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drkohler on 20 October 2012
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runqvist said:
drkohler said:
  • CPU – Cell Broadband Engine X @ 3.2GHz – 16PPE’s – 128 SPE’s

    • This chip, manufactured in 45nm, would have a die size of approx (16*6.5 + 128*11.3 + >100) mm^2, approx. 1600mm^2, in 28/32 nm approx 1100mm^2. Such a megamonster die  is IMPOSSIBLE to manufacture. NVidia is the company that makes megadies that are around 550mm'2 and these are EXPENSIVE chips to make


    Maybe I am more tired than I think, but how your math works out? I counted (in my head) that the die size at 28nm would have to be 700mm^2. That is the roughly the same as the highest die size for processor that I have heard of.

    So it would be possible according to my math, but not likely.

    You can't shrink linearly everything on a die. particularly the cell has an element interconnect bus that is very hard to shrink (and the pad area is another more obvious example). The 100nm^2 above is a wild guess for the whole "everything else but processors" in the cell, and 100mm^2 are very generous and could be two to four times bigger). Also possible improvements in the SPUs and PPUs would further increase the sizes of those elements. Nobody is going to design such a monster. And we haven't even looked at the power draw of such a monster Even if the cell used only 25Watts, a die-shrunk chip 16 times the cell would use 250Watts at least.