The Cell Processor....

[crumas2]

Final-Fan said:

1.  "if [your] belief ..." what?  What is the result/quality/whatever of that belief that you are sorry for if it exists?  I can guess, but guessing is all I can do right now. 

2.  Such people might be inclined to believe that ... unless you tell them it's not true.  I don't see why a simple disclaimer wouldn't prevent all this misunderstanding you fear.  As for the objection "but why mention it at all?" -- well, I had had the impression that you were saying that this aspect of the Cell in particular shouldn't be mentioned (and not necessarily other things), which makes little sense unless you are indeed telling those people some things about the Cell's architecture, in which case it would make more sense to simply mention the cores, where appropriate -- with the disclaimer -- instead of skirting around the issue.  (And, for that matter, similar fears of misunderstanding (and thus disclaimers) ought, I would think, to attach to ANY architecture you mention in the Cell that could be falsely believed equivalent to Intel/AMD architecture by the uninitiated.) 

If the impression I mentioned was mistaken, then this whole side discussion was likely a misunderstanding-based waste of time.  WAS IT?

Having worked as a software engineer most of my life (I'm almost 50), I've become fairly use to the impressions non-systems-engineering people often get from "buzz-word" descriptions of technology.  Sometimes it's kind of like telling someone that a soft drink (soda) has no sugar in it, when in fact it has lots of high-fructose corn syrup, which is even worse.  But people often like to draw conclusions from simple answers to complex questions.  Saying that both a traditional 8-core CPU and the Cell both have 8 cores is technically correct.  And yes, a disclaimer of "but due to vast architectural differences the performance of a traditional CPU with 8 cores and a Cell processor with 8 cores may vary widely depending on system implementation, application used, operating system, quality of code tuning, etc." would definitely set the record straight.  But I wasn't seeing that in the original article... just that the Cell is an "8-core" CPU.  My complaint was that this oversimplified description of the Cell's architecture was misleading to anyone not versed in how various multi-core chips are designed and used within systems.  And I stand by that statement.

Also, I'm not making any assumptions regarding the technical/engineering prowess of the readers of this thread, just making a statement in general that may or may not apply to any specific reader.