The Cell Processor....

[joeorc]

Soleron said:

joeorc said:

Soleron said:

slowmo said:
The 360 CPU has 3 dual cores which equals 6, if you don't even know that I hardly think you're qualified to compare the two.

No, he's right, it's three cores. The 360 has simultaneous multithreading (Intel calls it HyperThreading, HTT) where one core can use its idle functional units to execute another thread in parallel. But it can't be counted as another real core - you can get +30% performance at best, but at worst -10%. Intel turns off HTT for benchmarks, that's how variable it is.

The PS3's PPE has SMT too, but just like the 360 it's not significant enough to call it another core.

@Soleron:

spot on..good info..! though the xbox360's processor is ,made by IBM not intel...

Yes, I mentioned Intel because he's probably heard of HyperThreading. And I said Intel turns it off for benchmarks because I know they do; I don't know what IBM does.

"the Cell is also a GPU...the Cell is a hybrid CPU/GPU so yes it does indeed make game look better if you as a developer design a game to use the Cell Processor's GPU functions..and as for the PPE being there to control the SPE's , once again that is not 100% true the SPE's are and can be used without the need of the PPE to direct them, does that mean the SPE should..no because you indeed get better result's from the PRE-call file system of the PPE to the SPE's. but the SPE's can do DMA commands without the need of the PPE."

That claim is marketing speak only. The Cell is clearly a CPU, however you are right in that it has much higher FP performance per core than a normal CPU. But it doesn't have any fixed-function hardware that a GPU does and it has very few parallel threads compared to a GPU. I said it can perform some pre- and post-rendering effects to the graphics, but if you were to make it do shaders it would be 10-100x slower than the PS3's GPU.

umm no its not..that is for sure not marketing speak,since when is 30 billion shader ops/sec is marketing speak because that is what the Cell has been already benchmarked at with its terrain rendering..that's without needing the GPU...the Cell is infact a hybrid CPU/GPU yes it does indeed get better results while working in tandum with the GPU but the Cell is infact also a GPU ..that's not marketing speak it is what it is.