| kars said: Fourth: While normal people didn't realize it but no one uses Assembler anymore for these systems. They are simply to complex to do it on such a deep level because programers need to much time and make to many errors and debugging in Assermbler is a lot of fun and takes even more time. You won't really go lower than C or even C++ and competitors and this means that you depend on compilers and compilers always prefer simpler environments, Less compiler bugs and better optimized code. T0o get a better grip on their programs it is advisable to rely on Libraries or even objects, but these structures make the optimization for the SPEs difficult. |
People still use assembly language, but its use is generally not widespread ...An intelligent professor I had in university said that 95% of code would be run 5% of the time and that it was generally less expensive and time consuming to buy faster hardware than to bother optimizing this code. The other side of this is that there is still 5% of your code that needs to be fast in order to give yourself the type of performance you want. Generally speaking you obtain this performance by the use of intelligent data structures and faster algorithms but there are instances where you would still want to use assembly.
Now the problem with the modern focus on parallel processing is that few problems are implicitly parallel, few programmers are properly trained how to handle parallel programming and software has to be properly designed to take advantages of parallel processors. The problem with the Cell is that it doesn't conform to the standard (easy) way for people to conceptualize parallel algorithms (threads/processes) and forces developers to a different paradigm where you attempt to write a single threaded program and break it into multiple parts as needed.
In terms of maximum theoritical performance the PS3 will win because it will be simple to generate a benchmark where the SPEs will be constantly filled with data and processing at full speed. For the average developer it will be far easier to get the three core XBox 360 processor near its maximum potential than the Cell though.
