Ea finally gets it, "We Need Cell Processor"

[kars]

KruzeS said:

kars said:

But even the PPE itself or the Xbox 360 isn't really suited for branching intensive code. The pipeline is quite deep and its brnaching prediction is rather simple, which makes it slower than many other processors for branching intensive code.

You're right, but don't forget SMT. Each of the 360's 3 cores can run 2 threads simultaneously to avoid pipeline bubbles and keep each core busy.

Sure, I didn't forget it, but in my experience such code has the tendency to have more than two choices (a simple switch case structure is enough), so SMT will only have a limited effect. Till you figure out which branch was the right one you already found the next branch.