| bdbdbd said: @Mike B: Whether they are GPP:s or not, the number of transistors per SPE limits their ability to work as GPP, which makes them work as specialized (where name implies too, if i recall) work more efficiently. Actually, if they wouldn't need to work as specialized, you wouldn't need the PPE to control the SPE:s. |
The place the PPE takes within the Cell, the PPE is needed to do this management. IBM could build a full system with only one SPE, acting as its CPU.
To quote a friend:
"There has been a lot of debate about how the Cell will perform on general purpose code with many saying it will not do well as it is a “specialised processor”. This is not correct, the Cell was designed as a general purpose processor, but optimised for high compute tasks. The PPE is a conventional processor and will act like one. The big difference will be in the SPEs as they were designed to accelerate specific types of code and will be notably better in some areas than others, however even the SPEs are general purpose. The Cell has in essence traded running everything at moderate speed for the ability to run certain types of code at high speed."
Read his articles, they are informative:
http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell4_v2.html
