So whats the buzz on CELL workstations?
- Thread starter Brimstone
- Start date
He's trying to tell you something. That is, if you want to listen.
For me it doesn't matter, so I'll say my thoughts out loud. The deal with Nvidia was completed just before they annouced it. They didn't collaborate for two years prior on any Nvidia designs. That was all PR. They are working on it with sony now.Qroach said:
He's trying to tell you something. That is, if you want to listen.
Then, can I ask you a question? Why was the announcement of the nVIDIA partnership at that timing, just a week after the official Cell announcement?
Coincidence, coincidence
Though they've not unveiled PS3 yet, obviously Sony was trying to tell me something. Panajev2001a
Veteran
one said:Qroach said:
He's trying to tell you something. That is, if you want to listen.
Then, can I ask you a question? Why was the announcement of the nVIDIA partnership at that timing, just a week after the official Cell announcement?
Coincidence, coincidence
There was high level talk and nVIDIA was following very closely PlayStation 3's R&D without receiving money from SCE or having a real contract.
nVIDIA for the last two years had its best engineers working hard on NV5X and while they were developing it they kept as one of their R&D goals the scalability of the architecture from the high-end (desktop PC GPUs, possible console GPU, Render-farms, etc...) to the low-end (PDAs, Cell Phones, low cost Desktop and Notebook GPUs, etc...) of the CE market.
They wted to go for PlayStation 3, but it was probably a mix of the "we have the best technology" + "we have the best tools" + "we have the best 3rd party ISV Developer Relations teams" speach from nVIDIA with more and more aggressive pricing that won them the contract.
Believe what you will, but as stated before on this forum... the GPU was not supposed to be nVIDIA's, someone else HAD the contract till about two weeks or so before the announcement was made that SCE had selected nVIDIA a partner in the GPU for PlayStation 3.
DeanoC said:
Eh!!! So is the 'main CPU' really going to be 64bit, or is that just some cut-and paste without thinking. Also note the wording Additional detail is given on the design of a 4-way SIMD streaming data processor. Where data processor is implied as not equivalent to Cell processor.
OK, so CP is made up of DP(s) - that one's easy.
Also note the words 4-way. Not sure how they are using the terminology here, but it is universally accepted that if we say n-way box it means we are refering to a system with n processors within.
So 1 DP is made up of 4... something. Guess.
Wonder if that one lecture will be overcrowded.
Panajev2001a
Veteran
passerby said:
I do not think it is a typo... it is the same thing they wrote in the ISSCC preview papers and had in the famous Peter Hofstee's video talk on the CELL processor.
I guess we all underestimated the role of the PU in regards to high performance implementations like PlayStation 3.
Also note the words 4-way. Not sure how they are using the terminology here, but it is universally accepted that if we say n-way box it means we are refering to a system with n processors within.[/quote]
Read this patent:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?S23512C3A
4-way SIMD instructions can be something like this: we have 4 FMACs and they all perform a FP MADD on one field of three 128 bits registers writing the result in one field of a 128 btis destination register.
Panajev2001a
Veteran
Brimstone said:
Who sai that CELL WorkStations were planned to have standard PCI-Express and AGP busses ? Maybe they have them, maybe they do not.
Maybe they want to talk to developers about the GPU when they have the NV5X-PS3 almost completed.
The CPU will be the main focus at GDC for developers, they can experiment with advanced DirectX 9 features on the PC side while they wait for the final shipping WorkStation.
Panajev2001a
Veteran
nAo said:
Exactly, as it is basically the same kind of terminology they use when they talk about the VUs in the Emotion Engine.
Hmm? Do you have any concrete info on exactly when it's confirmed that nVIDIA won the contract?Panajev2001a said:
In my estimation, it's before July 2004 when the schedule diagram was presented. How can they present the plan of the unveiling event without determing who is the main partner for Media Processor?
In DeanoC's and Brimstone's view, it's in December or November 2004. But assuming SCEI does all fabbing, especially with eDRAM, it's very unlikely that they can proceed to the mass production in Q4 2005 if they reached the agreement in Nov/Dec 2004. It's still a speculation, but I believe it has no logical error.
Also, change to nVIDIA can speed up the development of the PS3 rather than slowdown DeanoC suggests if the nVIDIA solution is superior than the alternative, as nVIDIA must be developing something which could at least meet the requirement by Sony.
