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[gofreak]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050309-4686.html

A number of people have been suspecting this for some time, but I guess when Hannibal says something, people take more notice. I wouldn't be at all surprised, from the descriptions we have of each, they sound very similar, if not the same.

 

[TTP]

So, basically Sony and IBM have been working on the Xenon CPU in the last 4 years?

 

[gofreak]

So, basically Sony and IBM have been working on the Xenon CPU in the last 4 years?

Heh, not quite. The power core is just one part of Cell (some people don't even include it when calculating performance figures ).

 

[TTP]

Oh, I see. Thanks.

 

[Elios83]

Cell is made of a PPC core + 8 vectorial processor or SPUs how IBM/Sony call them.
The 8 vectorial processor alone are capable @4GHZ of 256Gigaflops.
The PPC core has an additional 32 Gigaflops @4GHZ but in the Cell it's not even considered because the PPC has the role of director of the SPUs but in theory a single Cell would be 288Gigaflops @4GHZ.
Xenon CPU is made of 3 PPC without any SPU.

 

[TTP]

Cell is made of a PPC core + 8 vectorial processor or SPUs how IBM/Sony call them.
The 8 vectorial processor alone are capable @4GHZ of 256Gigaflops.
The PPC core has an additional 32 Gigaflops @4GHZ but in the Cell it's not even considered because the PPC has the role of director of the SPUs but in theory a single Cell would be 288Gigaflops @4GHZ.
Xenon CPU is made of 3 PPC without any SPU.

Thanks Elios (grazie )

But you forgot to mention the Xenon CPU has a VMX thing in it doesn't it?

 

[gofreak]

Thanks Elios (grazie )

But you forgot to mention the Xenon CPU has a VMX thing in it doesn't it?

Yes, it has one for each core. The cell Power core has VMX too.

 

[Elios83]

Thanks Elios (grazie )

But you forgot to mention the Xenon CPU has a VMX thing in it doesn't it?

On the contrary,VMX is what gives the major floating point capabilities.
8 floating instructions per cycle.
So 3 cores at 3.5GHZ is 84Gigaflops.
Cell has a single VMX since there's only a single PPC,so that's where the 32 extra Gigaflops @4GHZ I was considering before come from.

Ciao =)

 

[TTP]

Oh cool. Now everything is back in place in my confused mind Thanks a lot to you both.