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86 Comments
- gatorsrule21, on 10/12/2007, -29/+63This message brought to you by Sony USA.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+34And Digg is brought to you by Sony haters.. it seems...
This is about the CELL PROCESSOR people created by Sony, IBM, and Toshiba. This is not about Sony, not PS3, not Betamax....
At least no mention of Rootkits.. - jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -5/+22I was gonna say this would make for a great advertisement aimed at convincing consumers that the PS3 price is justified.
- NoOneButMe, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~samw/projects/cell/CF06.pdf
And "Potential" doesnt mean anything if it cant be utilized. Quantum Theory has the potential to bring supercomputing to the everyday home. Wont happen anytime soon though. - rockforever, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12I can't wait till a new fad hits digg and people stop bashing Sony at the very mention of something that the PS3 features.
- gsnedders, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9The Linux kernel already runs on Cell (IBM, as always with they new chips, have ported the kernel over), and Sony have got all the various GNU tools running.
- coheedcollapse, on 10/12/2007, -15/+24The difference between Betamax and PS3, threepio, is that there were no people on Digg that were so obnoxiously against it that it made me want to buy it just to spite them.
Take THAT! - czack, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14ywong137
I like how it's AMD, Intel, and.... Cray.
Cuz you know, Cray Supercomputer is coming out with a new console this year and is a big competitor to Sony...
***
Did you even read the article man, or are you just blindly bashing the PS3? I think the latter. If you actually took the time to read the article, you would have read this sentence: "The authors developed a performance model for Cell and used it to show direct comparisons of Cell against the AMD Opteron, Intel Itanium2 and Cray X1 architectures." They are comparing the cell arcitecture to cray's architechture in a scientific setting, not against PS3 performace. Dumbass.
How'd you like a foot up your ass? - samdu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8"on point, why bash Cell, if its blazing, isn't that good?"
Because according to the digg mob, ANYthing that Sony has a hand in cannot, by reason of association, be a good thing. And yeah, that's pretty much cutting off your nose to spite your face. - distrbnce, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12ywong137: You're confused. Probably 'cause you just read the title and went straight to the comment to bash Sony.
The article quite clearly isn't about computers, it's about processing.
You mentioned Cray isn't coming out with a console, but neither is AMD or Intel, so whatever point you might have been trying to make, broke off, and fell into the deep, dark pit that is your fanboy illogy.
(illogy is my new noun for illogical) - hchaudh1, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13Most of the comments here are just driven by a hatred towards Sony. I mean, do a google search. The cell processor is a generation ahead of current processors. Its being ratified by the scientific community, the military is planning to pick it up. Why is everyone saying its so bad?
I wonder what the general reaction would have been if it was part of the Wii. Not negative I am sure.
I have never been a fan of Sony's. But for once, they are doing something good. We are looking towards moving ahead of our current RISC based processors.
@n00854180t Nowhere is it mentioned that Sony sponsored the study.
@JeffH Why would it be horrible. The Linux kernel has already been ported to it. Sony will be releasing a functional Linux distro with the PS3.
The software was indeed optimized for the cell, but how does it contradict the fact that the cell indeed gave better performance. - distrbnce, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I'm sure most major scientific studies are run on hand-optimized code.
- hchaudh1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9You do realize everything that happens inside a computer is math.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_(computer_graphics) - Chewie67, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The PS3 has been mentioned. Isn't someone going to spout off about how much fun they'll have wearing their pink tu-tu, listening to Britany Spears, and playing nintendogs on their new Wii?
Isn't it a requirement for a Digg comment section? - Virtualtaco, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Everyone needs to take a ***** reality check and recall that Sony, IBM, and Toshiba own the rights to the Cell and that it's being compared to the top processor companies' products by the DOE. This personal gamer agenda ***** is retarded. Seriously kids, mod me down, pick up your ball, and go home.
- Virtualtaco, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Oh yea, like... business? I'm sure the fact that IBM is a competitor of Cray in supercomputing and owns the Cell in part has nothing to do with it.
- Falcorian, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Yes... Because that's the point. LBL doesn't do game related studies, they do science related studies, where they are perfectly capable of programing their own programs to run on it.
- SanityInAnarchy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8To be fair, you kind of have to hand-optimize things for the Cell. Kind of like how you have to add threading to see any kind of performance gain from a second CPU. Yes, I know about AMD's -- er -- opposite of hyperthreading, so it's theoretically possible that we'll eventually see some sort of solution to make the Cell become a wicked-fast Intel CPU, but I wouldn't count on it.
