interesting...i'm excited to see how this affects Playstation titles in the years to come.

To be honest it won't much.

Actually it should make a huge difference with regard to what can potentially be accomplished on the PS3.

Uncharted kablam !
also

Killzone 2 dubble kablam !

Shush the non believers ! :P

In either case it's very powerful but i don't think i have anything to add that hasn't already been said. atleast at this point. :)

Cell Can find oil!!

^and cure cancer

washimul could perfectly explain that, i'd wish he was somehow here :D

I'll give you a serious answer, since I like to presume people don't just post these questions to troll... careful reading it, since I can slip up and get overly technical. Also, be aware that some folks will "disagree" with me, although I'll tell you straight up that I am *always* correct. ;)

The Cell concept is basically "the programmer, with a decent compiler or assembler, can write any app faster than extra hard logic can ever accomplish", which is, at a very low level, undeniably true for most situations... and especially for rigid mathematical algorithms (like 3D animation, graphics, or physics).

The Cell is basically a pile of really speedy, "primitive" RISC processors -- they have no cache memory (although you could claim that all of the localstore memory on each SPU is basically L2 cache), no branch prediction, and no out-of-order processing. Outside of switching from CISC to RISC instruction sets, and increased clocks, those three advancements (cache, branch predictions, OOO instructions) are mostly what have allowed modern processors to outperform their predecessors by such a large margin. Unfortunately, all three of those advancements are really just safety nets for inefficient programming, or inefficient compilers (not to be confused with "bad" programming... many object-oriented programming practices are low performance, but "good" because they save the developer a lot of time during development, for example).

The downside of putting that stuff on a CPU is that they burn a HUGE amount of logic. Meaning that those safety nets, which have been proven to not really net the performance gains to justify their logic usage, are really just using space/heat that could be used for more basic processing pipelines. Hence the Cell concept.


Boiling it down, the Cell is a load of simple processors (meaning "simpler than the monolithic giants it has for competition" plus it has great vector mathematics instructions), which downright rip through anything 3D-math related (or math in general), and are "okay" for general purpose programming, but are limited by their lack of access to main memory. Thus writing code to work fast on them requires some hardened parallel thinking, which isn't something most game developers are too awful familiar with, or willing to base their engines on. Those that do see gains for both the PS3 and 360, however... mostly due to the fact that thinking in parallel often involves disposing of other bad performance practices, like walking through large tracts of memory unnecessarily, or using virtual function calls in excess.

Okay, that got technical.  How about this:

The Cell is a simpler, but higher potential horsepower engine than most CPUs on the market.  Its like a racecar that, yeah, is really dang fast, as long as you make sure you have a great pitcrew and don't skimp on the pitstops.  Competing racecars can get away with firing half their pit crew, and skipping a few pitstops to make up time, although in the end, they're destined to lose the race if the Cell team is doing its job.

@Mifely
Thanks that reply was perfect! I didnt really need the first 5 paragraphs but the last one...wow!
I even liked the analagy.

But seriously, thanks. That was just what i was hoping for.

@ Mifely