dodo3 said:
Sorry, I'm new but I was just wondering what are the SPEs strong points and weak points?
That's a much better question than your thread title is. Consider changing it (the SPEs
can be used for mostly anything. It could in extreme cases make the overall execution speed slower than not using them, but it can be done
)
Anyway, the SPEs are particularly suited to classic stream processing tasks. So, your algorithm should be easy to parallelize, the working sets should be relatively small and memory access predictable. What does that mean in practise? Well, for games you can probably use them quite easily in some areas while in others, different algorithms than those used on classic systems may be appropriate. Whether or not these are actually available and practical to implement depends on the case and largely remains to be seen. I fully expect that PS3 developers will have a lot to explore even after all the first gen games are out.
Sorry that I can't give more concrete examples, but I have not yet programmed for PS3
and don't want to say anything wrong or flameworthy in this thread.
dodo3 said:
Can the SPEs help the RSX render graphics?
Short answer: Yes, of course they
can.
Long answer:
There are many possible ideas that could use one or more SPEs to render graphics, and many have been thrown around here in this forum. I believe the biggest distinction is wether you have cell actually changing / producing framebuffer content or just helping out with a secondary task like shadow volumes. Anyway, I personally don't believe that some of the wilder possibilities (i.e. "hdr anti-aliasing on cell") will surface in actual games but I like to be surprised.
