MfA said:
x86 with it's SIMD extensions is about as good at multimedia as any other of the mainstream instruction sets with their SIMD extentions. IMO x86 would even be a reasonable ISA for a massively parallel processor with simple cores.
Id much rather have a massively parallel x86 with lots of simple x86+SIMD cores and some vertical multithreading than Cell personally.
Are you suggesting that such a thing would be economically viable? I think you are. What are your reasons to preferring this to Cell?
aaronspink said:
ultimate_end said:
And no, Cell is not just a "kick ass console". Sony corporation is investing the billions that it is because they are R&Ding for the future of their entire consumer electronics business. Same goes for Toshiba, who I heard are even supplying GM with cell based processors for use in motor vehicles.
Apparently Sony then wants a short future in the consumer electronics business.
I didn't mean their
entire future. If I meant that I would have said that.
aaronspink said:
ultimate_end said:
What's the total STI investment? More than $10 billion probably. What kind of fuckwit company spends that kind of money on the CPU of a stupid games console? I cannot believe the relentless stupidity that festers around these boards! Cell probably isn't suitable for general purpose computing, but the scalable architecture sure is suitable for the kinds of applications that Sony and Toshiba are best known for.
10 Billion? likely not. Probably not muc more than 1.2 billion at the most. If they have spent more, then it is already a failure.
And if it isn't suitable for the general purpose market then it will have a hard time paying for its self for use in anything except PS3.
I am including Sony's investment in fabs as well, because Sony has stated that these 65nm fabs will be used only for Cell IIRC. I am also referring to the investment that all the STI partners have made, as everyone appears to assume that somehow, the
total spent by all three companies is all for PS3 and that somehow, Sony has orchistrated this entire project because they want a "kick ass console".
By "general purpose" I am referring to PC-style general purpose computing and I speak relatively, because according to the patents, Cell is intended to have Integer/Floating Point and Scalar/SIMD capability which means that at high clock speeds Cell will actually perform extremely well at such applications as Word processing etc. I should have been more careful in my wording.
aaronspink said:
Also, who are the morons in this thread who somehow think that PC's aren't moving towards media and entertainment applications?
No one. The PC already has a large portion of the media and entertainment applications.
And that means exactly what?
As for my comments, again, my phrasing was sub-par. That's what you get when you need sleep, which also explains the ranting nature of my posts. But I am referring to the couple of comments such as this one by Entropy:
"I certainly don't see the x86 market as a whole clamoring for higher media performance"
Which is completely untrue.
aaronspink said:
It wasn't that long ago that PCs didn't even have FPUs
Actually, it WAS quite a long time ago. PCs had FPUs before consoles did.
What have Consoles got to do with this?
As for PC's FPU, well in the overall history of the Personal Computer, I don't see it as such a long time. More importantly, if we think of media/entertainment as being the current "era", then the fact that PC FPU also belongs in this timeframe also suggests "recentness". I am merely trying to highlight the rise of entertainment/media importance in the PC. Frankly, I find your comment to be nit-picking.
aaronspink said:
t from TVs, sterios and games consoles. At the very least, companies such as Sony do not believe that a single home server should be PC-based. Why do think Cell is so important?
It isn't that important. Just another also ran on the road of computing progress. Nothing about cell is any different than the fanism and ra-ra comments about PPC during the AIM era.
You need to improve your reading comprehension buddy. I meant important to "companies such as Sony".
I agree that Cell is just a step on the road of computing progress, I never claimed otherwise. I do fail to see however, how you can compare Cell to PPC, which was effectively nothing more than a simple x86 alternative for desktop computing.
aaronspink said:
Now, I also read people defending the PC paradigm. In the face of the media revolution, the lack of industry unity and the requirement for legacy software support has held back progress in the PC industry.
Its easy to pontificate. It is much harder to give examples. So lets hear them.
LOl. You do realise that quite a lot of CPU transistors are dedicated to x86 legacy support don't you? In the past, when overall transistor budgets were small, this was a very big hindrence to peformance. Think of all those transistors that could have been used to increase performance. That's just the beginning my friend. Bottom line? Microsoft dictates the PC industry. The majority of consumers use Microsoft applications and Microsoft operating systems. Because of Microsoft, each iteration of CPU has to be backwards compatible and therefore very similar to the previous one. This has prevented innovation in moving away from the tired old x86 architecture. The same thing also applies to the overall layout and architecure of the PC. If you can't see it, then you are blind.
As for industry unity, I was referring mainly to the Graphics card industry (even though, in the PC industry most things take forever to gain approval, which slows progress). According to Dave, It is graphics card companies who dictate to microsoft what direction to move the industry in. It is then up to Microsoft to balance the opposing forces and introduce the next DirectX. Any type of mediation process takes not inconsiderable time, this is where progress is limited. Then there are industry standards to fight over, such as PCI Express for example. That took quite a while IIRC. These things take the time that they do purely because there are so many opposing forces in the industry. People like you label anyone with a different perspective as "idealistic", but so are the people who seem to have dillusions that the PC industry is some kind harmonious utopia, when could not actually be possible for anything that consists entirely of countless self-concerned parties.
aaronspink said:
What x86 dark ages? There are over a half BILLION x86 users. And all of those users paid real prices, that actually covered the costs of design and development. There are at most 75 million PS2 users and the vast majority didn't pay enough to cover the R&D costs ofthe hardware.
You have made good comments so far, but now you just sound rediculous.
Over a half billion users? If you read my comments and those of others on this thread, then this is actually irrelevant. I would also like to add that just because something is common does not mean that it is good. This is something that everyone should learn at an early age, but maybe you haven't reached that point yet.
Yes we all payed real prices. Real prices that are inflated so that every single one of a thousand bickering companies can make healthy profits. You are quite comical as you seem to think that you are actually seeing some kind of value in your PC! A PC that you are paying for a decade and a half of x86 backwards compatability. A PC that you will have to upgrade in 6 months because of the next incremental rise in CPU performance that Intel, AMD and whoever else decides to release, because they need to sustain their income in a market that will remain essentially unchanged for years to come.
aaronspink said:
Maybe, just maybe, x86 is king becuase people want x86. It certainly isn't from lack of alternatives. the alternatives come and go, but the PC remains. It adapts. It is because it is fast moving and dynamic that it still exists. The last threat from the "media processors will take over the world" resulted in significant consumer exectronics companies writing off hundreds of millions in development costs when the PC space made a correction and added new functionality. Boom media processors dead. Same thing happened with the DSP rage era where people were predicting multiple DSPs in each PC doing the bulk of the work. Now DSPs are also a dime a dozen.
Yeah like consumers actually care whether x86 powers their computer or not. Consumers are brand loyal to Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, ATI and Microsoft. They are not brand loyal to x86! Again, read the comments made and you will realise that the iron grip x86 has on the market is not attributable some kind of imaginary superior technology or mass appeal. The PC industry is a self perpetuating behemoth. That, my friend, is what will prevent Cell from taking over your daily computing. You are completely dilluded if you believe that the few challenges to the PC industry in the past failed because the PC is the only realistic alternative.
In any case, the PC era as we know it is almost at an end. The question is, who will win out as the home server king and evolve from there? will it be the PC? Don't be surprised if Microsoft lose the battle to take over your life. If Microsoft loses, it will be the beginning of the end for your beloved PC. Everything dies aaronspink... everything dies.
