Procrastinato said:
If you guys weren't aware by now, I have had some experience with programming the Cell.
Harnessing it well really is in the hands of the developer completely. Honestly the biggest barrier is that lots of folks are "afraid" (i.e they don't like to think outside the box) of the distributed-computing-on-a-chip paradigm, because its not commonplace, and not something they teach you about via a textbook.
Everyone I know who has done Cell work thinks its pretty cool. Everyone I know who hasn't done Cell work thinks it "sucks", or is scared of it (although they won't admit that outright).
And yes, of course Sony (well.. and IBM) has the best resources for understanding and utilizing the Cell (although they provide these resources to any PS3 developer), but really the barrier in utilizing it is a purely human one, in my experience. If you get a technical director, or engineering lead who is worried about using the Cell being time consuming, and then the game comes out worse on the PS3, because eventually the business folks tell them "you're gonna do it, whether you like it or not", and then its a rushed nightmare, because engineers on said project avoided tackling it for too long. Its the worry, and lack of forethought, that's really the barrier, and on any multi-million dollar project, people get pretty dang worried about their time.
Those "brave" enough to try it out typically find it pretty enjoyable, in my experience. Its refreshing and new (if you're a software engineer, like myself), and if, like me, you enjoy your work, its a lot of fun to work with -- because getting big frame boosts from utilizing it well are good feedback, and fun results.
I always take issue with people who claim to dislike it, without actually having used it, because I know its not really that hard to understand -- they're just being... well... um.. non-adventurous. That's the nicest way I can think of to put it. If they step out of the little box they live in, they might find working on the Cell to be pretty cool.
Parallel programming is awesomely fun, because you're always finding new cool ways to utilize the hardware. Parallel work on processors like the Xenon is kinda fun.. but there's a lot of frustration with it, because its kinda like the extra cores are "tacked on" for convenience... its like riding a bike with a broken gear. The Cell is designed as a parallel machine, and the hard work actually pays off. Doing en-masse parallel stuff on the Xenon often isn't worth the effort... so at least the convenience factor of being able to farm off all the light work to other cores at least makes my job easier, as an engineer -- and I guess that's somewhat enjoyable from another perspective.
Xenon == mass-produced sportscar with automatic transmission. Sorta fun. Yay for awesome GPUs. Fun if you just like to tool around in something sorta speedy now and then, but aren't so much into driving, really.
Cell == exotic sportscar with manual transmission. Really fast, a blast to drive. Takes some skill and devotion. A joy if you're into driving fast cars, if you get my meaning.
By nature, you're going to find that the games industry's best engineers like the Cell alot, because they like what they do, and get into such things.
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