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Squilliam on 17 November 2012
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drkohler said:
Squilliam said:
The proof is in the results. If the Cell was all that it would be used in considerably more applications than it currently is. In single threaded performance and efficiency the X86 Intel CPU is king, in price/performance applications ARM is the one to beat and for high performance computing there isn't much out there which can hold a candle to GPGPU/Xenon Phi architectures.

The majority of the major optimisations developers have made are for graphics processing which is irrelevant if you attach a very strong GCN AMD GPU to the console. Once you've done that then you're going to throw away the majority of your legacy code as it simply isn't needed anymore.

If proof is in the results, why isn't the WiiU an X86 item? Why do you bring in Xenon Phi (>$1500 a piece) or high-end GPUs (>$150 currently) stuff into the discussion? None of that you will ever see in a console. A console has a $199 target, so discussing $2000 accelerators and $500 graphic cards is a moot point, consoles are never going to compete on high-end PC graphic levels. The simple fact is that a console maker will always target the $25 CPU and $25 GPU. A 3PPU/6SPU enhanced 32nm cell would have fit the bill in all respects for PS4, and would have had relatively low R&D costs attached to it. It is completely irrelevant whether the whole world embraces cell or not (again, see WiiU), the only relevance is that it fits the needs of a PS4.

Your point of (ab)using the SPUs for graphics processing is of course right, but as things stand now, both MS and Sony will discard 99% of their legacy code anyways, as they go AMD if latest rumours are to be believed.

Why isn't the Wii U X86? Quite likely because they want backwards compatibility with the Wii.

Why did I bring up other architectures? As an example of course. What's the point in including a CPU which is obsoleted by the GPU? The majority of effort this generation has been to use the Cell processor for graphics rendering because graphics rendering requires the fewest lines of code and that was required in order to bring the console versions to parity with the Xbox 360. If you have a next generation GPU you don't need the Cell as it is far more efficient/effective as a GPU than the Cell processor is and the Cell processor is utter crap for general purpose loads which would be better suited to run on an X86 CPU OR power PC architecture.

All of the C coded for the engines used today will recompile just fine for X86 because afterall developers have been supporting the PC throughout this entire generation of consoles so I can't anticipate them having problems.



Tease.