@Greenmedic: That's how it currently is. But since Cell is essentially a giant DSP, after the price goes down enough, its potential applications only grow. In 3-5 years, it could be a common processor in soundcards or hospital equipments. TV:s, voice recognition systems etc. Of course, it could have had ended up as Sonys in-house processor.

I guess I jumbled things together and failed to make my post really understandable. Though it has been a few years since I read that giant 200 page tech manual for the CELL IBM put out.

It's really a touch call. Its a matter of programming versus hardware. nVidia's cuda based physx offloads physics based processes to the processor. Grant it to get a really decent physx performance you need an GTX 280 or stand alone PPU. I have seen demos from Intel, ATI, and nVidia that show way better particle effects on PC versus what the PS3 has shown to date (sorry Killzone 2). Physics without particles equals just a flash of damaging orange and black light.

Also yes I know the term is branches, just didn't want to confuse OP. Look at Valve's AI Director, I'm pretty sure that shows that you don't need a processor that can crunch numbers five times faster, guessing since the Core 2 Quad Extreme was like 20 times faster and the 965 four times then the C2QE 9770, then the Core i7.

As for the KZ2 diagram, they are only using 3 SPEs? That doesnt make much sense considering that the game has everything it has going for it. Was expecting the full 6 running at about 50% of their abilities and not 3 running at full steam.

@ssj12: Look again, they're using 4 SPEs, not 3. They're not using them at full steam though, as evidenced by the big blank areas in the diagram.

The only thing Killzone 2 (and likely most PS3 games) are using at full steam is the PPE. It's not how the Cell was designed to be used, which should tell us something.

The PPE was, by most accounts, intended for controlling the SPEs and putting their work together. Instead, it's being used left and right for almost all tasks. It's not hard to imagine PS3 developers wishing for more PPEs (hint: it's called the Xenon).

It's already down to $60 for the 65nm process chips used in the PS3. The current sticking point for the CBE is power consumption and heat, but... as with all things, it's only a matter of time before that can be remedied. Figure by the time the PS3 goes to a slim format, it might even be passively cooled (unlikely, but possible).

I actually find great promise in the architecture. To me it was a novelty that the first commercial application was in a game console. There are plenty of applications for it; it's generally only the PS3 naysayers that have to attack the underlying technlogy since Sony has been so bullish about using it to market their console.

Personally, I don't see how anyone could read the white paper for the CBE and not be impressed.

Sony decided to use the Cell in the PS3 for its superior Blast Processing.

@greenmedic88: I don't see many people criticizing the Cell itself, as it obviously has its applications.

As for Sony's decision to use it in a gaming console, that's quite controversial and rightly so. It's not just "naysayers" criticizing that.

When I look at that Killzone 2 CPU usage diagram, it reinforces my belief that the Cell isn't a blessing for game developers.

It is more ideal for a media center as opposed to a basic CPU/GPU based game PC/console. It makes one wonder whether Sony was really engineering a game console or a Sony branded media center that "also plays games" for the living room from the beginning.

Seeing as how it was used to push the BR format to success over HD-DVD, and that it's also being used as a portal to Sony's online media rental service/store, it does seem as though gaming may not necessarily have been Sony's sole priority this generation.

And it isn't the simplest platform to develop for; that much has been made pretty clear if the developer is at all interested in optimizing performance from the architecture.

Either way, the loudest opponents of the Cell seem invariably a part of the anti-Sony brigade.

thats mainly due the GPU.

not the CPU.

the CELL is more powerful than the 360 but require more time to tap the power.

And memory constraints.

It would be interesting to see what could have been had Sony stuck with a twin CBE set up with 512MB of shared XDR RAM.

Not too much point in second guessing since it didn't happen, but...

@NJ5: I think Greenmedic nailed it; PS3 was designed to be something else than (just) a gaming console.
Btw, wasn't five SPE:s the maximum amount, that could be used in games all the time, when the sixth may be "borrowed" by the system without a prior notice in PS3?

I do agree that devs propably prefer the Xenon due to the processors nature.

@Greenmedic: The optimizing part has its minuses; in order to match 360 in processing power, optimizing is required, which increases costs. Just as NJ5 said, due to this, the devs propably prefer 360.