Why did Sony use the Cell processor in the PS3?

[NJ5]

MikeB said:
@ NJ5

IMO the peak perfomance difference is quite significant as well as the fact that the Cell can feed the RSX about twice as much data than the Xenon can feed Xenos.

Talking about apples and oranges in the same sentence only confuses people. We're comparing GPU vs GPU. The peak performance argument I gave is significant because the PS3's GPU can't reach it for practical applications (i.e. one part of the processing needs to wait for the other due to separate pipelines, while the 360's GPU can achieve it due to unified pipelining).

And I don't see your point of discussing peak performance of the GPU when talking about GPU/Cell cooperation since they're two totally distinct subjects.

The GPU in the Xbox 360 was very revolutionary and relevant in terms of GPUs. It was the first time that someone managed to implement the superior idea of unified pipelines in a good manner. Here you have a Nvidia engineer basically praising ATI's achievement and announcing Nvidia would follow their steps:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20060418170458.html

And a link explaining the Xbox 360's GPU awesomeness:

http://www.techreport.com/etc/2005q2/xbox360-gpu/index.x?pg=1 

Yes, the Xbox 360 is also a very interesting machine, despite the fact it came out a year earlier than the other two current-gen consoles.