On the topic of "Cell" press releases and such...

[Guden Oden]

I don't think we should take the "up to 10x more powerful" statements too seriously. It's too early for Sony to reveal its cards now (particulary not in a Reuters press release I might add), and this device isn't intended for PS3 anyway, so I would expect them to spread a bit of misdirection and such until the time comes for the true announcement.

I have no idea how fast the BB will be, though I definitely expect it to be faster than 64Gflops.

 

[a688]

Re: On the topic of "Cell" press releases and such

I don't think we should take the "up to 10x more powerful" statements too seriously. It's too early for Sony to reveal its cards now (particulary not in a Reuters press release I might add), and this device isn't intended for PS3 anyway, so I would expect them to spread a bit of misdirection and such until the time comes for the true announcement.

I have no idea how fast the BB will be, though I definitely expect it to be faster than 64Gflops.

I don't know about "not intended for PS3" since it's supposed to use the cell processor. Its not going to be a gaming console but it is using tech that is to be used in th PS3 so it that should give some insight into the cell for the PS3. Whats the processor in the TV going to be used for anyways. I'm aware of processors in current TVs but is the cell going to replace them in general or what?

 

[Fafalada]

I have no idea how fast the BB will be, though I definitely expect it to be faster than 64Gflops.

Even by DM math, the chip would have to be 2x faster (he downgraded P4 performance by half for some reason - no need to guess what).

Of course by this definition, the fastest desktop is a 2ghz PPC970 (8Flops/clock), which gives you 160GFflops by DM(tm) math. If we're nasty and calculate against dual CPU we are at 320, and with some MHZ increase by end of 2004 we could be approaching 512 8)

Of course spinning the PR spin DMs way wouldn't stop there...

 

[cthellis42]

Frankly, I have no idea what implementation they'd be sticking in a TV, but I have a LOT of confidence in the ability for information to hit "totally uninformative" levels between engineers, PR, and actual PR release, the article writers who probably don't know anything outside of that release but are writing up something anyway, and the fact that "CELL" gets used in many ways, as it can basically be used when talking about the overall architecture and a host of differing chip implementations. Modular stuff is hard to work with anyway, but in this case there aren't even any finished products locked in spec-stone to be mentioned specifically for whatever's being said.

 

[Guden Oden]

Re: On the topic of "Cell" press releases and such

I don't know about "not intended for PS3" since it's supposed to use the cell processor.

Cell isn't a processor, its a processor architecture. Compare with x86 - you have your antaurs and pentiums and crusoes and athlons and etc.

Whats the processor in the TV going to be used for anyways.

MPEG2 decoding and such I would think.

I'm aware of processors in current TVs but is the cell going to replace them in general or what?

Yes. It would run the whole show, including on-screen menus and such.

 

[Megadrive1988]

ahh good, I was going to ask, if it is likely we'd be seeing any sort of indication on the transistor count for the Cell that Sony is currently sampling.

 

[Phil]

I thought it had been said numoures times that "CELL" is an architecture, not a chip as you will find it in consumer electronic devices. Future TV's of Sony will have a CELL variant, but lets not forget the beauty and purpouse of "CELL" - scalability. I expect TVs and similar types of consumer electronics to have a low-powered CELL variant, while the Broadband Engine in PS3 will be a high-powered CELL variant.

And as Guden points out - do we really expect Sony to hand out specific performance information of their next console now and today (and as unclear as in the above article)? No.

 

[Megadrive1988]

exactly Guden and Phil, Cell is not a processor, but an architecture, one that is modular & scalable.

It's like saying MIPS processor and 800 MFLOPs or PowerPC processor or X86 processor or what have you.

until we know the exact implimentation of Cell for PS3's CPU and likely, the GPU as well, we really won't have a clear picture as to what sort of performance we're looking at.

I'm sure a Cell-based processor for a television will not be as powerful as the Cell-based processor for the PS3. who needs 512 GFlops or more for a television?

 

[Panajev2001a]

Re: ...

I guess you people are missing out the whole point of CELL; a homogenous execution environment. Having varying clockspeed devices and latency was not a part of SCEI's game plan....

I am pretty sure they will not force the same clock-speed on all CELL based processors and I am also pretty sure that they cannot force the latency to a certain specified level as it would be a massive undertaking bordering on the impossible.

Beside, the embedment into a TV set revealed something very important about CELL; a fanless ULV operation. A chip cannot burn more than 10 watts without a fan, so that means a low clocking speed very probable.

Or we might have a chip with a very silent fan or you might be right and in the WEGA Engine 2.0 they will not have 4 GHz CELL chip.

You are connecting this CELL based processor used for TVs with PlayStation 3's Broadband Engine trying to guess the latter's clock speed from the former's clock speed which is IMHO incorrect.

 

[London Geezer]

DM, you do know that there are TVs (plasmas for example) with fans to keep the chipsets cool enough, right....... If you didn't know, well, they exist. And they are very quiet too, since they don't need to spin at desktop kind of speeds.

