The Cell for (rendering) 3D graphics?

[Ragemare]

I found this slightly dubias, but informative article posted on slashdot http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.html

What I find interesting is that it suggests that the PS3 may be powerfull enough for raytraced games and that the only thing that stands between the Cell and desktop domination - performance wise - are GPUs.

The PC does have a weapon with which to respond, the GPU (Graphics Processor Unit). On computational power GPUs will be the only real competitors to the Cell.

GPUs have always been massively more powerful than general purpose processors [PC + GPU][GPU] but since programmable shaders were introduced this power has become available to developers and although designed specifically for graphics some have been using it for other purposes. Future generations of shaders promise even more general purpose capabilities[DirectX Next].

GPUs operate in a similar manner to the Cell in that they contain a number of parallel vector processors called vertex or pixel shaders, these are designed to process a stream of vertices of 3D objects or pixels but many other compute heavy applications can be modified to run instead [EE-GPU].

With aggressive competition between ATI and Nvidia the GPUs are only going to get faster and now "SLI" technology is being used again to pair GPUs together to produce even more computational power.

GPUs will provide the only viable competition to the Cell but even then for a number of reasons I don't think they will be able to catch the Cell.

Cell is designed from the ground up to be more general purpose than GPUs, the APUs are not graphics specific so adapting non 3D algorithms will likely mean less work for developers.

Cell has the main general purpose PU sharing the same fast memory as the APUs. This is distinct from PCs where GPUs have their own high speed memory and can only access main system memory via the AGP bus. PCI Express should speed this up but even this will be limited due to the bus being shared with the CPU. Additionally vendors may not fully support the PCI Express specification, existing GPUs are very slow at moving data from GPU to main memory.

It also seems to suggest that the Cell will be able to use software rendering at an acceptable speed or that it will possibly be even faster than today's GPUs at rendering a 3D scene

BTW it should be noted that alot of the article appears to be factual information about the Cell architecture and worth reading, although it does appear to slide off in to PR/sensationalist rhetoric at the end.

 

[PatrickL]

Look at console forum

 

[Dave Baumann]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

 

[Arun]

Sometimes, I pity you Dave. I really do Just keep up the good work and try not to suicide next thread you see about this hehe.

Uttar

 

[Ailuros]

Cell is designed from the ground up to be more general purpose than GPUs, the APUs are not graphics specific so adapting non 3D algorithms will likely mean less work for developers.

Sounds clear enough to me....

 

[KimB]

It also seems to suggest that the Cell will be able to use software rendering at an acceptable speed or that it will possibly be even faster than today's GPUs at rendering a 3D scene

To put this into perspective, nVidia is developing the rasterizer for the PS3.

 

[sunscar]

Well, yeah, that's true, but the artical we're referencing does'nt pertain only to the PS3. It's purely about what the CPU could be used for in that particular area of the doccument. In any device though, not just PS3.


Later

 

[Nick]

The author of this article has some interesting *cough* ideas about travelling faster than light and defying gravity too! 8)

 

[oddfellow]

It also seems to suggest that the Cell will be able to use software rendering at an acceptable speed or that it will possibly be even faster than today's GPUs at rendering a 3D scene

To put this into perspective, nVidia is developing the rasterizer for the PS3.

Exactly.

Seems pretty simple to me.

 

[Ragemare]

It also seems to suggest that the Cell will be able to use software rendering at an acceptable speed or that it will possibly be even faster than today's GPUs at rendering a 3D scene

To put this into perspective, nVidia is developing the rasterizer for the PS3.

Exactly.

Seems pretty simple to me.

Thats what I was thinking. However I had heard that the Cell is not just capable of deceant software rendering, but that it could do it at a speed comparable to GPU's of receant generations before.

Maybe Sony could use another Cell(s) in place of a Nvidia GPU, but would rather employ Nvidia to take care of the graphics. Meaning they don't want to create a software render and API (I could make up some reasons to why that is ).

Personally I think the whole idea sounds too good/silly to be true.

Sorry for posting this again, but I thought it would be posted in here for the reasons sunscar said.

 

[XxStratoMasterXx]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

 

[DukenukemX]

When the PS3 is out is there anyway to benchmark this?

Of course the answer is no. Only developers and Sony know the limitations of the PS3.

So for the Cell to be the next best thing since sliced bread is extreme. Especially considering how Sony exaggerated the PS2 hardware.

So why does the power house "Cell" need a graphics chip from Nvidia? Simply because hype can only go so far.

Give it a catchy name like "Cell".
Then claim it to be 10X more powerful then any PC/VPU.
Looks good on Paper.

I can argue that the DreamCast is more capable then the PS2 but no Sony f@nboy is going to listen.

This is all hype that's probably far from the truth. Take it with a grain of salt.

What someone should do is make a 3DMark for console systems. They did it for cell phones. Only way to get people to shutup.

 

[MfA]

Well if IBM ships those workstations they promised obviously yes.

 

[cho]

When the PS3 is out is there anyway to benchmark this?

Of course the answer is no. Only developers and Sony know the limitations of the PS3.

So for the Cell to be the next best thing since sliced bread is extreme. Especially considering how Sony exaggerated the PS2 hardware.

So why does the power house "Cell" need a graphics chip from Nvidia? Simply because hype can only go so far.

Give it a catchy name like "Cell".
Then claim it to be 10X more powerful then any PC/VPU.
Looks good on Paper.

I can argue that the DreamCast is more capable then the PS2 but no Sony f@nboy is going to listen.

This is all hype that's probably far from the truth. Take it with a grain of salt.

What someone should do is make a 3DMark for console systems. They did it for cell phones. Only way to get people to shutup.

we can run a benchmark if there is a linux that include a high quality gpu driver for ps3 .

 

[Cryect]

we can run a benchmark if there is a linux that include a high quality gpu driver for ps3 .

And the chances they include a high quality compiler?