The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
[URL]http://www.megagames.com/news/html/hardware/cellvsintelround1.shtml[/URL]
I made a post a while back stating that "is it worth doing a new computer revamp with the cell chip on the horizon. I was simple told go ahead cause it wont be compatible with PC’s because of the architecture difference. I have just found this webpage and it seems very interesting and very worrying for most PC owners.
Here are some of the main points.
According to the Cell consortium, the new chips will be made up of 64-bit processors (each with 2.5 MB of memory) and should debut at 4GHz speeds.
Cell will also carry a greater number of transistors compared to current Intel chips with the triumvirate announcing 234 million compared to the 125 million carried by the latest Pentium 4 CPUs.
According to its creators the main advantage of Cell architecture is its flexibility. Jim Kahle, an IBM fellow said, We support many operating systems with our virtualization technology so we can run multiple operating systems at the same time, doing different jobs on the system.
IBM declined to confirm which Operating Systems, other than Linux, have been tested on Cell.
If Playstation3 ends up having 4 Cell processors, as has been rumoured, the console will end up being officially classified, with today's standards, as a super computer.
Now if I have not misunderstood the cell may be used in computers, and if the ps3 has 4 cell chips, should that make it around 16ghz?
I made a post a while back stating that "is it worth doing a new computer revamp with the cell chip on the horizon. I was simple told go ahead cause it wont be compatible with PC’s because of the architecture difference. I have just found this webpage and it seems very interesting and very worrying for most PC owners.
Here are some of the main points.
According to the Cell consortium, the new chips will be made up of 64-bit processors (each with 2.5 MB of memory) and should debut at 4GHz speeds.
Cell will also carry a greater number of transistors compared to current Intel chips with the triumvirate announcing 234 million compared to the 125 million carried by the latest Pentium 4 CPUs.
According to its creators the main advantage of Cell architecture is its flexibility. Jim Kahle, an IBM fellow said, We support many operating systems with our virtualization technology so we can run multiple operating systems at the same time, doing different jobs on the system.
IBM declined to confirm which Operating Systems, other than Linux, have been tested on Cell.
If Playstation3 ends up having 4 Cell processors, as has been rumoured, the console will end up being officially classified, with today's standards, as a super computer.
Now if I have not misunderstood the cell may be used in computers, and if the ps3 has 4 cell chips, should that make it around 16ghz?
Page:
> What is worrying about it?
Well if you are some poor sod who has just spent £1000+ upgrading a PC which will be extremely outdated in a mater of 2 years I would be very pished of.
Well if you are some poor sod who has just spent £1000+ upgrading a PC which will be extremely outdated in a mater of 2 years I would be very pished of.
Tyla wrote:
> Only shocking announcement
> was the running temp of 85degC!!
With or without cooling, if so what type water, fan etc?
> Only shocking announcement
> was the running temp of 85degC!!
With or without cooling, if so what type water, fan etc?
poopots wrote:
> Well if you are some poor sod who has just spent £1000+
> upgrading a PC which will be extremely outdated in a mater of 2 years
> I would be very pished of.
Yep. Done just that.
*shrug*
You can't stop progress. Any pc is outdated in two years, and I'd rather have a cutting edge machine now, that stick with a crap pc for 2 years until this cell chip comes along.
It's the nature of pc's. I remember paying 100quid+ for 32Mb of ram years back.
> Well if you are some poor sod who has just spent £1000+
> upgrading a PC which will be extremely outdated in a mater of 2 years
> I would be very pished of.
Yep. Done just that.
*shrug*
You can't stop progress. Any pc is outdated in two years, and I'd rather have a cutting edge machine now, that stick with a crap pc for 2 years until this cell chip comes along.
It's the nature of pc's. I remember paying 100quid+ for 32Mb of ram years back.
> It's the nature of pc's. I remember paying 100quid+ for 32Mb of ram
> years back.
Not really that old, but I do remember a few years back my dad insisted spending all my birthday money on 64mb of ram at a computer fair which I think cost me £70. And look now, you can 1GB of matched performance ram for about £150.
> years back.
Not really that old, but I do remember a few years back my dad insisted spending all my birthday money on 64mb of ram at a computer fair which I think cost me £70. And look now, you can 1GB of matched performance ram for about £150.
[URL]http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.html[/URL]
Nice read if you have the patience. The guy is -very- enthusiastic about CELL so he goes overboard a bit I think, but still.
Nice read if you have the patience. The guy is -very- enthusiastic about CELL so he goes overboard a bit I think, but still.
I don't think the PS3 would be 16 GHz the recent article on upwire said it would be >4Ghz, but i don't think it would be that much more that 4.
Let's hope the other consoles are powerful too.
These babes are gonna take computer games to the next level of realism.
Just imagine Half-Life 3!
Let's hope the other consoles are powerful too.
These babes are gonna take computer games to the next level of realism.
Just imagine Half-Life 3!
I totally don't buy any of it.
* CELL processors are supposed to run faster than the current I686 breed, with double the number of transistors and a ton more cache memory. I bet AMD and Intel are really wishing they'd thought of that. Or maybe the CELL will be massively more expensive to produce and massively more difficult to cool than current processors.
* Everywhere I look regarding CELL processors there are nonsensical statements like "runs multiple operating systems at once". How exactly does this work? Why would you want to do this? What benefits would it engender?
* Software designed to run on CELL architecture will need a complete rewrite compared to software running on standard single-processor architecture. The software design techniques to develop multi-processor systems haven't even been invented yet. It is like being all excited over being able to build tall buildings because someone invented the brick, yet nobody's invented scaffolding. Read this for more information: [URL]http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm[/URL]
* CELL processors are supposed to run faster than the current I686 breed, with double the number of transistors and a ton more cache memory. I bet AMD and Intel are really wishing they'd thought of that. Or maybe the CELL will be massively more expensive to produce and massively more difficult to cool than current processors.
