| Soleron said: "That is to say, the additional cores are dedicated to running only User mode apps, not the OS." So that's why the PS3 OS reserves an SPE and does processing on the main core too? Great demonstration for a flagship implementation. |
It's a good approach. Making sure the core OS runs on the PPE the results from the 6 app SPEs (for the general games developer) are predictable and far more contant. Games will still make use of the PPE though to some extend (although more and more code will be moved from the PPE to the SPEs as PS3 game engines mature), having one additional SPE reserved for the OS allows Sony to add multi-media or other performance critical features which will be far less dependent on the amount of resources games take on the PPE.
