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Procrastinato on 06 August 2009
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Squilliam said:
Procrastinato said:

I wasn't aware that the i7's were performing so well, although you do have to take into account that the *vast* majority of PS3 F@H users don't know that you can free up ~10% more horsepower by checking some optimization options (like disabling the music, and disabling the graphics, which frees the PPU for work), AND that PS3s only have 6 usable SPUs (one is reserved by the OS at all times, and one is disabled at the factory).

Let's recalculate what the approximate PPD performance of an actual 8 SPU Cell processor would be:

900 base

+33% (2 more SPUs) of 900 base == +300

+10% (PPU freed up) of 900 base == +90

-----------------

900 + 300 + 90 = ~1290 PPD for a processor from 2006.

So its not as fast as all the i7s, its true.  Ah well.  I guess Sony's claims of it being years ahead meant only 2 years, not 3. ;)

I think you're slightly over guesstimating.

Wouldn't the figure be closer to 20-25% overall considering the extra PPU overhead from the two extra SPUs and the fact that no multicore processor scales linearly?

Im not doubting your point, im just 'adjusting' it.

Although it seems that the PP$ metric is currently being won by the PC architectures, well with Nvidia GPUs anyway and thats with prebuilt systems with Windows Vista. Which is pretty amazing considering that at every level there are extra margins paid to the manufacturers of the different components and retailers. One could argue that the GPUs are the Cells biggest competitors rather than the Intel X86 CPUs in terms of comparable workloads.

 

 

Actually the near-linear scaling is the primary benefit of the Cell architecture over architectures that share more direct resources than the Cell does.  That's kinda the whole point.  There wouldn't be any significant extra PPU overhead, either, actually.  Jobs can be launched on the SPEs/SPUs and run forever, doing their own gathering and distribution of data, which is probably exactly what F@H does.

I'm not trying to make the Cell look like a superprocessor in the general sense here.  I'm just pointing out the Sony really wasn't fibbing when they said it was years ahead of its time, especially since they were talking in the realm of "possiblity" as opposed to the actual reality of games as a business.  The PS3 Cell's "output" (meaning exclusive games' quality) will continue to grow over time, as devs get more used to it, and their engines become more adept at using it.  It honestly is a really good processor for simulation tasks, and the fact that it came out in 2006 is downright phenominal, compared to the other processors at the time -- especially game console processors.  Sony PR talked it up, but claiming that the Cell didn't deserve at least some of the hype (a fair bit, even) would be just plain untrue.

It will never replace a standard multicore architecture in the home, however.