What's the point of cell?

[radha]

NJ5 said:

Bokal said:

Where have you seen them sacrifying/risking anything?

Right before they went from 1st place to last place in the console business, with the most expensive system and an utter lack of focus on the things which got them to win the previous two generations of hardware.

The Playstation brand is weaker today than it was a few years ago, and it's a lot due to the cost of their system (not just to customers but also to themselves). The cost problem is primarily due to Blu-Ray and the Cell, the other components in the PS3 aren't particularly expensive.

@radha: I don't understand what your point is any longer. Yes there are simpler processors, but what does that have to do with performance metrics? The things I and Deneidez pointed out are still true and very important in terms of performance. FLOPS are just one small part of the complicated picture of CPU performance.

 

 

My point was to explain  how a pc CPU and GPU where different than the cell's SPU but i was trying to keep it simple for bugrimar. CPU and GPU are opposites, spus are in the middle (i have only read these part). I design hardware to test medical equipment, from my experience in that area FLOPS are more important because you need precision in my applications, but still i use more analog devices than digital devices. So that's why i said that in terms of number crushing which is what i use most i think FLOPS are the more important measure.  There are more flexible applications like games that need other things that you guys have brought up but from my point of view i haven’t see that much relevance to them.