Cell processor unwrapped… kinda sorta
posted Jan 24th 2005 3:55AM
The STI group's (Sony, Toshiba, IBM) new Cell
processor is generating some serious buzz in the chip community, and not just because it's supposed to crank out all
sorts of nasty cycles—if you haven't been paying attention, it's supposedly going to be the heart of the
PlayStation 3. But we all remember before how Sony
promised us the PlayStation 2 would pump out a few times the amount of polygons it actually was able to, so it's to be
taken with a rather large grain of salt as yet, but one man who goes by the name of
Blachford (who may himself also require
some salt) claims to have "interpreted" the patent
application docs on the Cell. So what we, er, may know is that it's supposed to run in the 4.6GHz range, have
9 cores (one being a PowerPC G5-like CPU, with 8 other APUs—vector processors), and a crazy unheardof 1k 6.4Gbps bus.
Okay, so, where to start.
[Via Joystiq]
These next gen consoles are gona rock!
PS3
Xenon
Revolution
if only i could afford to buy all of them :(
And game developers everywhere are currently wondering where they're gonna get the money to hire the 1,000 more coders they'll need to create each PS3 game...
Did Sony learn nothing from the PS2?
And what exactly did they need to "learn", how to sell a console that outsells the other ones hands down. Uh, I don't think so. Sure it will be hard for the companies to code for the new consoles, but tough, that's life in the big ciry. With new technology, that new technology has to be used in games.
Not a ps2 owner myself, xbox rocks, personally thnk that it is a better console, but there is no denying that the ps2 people did something right with the ps2.
I feel totally lied to about the PS2. I am waiting for the Toy Story like graphics I was promised.
I'm not buying another Sony console. The Dreamcast was a better game system.
Anyone else find it interesting that Sony and Toshiba can cooperate on the Cell processor and still have a pissing contest over Blu-ray and HD-DVD?
I just wish they would spell out the PS3 specs soon so I can figure out whether its worth holding off spending money on a pvr and/or, media center, streaming audio, etc. I held off on buying a dvd player until the ps2 came out and that worked out. I like single box solutions, but I want my mp3s in my living room.
Personally, I don't care about the specs of these consoles. I learned my lesson.
Sony came around a few years ago and lied out their ass about how awesome the PS2 was going to be. Where are my Toy Story quality graphics? The PS2 was supposed to push 66 million polygons, how come it can only push a maximum of 7?
Nintendo only claimed to be able to push 9 million polygons so everyone crapped all over their console prior to launch. Yet somehow, a first-generation launch title pushed more than 14 million. Since then, some games have been able to push more than 18.
As you can see, there isn't much you can tell about the performance of a console by press releases. I don't ever remember a Sony press release claiming to have more jaggy edges to their 3D graphics than the competition, yet that is quite true.
I am much more interested in what these systems will allow me to do. The idea of a gyroscope controller sounds just right. For years I’ve seen people tip their controller one way or another as they play, it is a natural instinct. It makes me wonder why nobody has done this before.
As for the number of giga-flops or 1024 bit dual processor mumbo-jumbo… who cares! Does anyone really care how fast the front-side-bus is on your Xbox? Of course not. As long as it plays Burnout 3, what does it matter?
Sony is big enough that its various divisions tend to step on each others' toes all the time. The Cell people are probably not the same group as the Blu-ray people.
And for what its worth, the PS2's reputation for being hard to develop on is well-deserved. Fine-tuning a game to run well on it takes months of time and specialized equipment. Though, this is partially due to the fact that it just doesn't have enough RAM. The XBox is a lot easier to develop for.
I think MS has the opportunity to take the lead with XBox 2, but to do so they have to get the Japanese on board.
Sony never claimed toy story like graphics. The quote came from an article in a game magazine and was writen by an editor who was writing a fluff piece on the system. Don't believe me? Look it up. No one has ever been able to prove that Quote came from Sony.
As for being lied too. Please, give me a break. Sony's PS2 has far exceeded what people thought it was going to do graphically. Just look at modern games like GT4 and MGS3. You remember those face demos Sony showed off before the system hit? Silent Hill 4 easily matched them.
I'm sorry but I get so tired of hearing people bash Sony for all of this. The system is over a YEAR older then then Xbox. So of course it is not going to have graphics as good as the Xbox. That's how technology is.
