MikeB on 09 July 2008
@ Retrasado
Mike. he's right. Although the Cell has 8 SPEs, for the PS3, they manufacture the chips with one SPE designed to not work.
Yes, just like I stated 8 processors. Let's count:
1 PPU
7 SPUs
Makes 8 processors. Otherwise with 8 enabled SPEs and 1 PPE it would have been 9. (8 + 1 makes 9)
One SPEs like I stated endless times here on VGChartz is used by the OS.
A question for people who don't understand this. What does the 360 OS run on?
Answer: On a processor core, eating up CPU cycles as well.
Anything the PS3 OS does on this SPE won't take CPU cycles from the PPE and the other SPEs. Sony can do more and more on this SPE without this really affecting the software running on the PS3. However Microsoft cannot change much, as it would impact the games negatively which are sometimes designed the get every last ounce of performance out of the CPU.
Really it can be a good thing to do! Especially if you have so much power as the Cell has. 