What'd be more interesting, though, is if Sony, AMD, Intel, and IBM all decided to have some sort of fair contest -- pick 10 or 20 well-defined tasks to use as benchmarks, and let each party hand-optimize it for their own CPU, then we'll compare. I bet the Cell won't impress anyone with its mad Excel or Access skills, and it might even suck at compiling. But, it's also possible there are things it does very, very well.
And to answer the question about why no one's rushing out to grab it, well, I didn't see you rushing to grab a Transmeta chip, either. But, my new Powerbook (ok, not so new) lasts maybe 4 hours on battery for basic things like text, email, and web. My old Sharp notebook with a Crusoe chip lasted 9-12 hours for the same things -- text, email, and web. Lasted more like 3-6 hours on the smaller battery, or if I was watching movies. It's not a fair comparison by any means, and these numbers are fuzzy -- the hard drive is busted and I can't replace it.
So, why aren't people rushing to buy them, especially now that they make CPUs fast enough to watch DVDs? It was an awesome little notebook, and it did everything I do now on my Powerbook, with the exception of having either a tad too slow of a processor (1 ghz, but Crusoes do emulation) or video card (some Silicon Motion crap). I hear the newer Transmeta-powered notebooks do just fine with DVDs. And nobody seems to care that the CMS firmware (the x86 emulation software) is proprietary and essentially TPM'd, since you only find that out if you're smart enough to figure out why X crashes sometimes (a bug in the old CMS), and you can't upgrade without the upgrade being signed by both Transmeta and your manufacturer, and Sharp was lazy.
I think the reason is, such things aren't for everyone, mainly because people don't know they need them. An ultra thin, ultra light notebook with a huge battery life? But people think 4 hours is pretty good, and they always look for a desktop replacement -- built-in CD burner, nice video card, couple gigs of RAM, 2 ghz CPU...
And probably the real reason is, these people have different needs than me, such as running BloatyApps under Windows, actually replacing a desktop, and insisting on more power to run their spyware. Thus, no market demand and very, very low product visibility.
Same thing could happen to the Cell. Especially seeing as they still haven't launched the PS3, the Cell needs all the publicity it can get, even in a field where you'd think people do research, like those in need of scientific computations. - icefitz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7"While their current analysis uses hand-optimized code on a set of small scientific kernels, the results are striking. On average, Cell is eight times faster and at least eight times more power efficient than current Opteron and Itanium processors, despite the fact that Cell's peak double precision performance is fourteen times slower than its peak single precision performance."
Hummmm....... hand-optimized code. What does that mean and that is also the kind of comment that gets other CPU benchmarks in *****. - JeffH, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10They forgot one little detail.
The Cell is an in-order processor. Therefore unless an OS and all it's programs were specifically programmed for it, it'd be a horrible computer processor. And it seems like the tests carried out seemed to have been specially programmed for it. - Sophren, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8"I wonder what the general reaction would have been if it was part of the Wii."
Most thought provoking comment I've seen on digg thus far. - ronmexico, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Pixelpimp, I'm pretty sure Apple can't afford Sony.
- threepio, on 10/12/2007, -22/+26In other news:
Tremendous Potential in BetaMax!
Tremendous Potential in MiniDisc!
Tremendous Potential in the Network Walkman!
It's amazing how little tremendous potential means in the long run. For the good of all gamers I hope that there is tremendous potential in the Cell processor and that it's used to create some revolutionary (oy) gaming experiences. Which I'll partake in. After the price of the PS3 gets out of "home refinancing" stage. - TetsuoSama, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Scientists rejoice!
Now they can calculate the public distaste for Sony in real time. - distrbnce, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I think I just read a rational, logical, level-headed comment.
Thank you hchaudh1 for letting the angsty-geek bandwagon pass you by. - coheedcollapse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Well the same thing happens with 64 bit processing, you don't get any of the perks without using special software, but people still buy into it, hell I even own one in my laptop, although I don't have the money to go out and buy 64 bit Windows (I ordered a 64 bit Dapper Drake CD, so I'll be using that soon enough).
- distrbnce, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5n00854180t, i'd like to say you're a pretty silly guy.
- coheedcollapse, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Yeah, no Sony fans have said anything about superiority, yet the phrase "Sony Fanboys" has been used more than twice.
