is gonna rock. Nice job STI.

 

[V3]

One BaDaBoom

If PS3 doesn't contained a Broadband Engine with a peak of at least One TFLOPS, PS3 will indeed be

sux0rs!!!!!!11"

 

[leechan25]

I think the BE will have two cells with two PU each.

 

[ysoya]

I believe Ken is sufficiently insane to integrate 4 PEs in one chip. (65nm)

I guess total processing power of BE may be around 800 GFLOPS

 

[Megadrive1988]

five hundred trillion, trillion trillion theoretical flops.

 

[Megadrive1988]

I think the BE will have two cells with two PU each.

then each of the 2 Cells should have 16 APUs, 32 total (and 4 PUs total)

same difference,

 

[rabidrabbit]

Flippity Flop, Floppity Flip
See how high this rabbit can hop

Floppity Flip, Flippity Flop
Cell's gonna be a 500 Gigaflop job.

 

[Megadrive1988]

a 256 GFLOP Playstation3 CPU would seemingly be roughly ~41x faster / more powerful than PS2's 6.2 GFLOP CPU (MIPS core + the 2 VUs + everything else)

now if it's 4.6 GHZ we might get slightly more out of a single Processor Element CPU with 8 APUs. The previously mentioned ~294.4 GFLOPs which is about 47x more than PS2's EE CPU.


now, lets say that Cell Processor Element is more efficient than Emotion Engine was, and you can get more realworld performance out of a Cell PE PER theoretical FLOPs. meaning that if Cell Processor Element was clocked down to the point where it produces 6.2 GFLOPs like EE, but it might still outperform EE because of efficiency or more usable realworld performance. okay, now lets say that in the real world, EE gets 1-2 GFLOPs sustained/usable/realworld performance. and a downclocked Cell PE rated at the same 6.2 GFLOPs gets 2-4 GFLOPS sustained/usable/realworld performance.

Okay, *now* you take a properly clocked Cell PE at 4.6 GFLOPs that produces 256 ~ 294.4 GFLOPs. you might be looking at 82~94x the performance of EE, assuming Cell PE is twice as efficient or gets twice the realworld, sustained usable GFLOPs performance compared to EE.

something to think about.


so I hope for 512~588.8 GFLOP PS3 CPU that is twice as effecient as Emotion Engine was, so developers have WELL BEYOND 100x the realworld performance of Emotion Engine.

 

[jvd]

I was joking when i put 1flop .

I've said before i expect peak of no where more than 128gflops , 256 gflops if it doesn't launch till q4 of 2006 .

Real performance would be around 80 or 90 gflops sustained .

I think this is reasonable considering how big a cell chip would be , its yields, its heat output , its power consumption and the fact that it had to be put in a 300$ console that at the most would cost 500$ to make and need to ship in the millions of units in the first few months of its launch

 

[rabidrabbit]

I was joking when i put 1flop .

Oh... sorry.......... *applause* you're so funny jvd

 

[Pugger]

The PS3 will be a 1-8 setup.

 

[London Geezer]

I think it might be an old school 4-4-2.
Maybe a 4-5-3.
If they want to go nuts, they could go the 4-3-2-1 route. But i think they'll need to fix the defense, it's a bit wobbly at the moment.

 

[Mythos]

If the first Generation Cell is 90NM, 1 Chip with 1:8 set up. Depending on the size of the chip; are we looking at 65NM with a BE implematation of 1 Chip with 4:32 set up or 2 Chips at 2:16 each? Likely scenerio?

 

[jvd]

I was joking when i put 1flop .

Oh... sorry.......... *applause* you're so funny jvd

Please please last thing my ego needs is to be fed

 

[DudeMiester]

FF Flops, hehe!

 

[Megadrive1988]

gimmie a 4 Broadband Engine MCM. that's 4:32 * 4 setup.

16 PUs total, 128 APUs total

oh and 4 TFLOPS per Broadband Engine, not 1 TFLOP. hehe.