PS3 and 360 graphic's capabilities. Explain the difference to me please.

[LordTheNightKnight]

MikeB said:

Words Of Wisdom said:

MikeB said:
@ TheBigFatJ

The PS3 doesn't have "seven processors"

No, the PS3 Cell includess 8 active processors. 1 PPE and 7 SPEs. The SPE is a processor which allows for one hardware thread (and any number of software threads), the PPE allows for two hardware threads (and of course software threads).

To be more exact, the SPEs are more than just processors. They can compute independently from the rest of the system, that's why they are often referred to as a system on a chip.

It seems obvious that he was referring to the fact that it SPEs have too many limitations to be considered fullfledged general purpose processors ala the PPE or 360's cores.

They are absolute not too limited in *any* regard, they are just different. On the Amiga we had CPUs far far inferior compared to a SPE. And yes we did consider the Amiga computer to sport a CPU.

The only difficulty is that you need to program them efficiently, nothing more than that. They are really just general purpose processors, being able to execute any type of code.

No, just no. Chips from twenty years ago are not proof the SPEs are full processors. Moore's law says why that is not a proper comparison. Only facts about the SPEs themselves are proof of what they can do.

They are not full processors, according to the very Cell designers. Nor are they meant to be. They are meant to either do the work that the main core cannot handle at the moment, or to work together to do heavy processing. If they were full processors, they would be redundant. A full processor is more of a jack of all trades. The SPEs are meant to do less, but do them better.