* Everywhere I look regarding CELL processors there are nonsensical statements like "runs multiple operating systems at once". How exactly does this work? Why would you want to do this? What benefits would it engender?
* Software designed to run on CELL architecture will need a complete rewrite compared to software running on standard single-processor architecture. The software design techniques to develop multi-processor systems haven't even been invented yet. It is like being all excited over being able to build tall buildings because someone invented the brick, yet nobody's invented scaffolding. Read this for more information: [URL]http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm[/URL]
Miserableman wrote:
> I totally don't buy any of it.
>
> * CELL processors are supposed to run faster than the current I686
> breed, with double the number of transistors and a ton more cache
> memory. I bet AMD and Intel are really wishing they'd thought of
> that. Or maybe the CELL will be massively more expensive to produce
> and massively more difficult to cool than current processors.
The thing to remember I suppose, is that its the hype thats branding CELL as revolutionary. Most of whats been mentioned about CELL already exists elsewhere. The real claim is that it can do all this and still be cost effective.
> * Everywhere I look regarding CELL processors there are nonsensical
> statements like "runs multiple operating systems at once".
> How exactly does this work? Why would you want to do this? What
> benefits would it engender?
Well running multiple operating systems isn't anything new, not even anything new for desktop machines, but they are software solutions rather than hardware. Generally speaking a home user has no interest in doing this anyway. We should remember that alot of the information thats being lapped up by the general public isn't being directed at them (yet) really but rather at industry. And they are interested in things like virtualization because of the potential money savings.
> * Software designed to run on CELL architecture will need a complete
> rewrite compared to software running on standard single-processor
> architecture. The software design techniques to develop
> multi-processor systems haven't even been invented yet. It is like
> being all excited over being able to build tall buildings because
> someone invented the brick, yet nobody's invented scaffolding. Read
> this for more information:
Erm...I think you're taking that article out of context to be honest. Having a multicore architecture doesn't exclude you from running software based upon a single processor architecture. Perhaps I've missed something but the article seems to say that we wont be able to use the potential of multicore processors without software specifically developed to do so, which of course is true. And as for the software design techniques not existing erm... concurrent programming is hardly some brave new frontier that nobody has ever thought of before.
> I totally don't buy any of it.
>
> * CELL processors are supposed to run faster than the current I686
> breed, with double the number of transistors and a ton more cache
> memory. I bet AMD and Intel are really wishing they'd thought of
> that. Or maybe the CELL will be massively more expensive to produce
> and massively more difficult to cool than current processors.
The thing to remember I suppose, is that its the hype thats branding CELL as revolutionary. Most of whats been mentioned about CELL already exists elsewhere. The real claim is that it can do all this and still be cost effective.
> * Everywhere I look regarding CELL processors there are nonsensical
> statements like "runs multiple operating systems at once".
> How exactly does this work? Why would you want to do this? What
> benefits would it engender?
Well running multiple operating systems isn't anything new, not even anything new for desktop machines, but they are software solutions rather than hardware. Generally speaking a home user has no interest in doing this anyway. We should remember that alot of the information thats being lapped up by the general public isn't being directed at them (yet) really but rather at industry. And they are interested in things like virtualization because of the potential money savings.
> * Software designed to run on CELL architecture will need a complete
> rewrite compared to software running on standard single-processor
> architecture. The software design techniques to develop
> multi-processor systems haven't even been invented yet. It is like
> being all excited over being able to build tall buildings because
> someone invented the brick, yet nobody's invented scaffolding. Read
> this for more information:
Erm...I think you're taking that article out of context to be honest. Having a multicore architecture doesn't exclude you from running software based upon a single processor architecture. Perhaps I've missed something but the article seems to say that we wont be able to use the potential of multicore processors without software specifically developed to do so, which of course is true. And as for the software design techniques not existing erm... concurrent programming is hardly some brave new frontier that nobody has ever thought of before.
Garin wrote:
> Erm...I think you're taking that article out of context to be honest.
> Having a multicore architecture doesn't exclude you from running
> software based upon a single processor architecture. Perhaps I've
> missed something but the article seems to say that we wont be able to
> use the potential of multicore processors without software
> specifically developed to do so, which of course is true. And as for
> the software design techniques not existing erm... concurrent
> programming is hardly some brave new frontier that nobody has ever
> thought of before.
No-one's ever had to write mainstream software concurrently. It's going to take a very long time for software gurus to develop techniques to create things like videogames that fully utilise multiple processing units safely. Running single-processor-architecture software on multiprocessor-architecture is of course possible, but it's likely to be slower if anything than running in its native environment.
> Erm...I think you're taking that article out of context to be honest.
> Having a multicore architecture doesn't exclude you from running
> software based upon a single processor architecture. Perhaps I've
> missed something but the article seems to say that we wont be able to
> use the potential of multicore processors without software
> specifically developed to do so, which of course is true. And as for
> the software design techniques not existing erm... concurrent
> programming is hardly some brave new frontier that nobody has ever
> thought of before.
No-one's ever had to write mainstream software concurrently. It's going to take a very long time for software gurus to develop techniques to create things like videogames that fully utilise multiple processing units safely. Running single-processor-architecture software on multiprocessor-architecture is of course possible, but it's likely to be slower if anything than running in its native environment.
I'm a little overwhelmed with this.
Will this 'cell' archtecture have a totally different instruction set to say, the normal x86 that we have now?
Will this 'cell' archtecture have a totally different instruction set to say, the normal x86 that we have now?
Page: