Cell Processor Gets Previewed

[thunderhawk]

Cell Processor Gets Previewed

Cell processor:


The Cell processor is a yet another multi-core approach which should provide strong performance and while half a year after Cell’s release it is no longer unusual to hear about multi-core architecture, the Cell chip utilizes a bit different approach than AMD’s and Intel’s dual-core products which are available for purchase at the moment.

Find the article here:
http://www.devhardware.com/c/a/Compu...r-Architecture


Some quotes:

The Cell processor is being developed jointly by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. The first two are obviously interested in its multimedia capacities, which look like they will be stunning. The last, IBM, is a good member to round out the group due to their background in manufacturing large volumes of high-end processors.

To demonstrate the capacity of the unfinished Cell, Toshiba released a video in April of a computer decoding 48 streams of video simultaneously. The screen was divided into a grid of thumbnails at 1920x1080 resolution, each playing a separate SDTV mpeg-2.

So far, current processors from AMD and Intel are having trouble pushing the 4 GHz mark, a mark Cell is easily clocked past. The PS3 at the E3 2005 demo has a Cell clocked down to a stable 3.2 GHz, providing 218 GFLOPS of power (and the graphics card in the PS3 provides 1.8 TFLOPS). It's also impossible to say what features have been removed or simplified in order to get this version of the Cell chip ready soon. However, Cell development is clocking it at 4 to 4.6 GHz, and is reported to have clocked it as high as 5.6 GHz. Of course, clock speed is not the only factor in a processor's performance, so don't take these figures as anything conclusive.

Altogether the Cell processor is a crowded little chip, with a whopping 234 million transistors (compare to AMD64’s 114 million transistors). The potential processing power of Cell blows away existing processors, even supercomputers. One Cell working alone has the potential of reaching 256 GFLOPS (gigaflops, processing 256 billion floating point operations per second). GFLOPS are benchmarked with a program called Linpack and are mostly usefull for comparing supercomupters. To compare, your home PC would be extremely lucky to reach 6 GFLOPS, unless you count your graphics card. This isn't to say that GFLOPS on the Cell and on your home PC provide an accurate way to judge exact performance specs. It's more of a cursory comparison.

Another thing about the Cell processor:
It supports something like networking. Cell processors will be linked
So your processor in your PC and the one in your TV and your BD recorder will be able to 'share the load'

I believe the cell processor is a huge advancement in electronical components for massive computer applications, and will probably be put into BD players and BD recorders.

Any comments?