Man it's like an army of clones on here sometimes. Sony bashing, mac loving, wii worshipping clones. - bejitunksu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Quoting JeffH
" The Cell is an in-order processor. Therefore unless an OS and all it's programs were specifically programmed for it, it'd be a horrible computer processor. And it seems like the tests carried out seemed to have been specially programmed for it."
Unless the cell was redesigned to be out of order, or the OS was optimized SPECIFICALLY for the cell, you're SOL for a good processor. - distrbnce, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6which is limited to geeks desperate to rage against something silly.
- hunchback, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5mac loving? usually there's heavy mac bashing / troll attacks on mac posts here.
on point, why bash Cell, if its blazing, isn't that good? The blazing price of PS3 however is not so good. - SkyFire360, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Sanity: To be fair, you kind of have to hand-optimize things for the Cell.
While it's true that you have to design your code with parallel operations in mind and keeping your code thread-safe, it is completely normal when dealing with multithreading environments. If you keep thread safety in mind, the new IBM compiler should be able to take your existing code and streamline it for the seven SPUs on the Cell.
More info here:
http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_projects.nsf/pages/cellcompiler.index.html - Virtualtaco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2To know that we'd have to have a copy of the contracts they all signed for the development colaberation. But they all have some stake in it. So there must be some kickback to IBM and Toshiba for having the first comercial batch go to Sony. Good question though I'd like to know the specifics too.
- millixaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah the Cell may be a wonderful product, but it's an IBM product. Therefor, any credit the product accumulates goes to IBM, not Sony. Sony is just the first company to put it in a "consumer" product.
- FoolErrant, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Game physics often uses similar or the same algorithms scientific computing does. What computers do now with game physics used to be research physics. That said, I'm still wondering about the capacity of the Cell to deal with game environments, due to the likely massive amounts of threading needed to use all of the SPUs and the CPU to the fullest, since most modern games only run on a few threads, due to the high amount of input needed...
- BugMeNot2, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5"The title is misleading, this is saying the cell excels at scientific computations, not game related computation."
Umm... where in the title does it say that Cell excels at game-related computation?
In the description, it says "scientific computations". - triplehelix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2i guess the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is a Sony fan-boy organization as well?
http://digg.com/technology/PS3_s_STI_Cell_processor_gets_scientists_excited - distrbnce, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2what an asinine statement.
- pixelpimp, on 10/12/2007, -8/+9I guess I haven't looked at the PS3 as something other than a gaming console. It maybe something more that just a gaming console. It could be more like a MacMini. If the Cell was in a notebook or desktop; $600 would be one hell of a price tag for that kind of system. I wonder why Apple didn't buy Sony and use the Cell. Or AMD.
- triplehelix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1there's a big difference between technology that has theoretical potential to deliver huge performance but hasn't been even remotely developed yet, and a piece of hardware that is being manufactured now that has the potential to out perform other existing technology's.
- Archimboldo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This doesn't give much about their agreement, but they are planning on continuing their joint development on newer versions for 5 more years:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=7765 - yaosio, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Newer processor architecture and design better than older processor architecture and design; also vectors, multi-core, ASIC.
- n00854180t, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Silly like a fox!
- Xevallah, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2"So how long till we have PS3 fanboys saying that this proves the PS3 is superior to all other consoles?"
Apparently the Sony bashing drones beat us to it!
The Cell hasn't been released yet because Sony has the rights to a small window of exclusivity. Everyone’s waiting on Sony. Also, the Cell in the PS3 isn't as powerful as the standard chip. Believe it or not; for economical reasons. - Archimboldo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Curiosity question: what does owning the rights mean? Does it mean they split the profits 33/33/33 for each one sold? Suppose one of them wants to make a mod to the Cell and market it, does the new version belong to the company that made the mod? Do they pay some fraction of a licensing fee to the other 2 companies?
- Virtualtaco, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3holy crap Dradien... if you get that pissed from us just saying that... how pissed are you going to be when everyone finds out we are both joking and laughs their ass off at how you though we were totally being serious???
...I think i just heard an aneurysm burst somewhere... - SanityInAnarchy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3I think this is concrete proof that Sony's completely blown it with this one. Despite coming with Linux preinstalled, I don't think there are any PS3 fanboys left.
- sporkman, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6I suspect there is a reason the cray is using AMD chips for the next generation instead of CELL.
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