Quick Question on PS3 CPU

[dess]

Anyone know how much DP FLOPS the Cell can do (at a given GHz)?

Why does it matter?

To have the right numbers? In addition to satisfact my curiosity.

The performance hit for double precission is 10x (acording to IBM). But as someone said it is not really important in a console.

In a console, no. But Cells will probably be used in other places, too.

 

[Tim]

Anyone know how much DP FLOPS the Cell can do (at a given GHz)?

Why does it matter?

To have the right numbers? In addition to satisfact my curiosity.

The performance hit for double precission is 10x (acording to IBM). But as someone said it is not really important in a console.

In a console, no. But Cells will probably be used in other places, too.

Yes, but this is the console forum. Double precision is used for things like offline rendering and scientific applications - the lack of high DP performance will most likely keep Cell out of super computers and render farms (a Cell with high DP performance would have brilliant for render farms).

 

[dess]

Yes, but this is the console forum.

Sorry, but it's hard to not be sometimes slightly off-topic in relation to Cell. And it seems other people also not being as much strict on it.

Double precision is used for things like offline rendering and scientific applications - the lack of high DP performance will most likely keep Cell out of super computers and render farms (a Cell with high DP performance would have brilliant for render farms).

Perhaps SP is not enough for some scientific calculations, but it seem it's enough for rendering: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=520142#520142
(Though, rendering may also involves DP, here and there.)

 

[arhra]

You don't seem to understand what redundancy implies (neither did I).
It means that any of the eight SPEs can be defective and they will still have a useable processor. This is not a new idea as such, only it has only been possible to apply it to memory up until now.

Haven't nvidia and ati been doing that sort of things for years now, that is, selling chips with non-functioning pipelines as their lower-range cores? The 9500 non-pro (4 pipelines), for instance, was i believe a 9500 pro (8 pipelines) with half of the pipelines disabled (either due to faults, or simply becuase they needed more chips for lower-end market segments), and some could be softmodded to reenable the disabled pipelines, basically turning it into a full-fledged 9500 pro... Or something like that, anyway, i don't remember the details exactly.