PC GPUs will catch and and spank the PS3 in folding at home soon.

[NJ5]

MikeB said:

@ Nj5

@MikeB: My point still stands, that's not a PS3 Cell, it has 8 SPEs instead of 6.

Again look at figure 5f, the cores show linear performance increase. You can easily determine how much double precision performance you get from 6 SPEs in this situation.

Of course the PS3 has 2 more active CPUs in addition to 6 SPEs, the PPE and one additional SPE used in the background by the CellOS.

But as always, you cherry pick part of my replies and ignore the parts which prove you wrong. PS3's SPEs are simply not as good for double-precision calculations as other CPU cores are, and the paper states that quite clearly. It's still a fantastic processor for single-precision, but that's not what we were discussing.

The Cell's double precision performance is also remarkable, way more than you could achieve with the Xenon.

The Cell is good at double precision format calculations, but really shines supreme at half- and single precision.

Ever heard of Amdahl's law? Not all double-precision workloads can be split amongst cores... The fact is that in general, the current SPEs are worse at double-precision arithmetic, and that's stated in the paper. That's why there'll be a new Cell with better double-precision performance.

I'd like to see the basis for the claim I bolded in your post. What's your source for that?