@ TheBigFatJ

The PPE is most similar to a Xenon core, the advantage of the SPEs is that potential performance increases just about linear with added SPEs. This is not the case for the Xenon CPU, three cores does not mean three times the potential performance, just like AFAIK any other multi-core CPU currently available.

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.

Didn't we see those images on the SDF website?

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.

Thanks, I'll try my best to get on more but you know - real life is really taking up a lot of time right now!

No, they are from Beyond3D. People discussing the rendering differences between the two versions. The 640p guy is also posting within that thread and he like many others prefers the PS3's rendering of the graphics.

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. 

perhaps developers chose to render at 640 and then upscale to 720 so they can achieve a sort of AA which reduces the jaggies but costs less performance wise than actually having 2xAA at 720p, and with the freed up processing power they had left, they used it for smart filters to help improve the IQ, maybe this is the method they chose to increase the IQ of the game and is why many reviewers tend to favour the PS3 graphics of GTA4.

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.

@ LTKN

No IBM's design goal was to make the SPEs full processors being able to greatly facilitate any kind of program.

They dropped a lot of redundant and legacy stuff, which in no sense render them not being full processors. The only difficulty is redesigning legacy code efficiently, but the redesigned code will run better on any other multi-core or multi-processor CPU, the difference is that it's crucial and more benefial for the Cell, on other processors the benefit is smaller.

SPU are dedicated processors with their own local memory of which the SPU can work from, the PPU is simply meant to feed data into that local memory and then remove that data that has already been completed, which always the SPU to work very fast without any stalls or interruptions, this is where the major performance boost comes from.

Essentially the PPU is the boss delegating work to it's employees, and it's the employess that do all the hard work while the boss just manages and co-ordinates his employees to maximise performance of his team, the problem is that current developers simply use the PPU as the only processor seeing as the code written for it is almost the same code written for the CPU of the  360, and because of this most multiplaform games barely use the SPU, and because the SPU actually require a different way of writing code for them so they can work as their meant to, developers simply don't use them and just optimise the shit out of the PPU, so essentially the Boss will craming all the work while his emplayeed point and laugh at him as they bludge all day, as you can see the team is not very efficient. lolz

In any case, console CPU are not jack of all trades like their PC counter parts, they in fact have less instruction built into the,, but that's because they don't need them unlike the PC, and this of course allows these CPU to be fast, efficient, and consume less power while running at the same frequency as PC processors and this is key to consoles as they have to be small in size than general PC's.