PS3's Cell processor demoed

By digistil
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digistil

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Toshiba has demoed the new Cell processor, which will be used as the brain in Sony's upcoming PS3. Using all but one of it's cores, the Cell is shown to be capable of decoding 48 MPEG2 streams and scaling them to create a 1920x1080 grid of all 48 streams (MPEG2 is what DVD uses).

The demo was to showcase it's multimedia capabilities, which is to say that the Cell's poly-bilities were not exposed.

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Xerxes

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I think this is all pretty cool :cool: I've been reading up a little on the CELL processor recently..with all the hype about the Xbox 360 and how powerful it is suppose tobe I decided that I'd see what the compition has to offer :laugh:

Well we all know that for a fact the Xbox 360 has 3x 3.0Ghz Dual-Core PowerPC (G5) Processors (64-bit) so that alone make it quite a beast...but from what I've been reading up on the CELL, the PS3 is going tobe somewhat of a beast itself...now what I'm about to say is not fact and is only what I think, what will actually be in the PS3 is unknown and will be offically revealed buy Sony at E3...but based on hear-say here is what I got...

The PS3 will have 4x 4.6Ghz (aprox.) CELL Processors (each with 9 cores) and is also based on 64-bit PowerPC (G5) architecture...to these 9 cores each processor has, I'm not sure if it's truely a multi-core processor as each of these "cores" is actually called an APU (Attached Processing Unit) and it has 8 of these with the 9th been a "controller"..someone with more technical knowledge would be able to set the records straight on that...but anyway, from what I understand the PS3 (if it works that is :laugh: ) could potentially be even more powerful then the Xbox 360...but the new Xbox does have one advantage, it has 512Mb of RAM while the PS3 only has 256Mb (this could change though) Well I hope you could follow me on that :laugh: ...so in the end what I'm trying to say is Xbox 360 hasn't won the "next gen" war yet....bring on E3!

NOTE: This is only my opinion and the "facts" I stated about the PS3 are not offical and may be different from what Sony reveal at E3 this year.

Linky for those interested in learning more about the CELL

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parhamreza

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Here's what I don't understand, how you can fit all that processing power into a box and charge 400 bucks for it, when the same processing power in a PC would cost thousands. How does this work? Do the processors on these next gen consoles simply have high clock speeds and nothing else, or what!

Grand Master

BGM

Posted
Posted
  parhamreza said:
Here's what I don't understand, how you can fit all that processing power into a box and charge 400 bucks for it, when the same processing power in a PC would cost thousands. How does this work? Do the processors on these next gen consoles simply have high clock speeds and nothing else, or what!

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its probably to do with the way that the processesor processes stuff.. at a guess im sure it has a completely different architecture to the 32-bit ones used in personal computers becasue they are 'based' on processesors nearly 20 years old now..

If manufactures completely redesigned the way their chips worked each time they had a new one out, im quite confident we would have PC thats could time travel by now (slight exageration, u get the idea).

The reason why they dont do this is so people dont have to buy completely new stuff to run on the systems.. can you imagine going to the shop to buy all new software everytime you upgraded your machine, at a cost of thousands of $$ due to the development time of an OS, or office suite for that matter..

Trying to squeeze faster and faster speeds out of a 20 year old architecture, reducing the die size, putting more transistors on and tacking on extensions such as MMX etc, and the like is what costs hte money in a PC, but the same chip because it wil have been designed from the ground up to be super fast will cost alot less and the reason why this isnt done is as stated above..

atleast thats what i beleive to be true... it just be a marketing ploy by the ****** corporations!

Grand Master

IK47

Posted
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  Dr.Jones said:
they lose money by selling the console, but they make a lot of cash selling games at 65 $

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ahahah!!

PS2 was only successful because piracy is so huge for it. Everyone I know who has a ps2 has it modded and buy's games for $10 each. If sony thinks that selling the ps3 for cheap is a good idea, they are about to change their $70B debt to $125B

Rising Star

Bwizzel-B

Posted
Posted
  IK .:. 47 said:
ahahah!!

PS2 was only successful because piracy is so huge for it.  Everyone I know who has a ps2 has it modded and buy's games for $10 each.  If sony thinks that selling the ps3 for cheap is a good idea, they are about to change their $70B debt to $125B

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Your comment about why the PS2 has been successful has no basis in fact.

Grand Master

Martog

Posted
Posted
  kawai said:
am i the only one that noticed that they demo is running WMP10 @ Fullscreen mode???

hmmmm....

