Xenos vs. Cell

[Luminescent]

Since they are both risky but promising designs...

Which is the more forward-thinking, industry-driving design?

Which is a greater engineering feat?

Which one will have more of an impact on next gen games and the way they are played?

In terms of general number crunching, flop potential, Xenos is ahead of Cell: 240 vs. 218 Gflops. Xenos' ALU back-end seems to be as flexible as Cell's SPEs and its load-balancing and sequencing front end, although specialized, seems to be fairly robust and more CPU-like than the gpus before it.

 

[ralexand]

I know so little about RSX but if it really is a pc part then the tri-core cpu, unified shaders, intelligent memory and on chip back buffer would appear on the surface more forward thinking but the cell architecture is also intriguing.

 

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

Since they are both risky but promising designs...

Which is the more forward-thinking, industry-driving design?

They have different applications so it's not comparable. I think both are pretty radical for their respective fields.

Which is a greater engineering feat?

Cell addresses some of the fundemental problems of microprocessors, namely the memory wall and the power wall. R520 is a great step forward for GPU design. I think Cell is more significant for the industry.

Which one will have more of an impact on next gen games and the way they are played?

R520 gives 4xAA for free. That's pretty nice.

In terms of general number crunching, flop potential, Xenos is ahead of Cell: 240 vs. 218 Gflops. Xenos' ALU back-end seems to be as flexible as Cell's SPEs and its load-balancing and sequencing front end, although specialized, seems to be fairly robust and more CPU-like than the gpus before it.

It's a big change for GPU design. The memory addressing is still very different from the traditional memory map model though. Cell's big advantage is very fast and very low latency memory access (6 cycles). xCPU is around tens of cycles for L2. I'm not sure about the R520.

 

[TexT]

Shouldn't it be, Xenos vs RSX... :?

 

[Glonk]

Cell addresses some of the fundemental problems of microprocessors, namely the memory wall and the power wall. R520 is a great step forward for GPU design. I think Cell is more significant for the industry.

IMO, Cell isn't nearly as significant as Sony wants people to believe. It's a niche processor design for some markets, but it's nothing spectacular.

It's a miniature BlueGene in design.

 

[phat]

In terms of general number crunching, flop potential, Xenos is ahead of Cell: 240 vs. 218 Gflops. Xenos' ALU back-end seems to be as flexible as Cell's SPEs and its load-balancing and sequencing front end, although specialized, seems to be fairly robust and more CPU-like than the gpus before it.

I haven't been keeping up with the latest FLOPS tally, but if what you say is accurate, then, obviously, Cell is the greater engineering achievement since Cell can use its 218GFLOPS to render graphics, or to simulate a nuclear explosion, or to repaginate your 300-page novel. Let me see a GPU do all that as well. It's easier to achieve greater FLOPS when you sacrifice flexibility.

 

[jvd]

well phat if you want to compare tflops then the rsx would make cell look like a 386 after all the cell has 215 gflops where as the rsx is capable of 1.8 tflops (Ya sure but thats what they say )

Flops isn't a way to compare anything

 

[danteye]

well, in your opinions, which is the most powerfull between ps3 and x360?

 

[_phil_]

well, in your opinions, which is the most powerfull between ps3 and x360?

Developpers.Put that in the bank

 

[Frank]

Multi-core CPU's are nice when you want to run a lot of applications and processes at the same time. Servers, mostly.

If you want to speed up a single application as much as possible, everything that lets you off-load as much calculations as possible is best.

For games, multi-core CPU's are mostly useful to animate massive virtual worlds in real-time, while multiple general-purpose vector units are best for generating more realistic visuals.

And I think you will get three stages in the future: some CPU cores, lots and lots of general-purpose vector units, and a dedicated pixel pipeline.

So, a combination.

 

[shaderguy]

We won't really know which design is more powerful until both have been out for a year, and developers have had time to learn how to best use each one.

You can compare specs until you're blue in the face, but realisticly there's no way of comparing them without putting the same game on both platforms, optimising the game with the help of the console vendor's dev support guys, and see what happens.

We will have to wait until a large, competent cross-platform developer produces games for both platforms, and then presents a paper comparing their performance at an open conference, or in an open magazine article. (I'm thinking Ubisoft or EA are the most likely sources of this info.) For example, for the current generation EA published its paper at GDC showing that showing the Xbox about twice as powerful as the PS2. Although that paper was controversial at the time, it's pretty much turned out to be accurate.

 

[danteye]

Multi-core CPU's are nice when you want to run a lot of applications and processes at the same time. Servers, mostly.

If you want to speed up a single application as much as possible, everything that lets you off-load as much calculations as possible is best.

For games, multi-core CPU's are mostly useful to animate massive virtual worlds in real-time, while multiple general-purpose vector units are best for generating more realistic visuals.

And I think you will get three stages in the future: some CPU cores, lots and lots of general-purpose vector units, and a dedicated pixel pipeline.

So, a combination.

i'm sorry but i'm a noob in this
which one has multiple general purpose vector units and which has multi-core cpu's??

 

[dukmahsik]

comparing a gpu to a cpu???

 

[danteye]

comparing a gpu to a cpu???

i'm talking about cpu!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

We will have to wait until a large, competent cross-platform developer...I'm thinking...EA.

I've never heard EA called a competant cross-platform developer, and I wouldn't say I know anything of theirs that really makes the most of PS2. Cross-party tends to be middle-ground regards pushing hardware. Platform exclusives tend to push hardware more.

Though as middleground goes, that might be a good average for system performance. Not being clever, not knowing the hardware inside out and using clever tricks, just using standard dev kit API's etc., which gives the most output? After all if you have to be a coding God to get 100% out of a system that only lets up 50% using the standard tools, it's probably not a well thought out system.

 

[shaderguy]

We will have to wait until a large, competent cross-platform developer...I'm thinking...EA.

I've never heard EA called a competant cross-platform developer,

You may be letting your envy and/or dislike of EA's business practices and/or art direction blind you. EA owns Renderware, which is by far the most competent (and successful) cross-platform middleware.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's a recent acquisition and doesn't define EA as a competant dev. Renderware might be good devs, but I don't know anything ground breaking from EA in house. And BTW I'm not anti-EA. I quite liked their LOTR action games and the latest incarnation of FIFA (but don't the PES fanatics know!). Just don't know anything from EA in house that's pushed any platform - it all seems very generic to me.

 

[Frank]

i'm sorry but i'm a noob in this
which one has multiple general purpose vector units and which has multi-core cpu's??

No problem.

The XboX360 has the multi-core CPU's, and the PS3 has the general purpose vector units. But the GPU of the XboX360 might have reasonably general vector units as well, and we don't know much about the PS3 GPU yet. So the picture might change.

 

[danteye]

i'm sorry but i'm a noob in this
which one has multiple general purpose vector units and which has multi-core cpu's??

No problem.

The XboX360 has the multi-core CPU's, and the PS3 has the general purpose vector units. But the GPU of the XboX360 might have reasonably general vector units as well, and we don't know much about the PS3 GPU yet. So the picture might change.

I understand! but you are saying that xbox, which will be in our homes 6 months before then ps3, will be almost powerfull as ps3?
anyway....thanks a lot for your answer!

 

[Frank]

I understand! but you are saying that xbox, which will be in our homes 6 months before then ps3, will be almost powerfull as ps3?
anyway....thanks a lot for your answer!

Thanks as well!

But nobody around here knows at this time which one is going to be the best one. That's where all the threads are about: speculation.

The most important part isn't going to be the actual hardware either way, but it will be the people who make the games for them. If those developers do well and make great games, the console that runs them will be popular.