EE Times article on the CELL workstation and PS3

[megadrive]

EE Times article weighing in on the CELL workstation and PS3

http://www.tinyurl.com/2hsc2

Cell processor to debut in fourth quarter
By Yoshiko Hara
EE Times

TOKYO — Sony Corp., Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and IBM Corp. jointly announced that the first application of the Cell processor will be a workstation for a digital content creation. They also said the first Cell-based prototype will be ready in the forth quarter.

The Cell processor, under joint development by Sony group, IBM and Toshiba Corp., aims for teraflop-level performance.

The Cell processor will be the heart of the next generation of PlayStation. Hence, a workstation design will initially serve as the development environment for PlayStation "3".

Detailed performance metrics for the Cell processor have yet to be disclosed. It is known to have a parallel processing architecture and teraflops floating point level computing power.

Ken Kutaragi, executive deputy president and COO at Sony Corp. and and of the Sony entertainment unit, was the driving force behind development of the Cell processor. Sony, IBM and Toshiba launched the development project in 2001. By integrating a Deep Blue-level computer in one processor, Kutaragi advocated integrating a broadband network and a platform that can handle movie theater-quality digital video content.

"Cell has enormous power for creating broadband content," Kutaragi said in a statement. "Today, movies and games are sharing the same world and characters on a common database. Within a few years, both forms of entertainment will be fused and become indistinguishable, offering a seamless experience in the home. Together with IBM, the three companies aim to offer technology that will accelerate the paradigm shift in digital entertainment."

The Sony unit developed a workstation dedicated to digital content creation using a processor based on the Emotion Engine, the core engine for Playstataion2. This time, Sony and workstation leader IBM intend to build a workstation more suitable for digital content creation.

"The Cell-based workstations we are creating with Sony and SCEI will deliver scalable, supercomputer-like performance to the media, entertainment and video game industries," said John Kelly, IBM's senior vice president and group executive.

IBM will develop the Cell-based workstations while the Sony group develops the operating environment.

[Makaveli_786]

I cant wait

[megadrive]

me neither 8)

[KlawHammer]

Same as me,,,

[Domination]

I sure as hell hope they are right about this thing.Speaking of being right,I read a passage (I believe last year) where Sony said that the PS3's graphic power is not going to be as short anymore as their last-gen consoles.It's power would be able to carry on for at lease ten years.I didn't undersatnd that before until now.

[KlawHammer]

10 years doesnt seem viable to me. The PC will catch up within 1-2 years.

[Makaveli_786]

If the chip is 1 teraflop it will be a while before PC's catch on, right now most PC's cant push out 15 g/flops, theyr a long way off, then again GPU's are picking up quickly so who knows.

I think it will be a while before they catch up with the PS3 but you can bet yo ass Sony wont wait ten years before giving us another kickass Playstation.

[Infant Finite]

PC's can't reach anything close 15 GFLOPS yet...In real world performance anyway.

[brownbeaner2]

10 years doesnt seem viable to me. The PC will catch up within 1-2 years.

Pc's will catch up but those wont be made for consumers(me or you) , but for private use like game developers and movie studios.

[rev>thanu]

GPU's might be able to catch up to Ps3's GPU in terms of shaders etc, texture work etc. But in terms of geometry ps3 will be a beast. NVidia and ATi seem to rather put fancy tricks like vertex shaders etc on their GPUs and they really don't pay any attention to the polygon counts etc. if they don't ps3 will always have that advantage over 2006 - 2010 GPus in those terms. but eventually yeah GPUs will catch up. the question is will CPUs catch up or fall behind. really you don't achieve anything if you have a GPU and your CPU can't even process or bring about the GPU's full potential because of it lagging behind.

[imported_The_One]

GPU's might be able to catch up to Ps3's GPU in terms of shaders etc, texture work etc. But in terms of geometry ps3 will be a beast. NVidia and ATi seem to rather put fancy tricks like vertex shaders etc on their GPUs and they really don't pay any attention to the polygon counts etc. if they don't ps3 will always have that advantage over 2006 - 2010 GPus in those terms. but eventually yeah GPUs will catch up. the question is will CPUs catch up or fall behind. really you don't achieve anything if you have a GPU and your CPU can't even process or bring about the GPU's full potential because of it lagging behind.

Yeah, true. But I doubt this will be the case. Take a look at PS2's CPU, it's 4 or 5 years old now, but it still packs a 6.2GFLOp/s punch . That's more then enough to keep any GPU of this age happy with data flowing to it constantly... So I doubt the CPU lagging behind will be a true factor.

[KlawHammer]

Wasnt that 6.4Gflops?

[imported_The_One]

Wasnt that 6.4Gflops?

Noo.... approx. 6.2 peak, not 6.4.

[julps31]

It would take a long time for PC GPUs and CPU's to catch up to the PS3's. It would be superior in almost every way. So they would have to really try something new or something they haven't done before hardware wise to catch up.

[Makaveli_786]

LOL, look at the dual GPU systems by Alienware coming into commission later this year, if it catchs on GPU systems will follow a pattern with twice the power as they are now.

[megadrive]

PS2's EE peaks at 6.2 GFLOPs/sec however in real-world, the EE probably sustains only 1 or 2 GFLOPs/sec. <---not an accurate figure, just a guess.

[Cookie]

10 years doesnt seem viable to me. The PC will catch up within 1-2 years.

You're right 10 years isn't viable. But we may be upon the dawn of a new era, an era when console h/w keeps up or exceeds pc h/w in terms of 3d gphx...

The pc tech upgrading is probably gonna slow down... you're already seeing it in the latest power hogging hot cards, and the problems intel's had with ramping up the latest pentium's speed.

The problems with heat, power consumption and leakage will most likely cut their speed. Ati has hinted as such in the past.

Now, we're about to experience probably the biggest increase in console h/w performance, just at the same time h/w upgrades seem to be about to start slowing down on the pc arena... if it takes them more than 4 years to significantly surpass the next gen consoles they'll be facing ps4 and the like by that time... the consoles will have taken the gphx crown and kept it.

[imported_The_One]

10 years doesnt seem viable to me. The PC will catch up within 1-2 years.

Most likely, since the nVidia released the GeForce *forgot version #* 2 years after the initial release of the PS2. So most likely it'll take them again 2 years to catch up. But I won't be counting on it... with 1TFLOp/s of processing power, and who knows how powerful the GPU is gonna be, I'm pretty sure it'll take them a bit longer then that.

[KlawHammer]

Wait a moment, i posted that exact phrase not a while back... ("10 years doesnt seem viable, the PC will catch up within 1-2 years").

I agree, PC tech has slowed down somewhat in recent years. This is the right time for consoles to strike...

[Cookie]

I agree, PC tech has slowed down somewhat in recent years. This is the right time for consoles to strike...

Indeed...

There's no doubt, however, that product cycles are growing longer in the software, chip, and telecommunications-equipment industries, which have yet to see the long-awaited rebound. When business stays weak for so long, says Michael McConnell, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Ore., "at some point, you have to ease up on the pedal."

http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...3712_tc024.htm

We know that intel most likely won't be providing Tflops class cpus, they'll most likely keep making general purpose ones with far less capabilities when it comes to 3d gaming. The bandwidth most likely won't be matched, pci express won't suffice. All that's left is the gpu, a single gpu to exceed the whole ps3. if ps3 exceeds pcs of its time by just as little as 2-3x, and the slowdown occurs, it might very well carry the gphx crown into the next -gen.