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[SHOCKIE]

"We're very much aware of the need to balance between innovation in architecture and the ability to leverage that innovation," H. Peter Hofstee, a researcher in IBM's Systems and Technology division, said during a break at an IBM press event here. "The learning curve for this platform should be significantly better than previous ones."

SAN FRANCISCO--The "Cell" processor that will power the next version of the PlayStation game console will also be adaptable for advanced scientific research, but you won't have to be a rocket scientist to program it.

Besides workstations, game machines and TV sets, Cell is also likely to power certain types of scientific supercomputers, streaming media servers and image analysis systems, all of which have continually expanding needs for processing power. Hofstee said Cell taps into an emerging "convergence between what we think of as supercomputing and what we use in the entertainment space."

LINK

 

[mCACGj]

...sell your Revolutions and Xbox 2's...?

 

[Gek54]

...sell your Revolutions and Xbox 2's...?

and buy more LRBMs!

 

[COCKLES]

SAN FRANCISCO--The "Cell" processor that will power the next version of the PlayStation game console will also be adaptable for advanced scientific research, but you won't have to be a rocket scientist to program it.

I can see the bullshit headlines now.

"KIM JUNG-SOONG STOCKPILING PLAYSTATION 3's TO RESEARCH HIS ORBITAL ROCKET DEFENSE PLATFORM - MORE NEWS AS WE GET IT!"

 

[mumu]

I can see the bullshit headlines now.

Didn't they find 10.000 PS2s buried in the iraqi desert? Those were the WMDs they've been actually looking for!

 

[COCKLES]

Perhaps it was Saddam whose been tweaking the POT lasers in PS2's all along...in an evil bid to crush the resolve of American soldiers.

 

[neptunes]

"..we will find them on the Internets..

 

[hooo]

Perhaps it was Saddam whose been tweaking the POT lasers in PS2's all along...in an evil bid to crush the resolve of American soldiers.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_148960.html

:lol The ps2 shortages at launch was all Saddam's fault. With 10-15 per scud, no wonder the boxes alone with for a grand plus on ebay back then

 

[xexex]

sorry but that was nothing but PR hyperboil.

I'll wait to see results. I want hard facts, as do developers.

 

[Moegames]

...and god said, let there be light!

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

OK, now to see what actually makes it in the box come 2006. Sony's very bad about hyping their machines to the moon and delivering bits and pieces of the pre-release hype in the actual console in stores.

 

[MetatronM]

Maybe that means that companies not named Konami will be able to use its full power!

 

[Nerevar]

yeah, well, I'm sure it is much easier to learn than a traditional parallel-processing programming environment.

 

[Vortac]

Chip design != documentation and developer tools

 

[gofreak]

Chip design != documentation and developer tools

Does "the ability to leverage that innovation" not come from developer tools etc?

 

[Panajev2001a]

So much faith you put behind IBM (Hofstee is one of the fathers of CELL)... not like they do not have the world's fastest super-computer and the record-holder of TPC-C... oh wait, they do .

I think IBM thought about not forcing every single developer to convert mountains of C/C++ code into ASM like you do on PlayStation 2 (not to be limited by the R5900 vore and the performanc eof the code generated by GCC).

 

[Fafalada]

Chip design != documentation and developer tools

Nope, but at the moment we can take some comfort in the fact IBM makes some of the best development tools on the market.
We'll see if that translates into anything beneficial for developers.

 

[xexex]

question. If PS3 was scaled down to PS2 levels of peak performance / paper specs, how would the two platforms compare? would PS3 be alot more effecient, and more capable in actual games than PS2? combine that with the relative ease of development (not super easy just better than PS2 environment) and it would interesting to see how games compare on the two "equal" platforms.

 

[Fafalada]

question. If PS3 was scaled down to PS2 levels of peak performance / paper specs, how would the two platforms compare? would PS3 be alot more effecient, and more capable in actual games than PS2? combine that with the relative ease of development (not super easy just better than PS2 environment) and it would interesting to see how games compare on the two "equal" platforms.

As far as CPU goes - using a PU with 2 'S|APUs' @ 300mhz would trounce the EE easily - even though both would have comparable paper specs.
GPU - well we don't really know anything about it yet