Say HIIII to CELL's APU; picture inside :)

[Panajev2001a]

Thanks to Vince for the link to the two IBM patents

CELL related patents:

Suzuoki ( SCE )'s CELL patent:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph..."&OS="Suzuoki+Masakazu"&RS="Suzuoki+Masakazu"

Patent by IBM regarding the PE's structure:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph...&s1=20030115500&OS=20030115500&RS=20030115500

Patent by IBM regarding the APU's structure:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph...&s1=20030037221&OS=20030037221&RS=20030037221

 

[Paul]

4 FPU's doing a 8GFLOPS each I suppose? Or did I make a boo-boo.

Hmm and to think this was under everyones noses for the longest time.

 

[Paul]

Hmmm I wonder if the APU patent even gives a declared speed. Let me check.

 

[Tagrineth]

lol...

So if PS1 is using a single SPU, and PS2's dual PS1 SPU's bolted together is SPU2... will this be SPU3 or SPU4?

 

[Vince]

lol...

So if PS1 is using a single SPU, and PS2's dual PS1 SPU's bolted together is SPU2... will this be SPU3 or SPU4?

Whatcha mean? I'm confused.

 

[Megadrive1988]

He's talking about the Sound Processing Unit of PS1, and that PS2 used two PS1 SPUs bolted together. I am not clear on that, however IIRC, PS1 had 24 sound channels, and PS2 has 48 channels. so....


but I dont know what this has to do with the APU diagram which is the subject of this thread....

 

[Paul]

It's a She

 

[jvd]

It's a She

Hahaha you said It's a she.. Hahah .

Anyway I have no clue what she said either.

 

[Vince]

Hahaha you said It's a she.. Hahah

lol

 

[Megadrive1988]

Anyway, all jokes aside,

I see 8 distinct processing units in the APU. I assume these are the 4 FPUs and 4 Integer Units.

 

[ShinHoshi]

What does "FXU" stand for ? is this unit the responsable of the integer operations ?

 

[Panajev2001a]

Yes.

 

[Panajev2001a]

New CELL related patent: December 14, 2000 ( almost 3 years ago: it was a very young CELL architecture, but you see the APUs entering the picture ).

http://makeashorterlink.com/?U502229D5

 

[Megadrive1988]

Exellent Panajev!

See i KNEW that Cell was in development BEFORE the early 2001 annoucement.

I wonder how long STI have really been working on Cell / Cell building blocks (PEs, APUs, etc) ....since 2000 or perhaps even as far back as 1999 ?

well, at least as far back as late 2000.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Megadrive, that might have been IBM alone or maybe they were already in talks ( most probable answer ) and started preliminary work.

It is a mistake thinking that they started work in 2001, some people decided to take that route, but the CELL architecture has roots that go farther in the past than that.

It is very likely that STI started doing preparation work before the three companies could not only formalize the alliance and reveal the existance of the project to the public.

IBM hand-picked this dream team of Senior CPU Architects and Designers to start the work on defining CELL ( yes they did take ideas from the enormous work IBM's R&D labs had done till that point ).

 

[Panajev2001a]

Exellent Panajev!

See i KNEW that Cell was in development BEFORE the early 2001 annoucement.

I wonder how long STI have really been working on Cell / Cell building blocks (PEs, APUs, etc) .... since 2000 or perhaps even as far back as 1999 ?

well, at least as far back as late 2000.

It is fun going from the most recent patents to the older ones ( going from the present to the past ) seeing how the ideas first appeared and how successive patents re-defined the CELL architecture around them, isnt' it ?

Thank Vince as well because his last find ( the patent I linked about the PE and the APU ) were the fruits of his research ( while I was trying to dig and analyze PSP stuff ): from there and other info you can start looking for more relevant patents.

And these patents are not covered by any NDA.

 

[Megadrive1988]

I'll bet the inner working of the Pixel Engines are under strict NDA, though