My point is that I'm not sold that all the press about the Cell's power is valid.  I see it doing very well in server apps and only par otherwise.  Until it is doing so much better by comparison, it is all theoretical garbage.  So far all that theoretical power hasn't added up to much of a competitive advantage.  I get tired of all the constant posts about how wonderful the Cell is and how much more powerful the PS3 is.  The games are looking good, but nothing too special for this generation.

 I give that post a 9.0.

 Slighting programmers as a reason doesn't make alot of sense.  With the money sunk into these games there is an strong financial advantage for any company (and definitely Sony) that can make the Cell pump out the games that give them a leg up over the competition.  So are you saying that they are all average industry programmers?  There is not one company developing for the PS3 that has anyone that can figure it out with the money that is on the line?  Especially at Sony of all companies?  Bullshit.  I can understand that the Cell is hard to program for, we've known that for a while.  When I see the Cell outperform the competition in games, then I'll believe it was the right longterm choice for Sony.  I'm not saying that it isn't, I'm just saying that hasn't shown it so far and doesn't look like it will in the near future from what we are seeing in the previews of new games.

 I give that post a 9.8.

This is incorrect.  Sony created the concept of a processor they wanted for the PS3 in 1999, and STI was formed with IBM and Toshiba in 2001 to work on a project to create the a new processor that took Power4 architecture to the next level, including generalized GPU/shader abilities.  But each of the three member companies had it's own agenda for the creation and marketing of the Cell.  I seriously doubt that IBM would have worked on the project (which cost approx. $400 m), if it hadn't believed the processor could be used in applications that would eventually dwarf the value of its use in the PS3.  In addition to that, IBM was already looking to extend Power4.

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/People/gradstudents/nplemieu/aboutMe/625_Project/celldoc.pdf

@ ProfCrab

I don't know what to tell you, but do you really think the number of programmers who know how to do low level programming is going up? It's not just game engines either. I went for an interview for the AIX group and they were just oozing desperation as the number of people who can do kernel programming ain't what it used to be.

The direction of the industry for years now has been RAD. Web 2.0 is all the rage. All of the undergrads here complain because they have to learn C which isn't "the road ahead". Most university CS programs don't even require C anymore.

You honestly think this doesn't have an effect on the pool of talent?

You said:

"There is not one company developing for the PS3 that has anyone that can figure it out with the money that is on the line?  Especially at Sony of all companies?"

You are right, what I was saying that NOT ONE company developing for the ps3 has a single programmer familiar with traditional parallel techniques. 

 While it still sounds shakey to me, you travel in those circles and I don't so I'll bow to your experience there.  That is bad news or people hoping to see an improvement from the PS3 (myself included, I do have one) in the near future, perhaps even this generation.

 I give that post a 10.

Here is a pdf for the tech-savvy:

http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/hpc/roadrunner/pdfs/adwpreviewrr.pdf 

 Could it be, that instead of the number of programmers that know how to do low level programming is not where it used to be, instead of not what it used to be?  I have seen no evidence that the number of programmers who know C has gone down, and this is something that I have researched.  As the pool of 'Programmers' gets larger, I am sure the pool of 'kernel-level' programmers is becoming smaller by percent.  But rather than it being a problem with the size of the pool, couldn't it just as easily be the increased competition from projects that conform more to the stereotypical 'hacker' mindset (hacker being used in its literal sense, not its 'cracker' sense)?

 There are currently several Linux distributors, and probably all of them hire kernel developers.  Similarly, there are several BSDs (open, net, free, etc).  Companies that distribute these also need kernel hackers.  Then you have Apple needing to hire developers for the Darwin kernel (another BSD variant), MS needing to hire kernel devs for their kernel, etc.  As 'other' solutions than windows become more economically viable, there is increased competition for the programmers with the skills to work on them; AIX, being closed-source, likely has a hard time attracting some of them when there are alternative options.

 Furthermore, how do people become kernel developers?  By writing for kernels.  These days, kernels are very large, and writing from scratch isn't going to appeal to as many people.  Therefore, anyone interested in kernel development is going to work on a pre-existing kernel.  Because AIX is closed source, that means that they will likely work on something other than AIX.  These people who are learning kernel development will then be the next people headhunted by Red Hat, IBM's linux division, etc; as they already know the code, they would likely be willing to get paid to do what they are currently doing for kicks.  I feel that blaming a shrinking number of coders for AIX's inability to find hackers is a specious argument when the entire industry is still basically growing, and it can easily be explained by increased competition from Linux peddlers needing kernel devs.

I can't argue with this, but I fail to see how it applies to the argument; this has been ongoing for years, and development of low-level stuff has only increased recently (see LLVM, rate of Linux development, rate of BSD development, etc.  They are all rapidly growing)

Was this sarcasm? I think it was, but wanted to make sure because it makes no sense if not.