The high GHz range can partially be confirmed by Sony's licensing of Longrun2 from Transmeta. This power management technology will permit them to move to smaller gate lengths and therefore faster frequencies, because gate leakage will be under control. This should allow them to move towards both 65nm and 45nm lithography processes.
The hype machine commeth...
And despite the fact that Sony promised the world and didn't deliver on PS2 we've already got a ton of people blindly believing they'll do it next time.
Sony company line (PS2):
Emotion engine is revolutionary, it'll do everything faster then it's ever done before. We'll take over PC's and all computing with our all powerful new processor. And despite the fact that the ps2 might have 4 processors developers will be able to use all of them in parallel with no difficulties. In fact if they don't figure out how to use our system it's not because of over hype, bad chip design, or poor developer support, it's because the developers are lazy.
Reality (PS2):
All quoted numbers on speed were for drawing unlit, untextured triangles. Real-world numbers were much lower. Dealing with multiple processors was a pain in the ass, so most launch titles didn't use any chips but the "emotion engine". Over time developers figured out how to get to the rest of the machine, but it was a pain in the ass.
Despite fast speeds at ship time within 3-6 month of the launch a high end PC's were faster.
Sony company line (PS3):
Cell is revolutionary, it'll do everything faster then it's ever done before. We'll take over PC's and all computing with our all powerful new processor. And despite the fact that the ps3 might have something around 32 processors developers will be able to use all of them in parallel with no difficulties. In fact if they don't figure out how to use our system it's not because of over hype, bad chip design, or poor developer support, it's because the developers are lazy.
Speculative Reality (PS3):
We'll get a lot of exciting benchmark numbers from Sony, which will be accurate under ideal circumstances and not have anything to do with the real world. The machine will still be damn fast, but launch titles won't look nearly as good as we'd expect because developers will have so much trouble trying to keep all the processors busy.
On the PC front with 3-6 months of launch both Nvidia and ATI will launch new cards based on upgrades of the tech they developed for the consoles. Intel and AMD will start launching CPUs with multiple cores on a single chip. The AMD 64x4 will blow away performance on any console. (Of course no games will be written to fully take advantage of it, because so few people actually own them)
So... Sony may not have used the words Toy Story graphics. Didn't they claim 66 million polygons?
Didn't it turn out to be some kinds foolish number that would never equate to real-world usage? You know, like 66 million polygons that are the exact same size, shape, not moving, no textures, in the dark?
You get my point. Someone isn't being truthful.
MS did the same thing with the Xbox. They claimed the Xbox had THREE TIMES THE POWER OF THE PS2. Right... You show me one game on the Xbox that looks "three times" as good as games like MGS3, GT4, or Silent Hill 4. Just one game, please.
Companies do this kind of crap all the time. All companies lie about what specs mean in terms of real world game performance. Nvidia does it with their cards. So does ATI.
Really only Nintendo gave a "real" spec sheet with the GC and even they over stated its specs. That's life. Just don't act like Sony is the only company guilty of this crap.
3 Times the power doesn't translate to "three times" as good looking games.
My car has 3 times the horsepower of your car doesn't mean my car will be 3 times as fast as your car.
@ raven
the next xBox is called "xBox 360" not "Xenon"!
Cygoku
I did my own analysis... it is available at any of the following locations...
http://www.igeek.com/CellProcessor.pdf
http://homepage.mac.com/dke/.cv/dke/Public/CellProcessor.pdf-binhex.hqx
http://www.mymac.com/fileupload/CellProcessor.pdf
PS3 will really kick ass(namely Xbox360's)I for one will be getting a PS3:)
David, thanks for the article.
As for PS2, it performed exactly as Sony said it would. Look again at the complete specs and consider the fact that Performance Analyzer results showed that games had reached as high as 20M polygons drawn per second a couple of years ago, quite a leap from the first Ratchet and Clank which drew a peak of about 8M (7.5M sustained) per second. Furthermore, those are merely the polygons you can see. The actual polygons calculated internally is higher than the number that you can see.
One SPE is like a PS2 vector unit but at a much higher clock speed, 3.2Ghz instead of 300mhz. Therefore it should be able to do vertex shading instructions atleast 10 times as fast as Vu1, which was the vector unit used for vertex shading in most games. So if bandwidth, rasterizer and pixel-pipelines can keep up, there is no reason why the PS3 shouldnt easily do more than 200M polygons per second in real world performance using just 1 SPE. At 60fps, thats more than 3.3M polygons per scene.
Thats more polygons than there are pixels at 1080p!