PS3 - 2 TeraFlops, 48 pipelines (you better be kidding me)

Q

quadp6

New Member
Could someone please explain to me how a video game can do 2 TeraFlops?
Nasa can only pull 70TF with 1000`s of itanium 2 processors. The ps3 will also have a 48 pipeline videocard(so it can run a 400X300 TV)? Is my life outdated? Please fill me in i am very confused.
 
actually a 1920x1080 hi-def screen :D 2Tflops? well I guess 10 billion dollars of research for a chip the size of a fingernail will do that. here is a powerpoint on the CPU http://www.ps3land.com/CELL.ppt

"So the way that the Cell processor works is that there is a pool of 16 or so of these (probably not completely identical) RISC or SIMD/VLIW cores on a single die. The system will do its processing by drawing resources from this pool on a task-specific basis. For instance, the audio processing subsystem will consist of a set of software routines that request cycles from the pool for the purpose of processing 3D audio. The 3D engine will similarly request cycles from the same pool for rendering, and similarly with the game AI system, etc. The different processing cores will probably be grouped together dynamically by software into "teams" in order to complete specific tasks (i.e. 3D rendering, audio, etc.). Each team's size will scale dynamically to fit its current workload by either acquiring new cores from the pool or releasing unneeded cores back to the pool for use by other processes."

Written by Arstechnica.
Click to expand...
 
yeeeeep. this news came out like 6 months ago i thought. i remember reading about the cell technology about 2 years ago, i believe. nobody believes the ps3 will really be that much better than the xbox. i beg to differ :)
 
well if the ps3 is powerful enough to hardware render hi-res CG quality video then my hat is off to it and I will definitely buy it. Imagine the next Final Fantasy on the PS3 *drool*
 
yea....it's believable. It's the way cell links the synergistic processors. Lets it dynamicly distribute load over 7 chips so it self optimizes. Chip to chip transfer speeds blow itanium out of the water.

I've been following this since it was first announced like 4 years ago.
 
like i said in the other thread, those charts are based on opinion and not bench marks. The numbers they use for the cell processor treat it as a standard multi-core chip. Their first cute little chart told me all I needed to know about the validity of that review.
 
Im not trying to say xbox is beter, its just 2 TERAFLOPS is unbelievable, does this means all p4, athlons and other chips are totaly obselete. How fast can a 3.8 GHZ P4 go? Could it be that ps3 is releasing BS specs so people wait to buy it insted of the xbox?
 
it doesn't matter because Cell is not x86. You could not put a cell chip in a desktop as the current code base is no where near compatible. The market will remain for Athlon and Intel chips as they have so much support right now. It will be a long time until cell works it's way out of the specialty sector and into home use.
 
quadp6 said:
Im not trying to say xbox is beter, its just 2 TERAFLOPS is unbelievable, does this means all p4, athlons and other chips are totaly obselete. How fast can a 3.8 GHZ P4 go? Could it be that ps3 is releasing BS specs so people wait to buy it insted of the xbox?
Click to expand...
They designed the Cell CPU for the PS3 specifically, so right now yes, it is better than current Pentium 4's and Athlons.
 
actually it wasn't designed just for the PS3. IBM wanted to develope the architecture and they managed to get Sony to pay for a lot of the development by releasing it in the PS3 for the first time.
 
cell chips are going to be used in a variety of sony products, eventually... from phones and pda's to laptops and the like.
 
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