 In short, I don't think that you can use a single company's inability to hire for a completely unrelated position to generalize across all video game companies not having the skills to program for the cell because they have become more average over the years.  I would need to see real proof of that before I would believe it, and even then I would likely take it with a grain of salt.

There is more hard with programming the cell than the lack of cache coherency.  That is a thing that is hard about it, and programmers will have to get used to it, but people are not used to SIMD'izing general purpose code; we have a lot of experience with SIMDizing certain types of algorithms, but not much for others because there has not been much need to do it yet, as there have really only been special-purpose SIMD processors.  With the advent of SIMD general-purpose processors, more research is going into this, and Cell (and other similar) compilers are only going to get better as time goes on.  Which is the entire point of me saying that Sony decided to use it too early; IBM has had great success with its Cell compilers, but it is focusing on their own needs and not Sony's (as they should).  In a few years, this research will likely get into more generalized speed ups.

EDIT: Some source material for some claims i made:

Numbers of linux kernel developers has raised from 483 to 1057 in 3 years: 
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment.php

Nah, you still aren't comprehending what's been said.  The claim is that Cell is harder to work with when people aren't experienced with it, and devs generally aren't experienced with it.  IF that is true, THEN your demand for teh elite graphics right now CANNOT be fulfilled, and your argument SEEMS to be proven right even though the REASON for slow revelation of better games may be the VERY thing you are denying.

Hoping rhythmic capitalization helps... 

@ alpha_dk said:

"Numbers of linux kernel developers has raised from 483 to 1057 in 3 years"

response:

Various companies have been pouring in money to get their architectures supported as linux has become the standard unix. That doesn't say anything about the OS industry as a whole. Just think about how many OS's experimental and commercial there were in the 80s. And anyhow, its not just AIX, I got the same impression from MS (not that I would ever work for them or AIX for that matter, just went to the interviews for free vacations). And you think there are tons of people with MACH experience, HAH.

 And most commercial OS's these days are more in maintenance mode than they were in previous years. A lot of the changes people think are part of the OS are really some userspace app.

 Plus have you ever met any of these developers? They tend to be older than the average developer in my experience with the exception of the Darwin (Mach) guys.

@ alpha_dk said:

I can't argue with this, but I fail to see how it applies to the argument; this has been ongoing for years, and development of low-level stuff has only increased recently (see LLVM, rate of Linux development, rate of BSD development, etc.  They are all rapidly growing) 

response:

Rate of BSD development compared to when? Once upon a time they invented the TCP stack (which MS stole w/o giving anything back, yay BSD liscence). And the rate of increase is going to be pretty high when you go from 5 to 10.

But the main point was that there was a time when you needed to know how things really worked inorder to do any kind of development. Hence the transition was easier. Now it's impossible, you cannot train a VB programmer to do kernel development in 6 months.

Additionally people were more open minded to different architectures. If you think cell is a complex architecture just look at the old Cray machines.

This is of course all anecdotal as if im going to be doing any research its going to be on my thesis. But I can tell you the our CS department is under extreme pressure to change the curricula and take out C as many of the big schools have. Maybe its all in their heads, I dunno. But Fortran (which in many situations is more efficient than C) and asm are no longer required taught (outside of a general P-lang or architecture class). Was this the case 15 years ago?

alpha_dk said:

There is more hard with programming the cell than the lack of cache coherency.  That is a thing that is hard about it, and programmers will have to get used to it, but people are not used to SIMD'izing general purpose code; we have a lot of experience with SIMDizing certain types of algorithms, but not much for others because there has not been much need to do it yet, as there have really only been special-purpose SIMD processors.  With the advent of SIMD general-purpose processors, more research is going into this, and Cell (and other similar) compilers are only going to get better as time goes on.  Which is the entire point of me saying that Sony decided to use it too early; IBM has had great success with its Cell compilers, but it is focusing on their own needs and not Sony's (as they should).  In a few years, this research will likely get into more generalized speed ups.

response:

SIMD is not THAT radical. Seymore Cray would like to have a word with you. gcc, suncc, and icc have had loop vectorization for a while. You just need to know what you are doing a little bit. x86 programmers have been using it for awhile now. You never use the SSE flags when you compile your linux apps (you come across as either a linux or bsd guy). And anyhow is SIMD not exactly what everyone was doing in the vector processor heydey?

Cache-coherency breaks the threading model people are used to otoh. They only "just" ported p-threads to cell on linux, and it's not your normal p-threads it's all cracked out with contexts and blah, blah. I don't even bother with it.

BTW, everyone knows FPAs are the future. Soon all this GPU and CPU nonsense will pass. :P