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Yeah I noticed that too, that can't be an actual picture of the renderation of all the frames, now it could be just a movie file showing the actual presentation of it, but I highly doubt there is Windows running on cell right now, unless they are using some sort of emulation to do so, and even then, I am not sure WMP would be able to do what they are talking about, it would be some software they developed themselves.

  noping said:
WMP10 on CELL??? hold on if it can WMP10 then it would have to be doing Windows on CELL?

it cat be WMP10. OTherwise AMD64, here comes the cell!!!

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If it isn't WMP10, then it's a program that looks like it full screen. As I stated above, I doubt it is the real rendering they were discussing, just don't think Windows is running on it, not even embedded.

Grand Master

Martog

Posted
Posted
  IK .:. 47 said:
ahahah!!

PS2 was only successful because piracy is so huge for it.  Everyone I know who has a ps2 has it modded and buy's games for $10 each.  If sony thinks that selling the ps3 for cheap is a good idea, they are about to change their $70B debt to $125B

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You sure you are not mistaking it for the Xbox? That seems to be the console of choice right now to mod and get games uber cheap for ti. And if they are buying pirated software (DVD's don't cost $10 a pop in the US unless they are DL), they are quite the stupid ones. If you are going to pirate software, don't pay for it, LOL!

The PS2 is more of a success because of the developer backing behind it, built on the success and hype of the PSX/PSOne, and Sony hyped up the PS2 as well, and lots of people bought into the hype. There are some good games on the system, but "good games" are a matter of opinion and that is how I feel. And yes, I down a PS2. :)

Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

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  Xerxes said:
The PS3 will have 4x 4.6Ghz (aprox.) CELL Processors (each with 9 cores) and is also based on 64-bit PowerPC (G5) architecture...to these 9 cores each processor has, I'm not sure if it's truely a multi-core processor as each of these "cores" is actually called an APU (Attached Processing Unit) and it has 8 of these with the 9th been a "controller"..someone with more technical knowledge would be able to set the records straight on that...but anyway, from what I understand the PS3... on and on...

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Dude, what are you on?

The PS3 will have one processor. Its clockspeed is entirely unknown and guessing at that is pointless. Current information suggests that it will have one Power-based main processing unit with 6 cells attached to it. The Power-based chip may be a dual/triple core deal... but probably not.

The cell processors are extremely limited in what they can actually do. It will be interesting to see how Sony uses them. Even more interesting will be how they handle the software vs. hardware acceleration split.

In fact, I'm interested to see how both MS and Sony do that, given the massive general-purpose processing power in the Xbox 360. I expect Sony will not be including a true GPU in the PS3, just like the PS2. Instead, they'll use the cells as vector engines and then attach whatever rasterizer Nvidia helps them come up with. I have no idea if they'll feature pixel/vertex shading capabilities. But the Xbox 360 almost certainly will.

One huge edge that may tip the scales toward the Xbox 360 (in terms of final graphical quality) may be its use of Embedded DRAM in the GPU. Having what is basically an on-chip frame buffer opens up enormous possibilities in terms of image quality.

Grand Master

Xerxes

Posted
Posted (edited)
  threedaysdwn said:
Dude, what are you on?

The PS3 will have one processor.? Its clockspeed is entirely unknown and guessing at that is pointless.? Current information suggests that it will have one Power-based main processing unit with 6 cells attached to it.? The Power-based chip may be a dual/triple core deal... but probably not.

The cell processors are extremely limited in what they can actually do.? It will be interesting to see how Sony uses them.? Even more interesting will be how they handle the software vs. hardware acceleration split.?

In fact, I'm interested to see how both MS and Sony do that, given the massive general-purpose processing power in the Xbox 360.? I expect Sony will not be including a true GPU in the PS3, just like the PS2.? Instead, they'll use the cells as vector engines and then attach whatever rasterizer Nvidia helps them come up with.? I have no idea if they'll feature pixel/vertex shading capabilities.? But the Xbox 360 almost certainly will.

One huge edge that may tip the scales toward the Xbox 360 (in terms of final graphical quality) may be its use of Embedded DRAM in the GPU.? Having what is basically an on-chip frame buffer opens up enormous possibilities in terms of image quality.

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I'm not on:laugh:ng :laugh: ...just very late at night was reading an interesting article...cause it was late I didn't bother to check to see if the article was e:blush:it :blush: and posted without thinking...I did mention at the bottom of the post it wasn't based on anything factual....anyway we will all know co;) :happy:

Edited by Xerxes
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