IBM's Plans For the Cell Processor 124
angry tapir writes "Development around the original Cell processor hasn't stalled, and IBM will continue to develop chips and supply hardware for future gaming consoles, a company executive said. IBM is working with gaming machine vendors including Nintendo and Sony, said Jai Menon, CTO of IBM's Systems and Technology Group, during an interview Thursday. 'We want to stay in the business, we intend to stay in the business,' he said. IBM confirmed in a statement that it continues to manufacture the Cell processor for use by Sony in its PlayStation 3. IBM also will continue to invest in Cell as part of its hybrid and multicore chip strategy, Menon said."
We like money! (Score:4, Insightful)
Multicore for raytracing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Whats a Future Power Road Map? (Score:3, Insightful)
Cell is a processor with two PPC cores, interfaced with a bunch of auxiliary CPU cores optimized for SIMD, each with its local memory.
Right?
Re:Whats a Future Power Road Map? (Score:3, Insightful)
On further reading - not two PPC cores, one core with two threads using a similar (but possibly superior) technology to hyperthreading.
But yeah, essentially your short description there is correct.
Also I've looked at the top 500 list - The cell, though not the variant in the playstation, is in Roadrunner. Roadrunner is the third fastest computer on the planet.
The problem with Cell... (Score:3, Insightful)
... is that it lies in between ordinary x86-type multicore processors and CUDA/GPGPU, and there's not much room in between.
Re:Whats a Future Power Road Map? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course game developers tend to be a bit more sceptical. The Cell requires a very specific way of programming (don't align your data flow to the processor's capabilities and performance nose-dives), which doesn't go over well with people who have limited time to make their game/engine work on several different platforms, most of which work roughly the same.
I attended the Games Convention Developers Conference 2008. A number of panelists mentioned that what they presented was harder to get working on the Cell due to its unique requirements. It really does require a different approach to every other system on the market.
Add to that the fact that the PS3 doesn't appear to deliver obviously superior performance to the more conventional X360 and the question arises whether the Cell is worth the hassle in the gaming sector. Scientific programming can afford to write system-specific code and jump through hoops to attain maximum performance (after all, 10% faster execution speed may mean their calculations finish a month or more sooner). Game developers, on the other hand, are on a very tight development schedule and might make a better game with a sightly less powerful but conventional platform to develop for.
Re:No, the basic problem with the Cell... (Score:1, Insightful)
Because those people made such progress after having nearly four years to experiment? It's time people around here quit pretending like Sony never gave them the chance to dink around with the PS3.
Re:We like money! (Score:1, Insightful)
What?
There are going to be some 120-140 million or so PS3 sold over its 10-11 year lifetime. Yeah, IBM is making 'next to nothing with Cell'.
IBM was so happy with landing PPC/Cell contracts for all three consoles that they immediately dumped Apple as a customer upon doing so after being fed up with the nightmare of dealing with Apple and Jobs over the years.
Re:Multicore for raytracing? (Score:1, Insightful)
If they return to ROM cartridges, RAM is only needed for working memory. Anything that doesn't change can be stored directly in the memory-mapped ROM, and accessed as quickly as RAM is.