 

[Pepto-Bismol]

I suspect the project is ... oh ... considerably more ambitious than you are guys are giving it credit for!

True, "Cell" is the codename for a class of processors rather than the nomenclature for a particular one. More importantly, however, it's shaping up to be tomorrow's licensed technology standard / guideline -- i.e., the roadmap and rules for an entire design phase (from marketing to mass production) at and below 65nm.

By putting Cells in consumer electronics, Sony is attempting to build "hotspots" in the home.

 

[Guden Oden]

I find Deadmeat's claim of anything above 10W power needing a fan a bit humorous, or maybe ignorant. Possibly both. I have a friend who ran a 800MHz P3 CPU with a fairly simple (by today's standards) all-copper heatsink. Zalman flower sinks can take on considerably faster CPUs with no fan. Same friend runs his GFFX* 5900U* with a Zalman VGA cooler; the one that looks like a flattened flower sink, not the heatpipe design.

Yes, it works. We played FarCry on his box at max settings on everything for at least 2 hours without any crashes at all.

Anyway, a fan using Sunon's MagLev bearing tech would run for a very long time even if a fan was required. I have such a fan in my Sony surround sound system.

* = Edit. Brainfart, I guess.

 

[Deadmeat4]

...

What did i tell u deadmeat

 

[cthellis42]

Whatever it is, I'm sure you'll have to say it a lot.

 

[London Geezer]

Re: ...

What did i tell u deadmeat

:?

 

[ManuVlad3.0]

4 Processors: code-named “Cellâ€￾ produced by IBM on 0.10-micron SOI process.
Clock Speed: 4 GHz
Floating-Point Performance: 256 GFLOPS
Operations per Second: 2 Trillion
3D Geometric Transformations: 2 Billion Polygons per Second
New processor design specifically for broadband communication generation.

256GFLOPS x 4 = 1 TeraFLOPS

System Memory: 512MB
System Memory Bandwidth: 24 GB/sec

Secondary Processor: Emotion Engine on 0.13-micron process (backward compatible with PS2)
Clock Speed: 300 MHz or 375 MHz (selectable)

GS3 (Graphics Synthesizer 3)
Clock Speed: 750 MHz
Embedded DRAM: 32MB
Screen Resolution: variable from 320x224 to 1920x1080
Fillrate: 24 Billion Pixels per Second

Sound: SPU3 + CPU
Number of Voices: 256 ADPCM channels + software

Blu-ray
Built-in Broadband Ethernet Port
120GB Hard Disk Drive

This is possible?

 

[London Geezer]

4 Processors: code-named “Cellâ€￾ produced by IBM on 0.10-micron SOI process.
Clock Speed: 4 GHz
Floating-Point Performance: 256 GFLOPS
Operations per Second: 2 Trillion
3D Geometric Transformations: 2 Billion Polygons per Second
New processor design specifically for broadband communication generation.

256GFLOPS x 4 = 1 TeraFLOPS

System Memory: 512MB
System Memory Bandwidth: 24 GB/sec

Secondary Processor: Emotion Engine on 0.13-micron process (backward compatible with PS2)
Clock Speed: 300 MHz or 375 MHz (selectable)

GS3 (Graphics Synthesizer 3)
Clock Speed: 750 MHz
Embedded DRAM: 32MB
Screen Resolution: variable from 320x224 to 1920x1080
Fillrate: 24 Billion Pixels per Second

Sound: SPU3 + CPU
Number of Voices: 256 ADPCM channels + software

Blu-ray
Built-in Broadband Ethernet Port
120GB Hard Disk Drive

This is possible?

Depends on where you got it. And it doesn't seem too out-of-this-world to me, apart maybe from the first part.... Also, fillrate of 24GPixels.... Mmmm

 

[cthellis42]

A 120GB hard drive would certainly NOT make it into a baseline machine, though I suppose it could be the "purchasable expansion drive" made available...

The first information, of course, is fairly dated since it's still pointing at the original process, not .065 micron. (Which does not mean all the numbers below will raise, it just points at it being the "old guesswork" we've seen around based on patents and newsbites.)

As far as the "Secondary Processor" goes, if they stick something like that in it would likely be the EE+GS, rather than just half of it at a larger process. Backward compatability made easy. (Though I'm not sure at what chip cost.)

At any rate, there's been a lot of discussion on "what people think" regarding the PS3 around here. You'd be best served by using the Search button and taking a look around.

 

[hey69]

why would a 120GB drive be not possible?

120gb in 2006 - 2007 is like a 10gig in 2002

 

[Guden Oden]

Yeah, 120GB isn't out of the question at all for a product meant to launch in ~2 years. Don't think it'll have 24gpix/s fillrate though, that's way over the top.

Also, it's of course unlikely the CPU will consist of 4 separate chips, and the process won't be .10u...