- Joined
- Jan 24, 2011
- Location
- Zebulon, North Carolina
A Cell processor is powerful, and in most cases we could go beyond a Flash video for ads and websites and actually be able to have a fully interactive graphical website without using GPUs, while in 3d gaming a cell processor can help render textures, taking a massive load off the GPU for other tasks like pixel pipelining or AA/AF/Ambient Occlusion, the only reason we are not using SPE technology is because neither company has main streamed it.
Let's think about this for a second, if Intel, AMD or even IBM tossed out a Cell Processor and sold it for, say $500 at 3.2ghz, Linux from my understanding already can utilize the cells, not sure about Windows but lets imagine if it was developed with SPE's in mind. We could have what is now "resource hog" Aero theme's with more flexibility, a richer graphically stimulating website environment, and to top it off, OpenGL would become main stream, automatically that kicks microsoft in the butt and they wouldn't do that to themselves, but on the other hand, if Cell processors were main stream, they would probably find a way to code DirectX for a Cell... which ultimately would open the flood gates for the Playstation 3 and we can stop being held back by at least one console.
Let's open another imagination book, when you play a graphically rich game or something pretty demanding, you CPU cores are hardly doing any work, there are 2 reason for this from my understanding, one is because the games don't really use the CPU for much else other than security programs or some light texture unpacking/maps and data swaps. The other reason is because when your CPU's Cache fills up or the cores hit more than 90% you will have performance issues, because it is relying on an architecture that isn't designed for 3D material. Now put a Cell in your rig, make Windows compatible with 8-12 SPE's all at 3.2ghz, it is still able to processes things developed for actual CPU's, but for a gaming situation, it is far superior, the language between a Cell and a GPU have no variance, where a CPU to a GPU or vise versa have different instructions which is why your CPU is hardly ever used other than those unpacking and small meshes.
If this were to happen at some point, IBM would really take the market, they could seriously take the market, and these chips would make CPU's dead in the water when it comes to gaming performance, a graphically intense game could literally run on a cell processor, backing it up with a high end GPU and your system would scream. I'm not denying the Cell Processor has limitation, but it's only limited by what is developed for it, and how itself is developed, there is a reason a game on the PS3 Exclusively looks as good as a Ultra Maxed out game today, and it's not because of that POS RSX chip. When you were able to run Linux, some Finnish guys ran a bunch of 3D benchmarks, the Cell on the PS3 outperformed in Ray Tracing, Physics particles, Rendering speed and overall higher precision counts.
The only reason a game from PC doesn't fair as well is due to differences in architecture, and the limited amount of RAM, in this case, we'd have access to 4 or 6GBs of XDR RAM, the XDR RAM in the PS3 is running at 3.2ghz, which is faster than anything we have available right now so it's infinitely more possible to create a 1:1 rig using a SPE based platform.
I wonder if this would ever happen in my lifetime, or if it did, how would it change Overclocking, XDR RAM would no doubt be paired with these high performance chips.
Do you think they would be affordable?
Would you buy one if it was (for example) 8 SPE's @ 3.2ghz 90W for around $500.?
Would you buy a 12 SPE @ 3.6ghz processor for $1000? 125W
most people willingly did with the Intel series, Cell processors need to become main stream, the Playstation 3 set the bar high, and most companies don't even want to compete because it's easier to make ports and shaft the PC user, because everybody will buy it anyway, I just keep thinking of how amazing Uncharted looks, taking advantage of 75-80% of the PS3's hardware, if it had more RAM the world could much more massive, i'd say, without a doubt if the PS3 had 1 or 2GBs of XDR Memory and more companies developed for OpenGL the PS3 would look better than our current gen PC hardware.
Let's think about this for a second, if Intel, AMD or even IBM tossed out a Cell Processor and sold it for, say $500 at 3.2ghz, Linux from my understanding already can utilize the cells, not sure about Windows but lets imagine if it was developed with SPE's in mind. We could have what is now "resource hog" Aero theme's with more flexibility, a richer graphically stimulating website environment, and to top it off, OpenGL would become main stream, automatically that kicks microsoft in the butt and they wouldn't do that to themselves, but on the other hand, if Cell processors were main stream, they would probably find a way to code DirectX for a Cell... which ultimately would open the flood gates for the Playstation 3 and we can stop being held back by at least one console.
Let's open another imagination book, when you play a graphically rich game or something pretty demanding, you CPU cores are hardly doing any work, there are 2 reason for this from my understanding, one is because the games don't really use the CPU for much else other than security programs or some light texture unpacking/maps and data swaps. The other reason is because when your CPU's Cache fills up or the cores hit more than 90% you will have performance issues, because it is relying on an architecture that isn't designed for 3D material. Now put a Cell in your rig, make Windows compatible with 8-12 SPE's all at 3.2ghz, it is still able to processes things developed for actual CPU's, but for a gaming situation, it is far superior, the language between a Cell and a GPU have no variance, where a CPU to a GPU or vise versa have different instructions which is why your CPU is hardly ever used other than those unpacking and small meshes.
If this were to happen at some point, IBM would really take the market, they could seriously take the market, and these chips would make CPU's dead in the water when it comes to gaming performance, a graphically intense game could literally run on a cell processor, backing it up with a high end GPU and your system would scream. I'm not denying the Cell Processor has limitation, but it's only limited by what is developed for it, and how itself is developed, there is a reason a game on the PS3 Exclusively looks as good as a Ultra Maxed out game today, and it's not because of that POS RSX chip. When you were able to run Linux, some Finnish guys ran a bunch of 3D benchmarks, the Cell on the PS3 outperformed in Ray Tracing, Physics particles, Rendering speed and overall higher precision counts.
The only reason a game from PC doesn't fair as well is due to differences in architecture, and the limited amount of RAM, in this case, we'd have access to 4 or 6GBs of XDR RAM, the XDR RAM in the PS3 is running at 3.2ghz, which is faster than anything we have available right now so it's infinitely more possible to create a 1:1 rig using a SPE based platform.
I wonder if this would ever happen in my lifetime, or if it did, how would it change Overclocking, XDR RAM would no doubt be paired with these high performance chips.
Do you think they would be affordable?
Would you buy one if it was (for example) 8 SPE's @ 3.2ghz 90W for around $500.?
Would you buy a 12 SPE @ 3.6ghz processor for $1000? 125W
most people willingly did with the Intel series, Cell processors need to become main stream, the Playstation 3 set the bar high, and most companies don't even want to compete because it's easier to make ports and shaft the PC user, because everybody will buy it anyway, I just keep thinking of how amazing Uncharted looks, taking advantage of 75-80% of the PS3's hardware, if it had more RAM the world could much more massive, i'd say, without a doubt if the PS3 had 1 or 2GBs of XDR Memory and more companies developed for OpenGL the PS3 would look better than our current gen PC hardware.
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