IBM Still Developing Cell Processor; Loves Games

[wicko]

[citation][nom]Yuka[/nom]From a performance stand point, for games alone, Cell has no big advantage over standard x86 + big graphics combo;[/citation]

Sure it does. The cell can be used to assist the graphics card and do it's typical workload as well - x86 can't do that, not effectively anyway.

 

[nisallik]

[citation][nom]pandemonium_ctp[/nom]That has to be subjective. PS3 outputs at 1080p, while Xbox is only capable of 720p/1080i.[/citation]

No, they both play games at or around 720p. But the consoles will upscale to 1080p.

Not really a big deal to argue about which is better, as there is hardly anything decent to buy on them. I usually just rotate my purchases to have an even amount of games between the 360/PS3... there is no huge difference between them. Now when I play games on my PC, now there IS a difference!

 

[kelemvor4]

I'm not sure you guys are understanding. The ports you guys are talking about have to be written to work on the weakest of the systems. Sure there may be some fairly minor tweaking for an individual PC or PS3 system, but that generally doesn't do a LOT.

The titles designed for PS3 generally are superior to what you'd see on xbox, wii; while titles designed for PC are superior to those PS3 titles. It's not a console based limitation that's screwing you into only using one core - it's poor development practices. Until people stop buying these crummy port titles like hotcakes, I don't see that changing much. There's just too much money to be made selling garbage while paying less for development.

 

[megamanx00]

That ol Cell was/is a pain to develop for. I'm sure that future iterations and their supporting compilers will prove more useful. We'll see

 

[dark_lord69]

Someday consoles may come in a light version that will be somewhat of any empty shell used for could gaming. (Of course they will require a good internet connection) But it could allow for low priced consoles. I believe Onlive is working on something similar to what I was talking about.

 

[IM0001]

With the way GT5 has teased us with screenshots of the new graphics abilities they are putting inside the game, I believe it will be one of the few PS3 games that really show off everything that the PS3 can do to it's max. Only when it is released will we truly know, but if the amount of time is any indication of optimizations and polishing we all hope is being done, the game may really make the PS3 look like Sony wanted out of the gate. With all the Delays, if the game does just that, (along with being a fantastic racing simulator as expected) it will have been worth the wait.

 

[joe gamer]

The cell processor is a gimmick, a marketing tool and nothing more. Asymmetrical processing will never be able to compete with symmetrical processing. When you know that all of the CPU's cores are identical programming a multi-threaded app is not difficult, you simply balance the load equally. But an architecture with an asymmetrical processing load? where the processors have different capabilities and load limits? That would be a serious pain in the ass to program for, hence the difficulty of making games for the PS3.

If the Cell processor was really worth a damn don't you think that someone somewhere outside of the PS3 would be using it for something/anything? It's too expensive and too complicated for efficient implementation. I wish the Sony boys would have used a standard processor, that would have cut down on the costs enormously and allowed them to sell at a much lower price point. I might even have one if that were the case.

 

[Guest]

Didnt intel say several months ago that it was discontinuing development of the cell processor???

 

[robochump]

Well now its a matter of which console has better interactive game play. PS3 using Wii type controllers (Move Motion) and XBOX using player motion (Kinect). Graphics is not a big factor and I think the motion sensing system of XBOX is pretty cool if it works well with minimal lag.

About topic I think IBM will do wonders with the Cell processor and I will be shocked if it is not in future consoles. Cell does not generate too much heat like x86 CPUS, decent power to wattage output, and only needs to become more developer friendly to stay on top.

 

[TeKEffect]

[citation][nom]bdcrlsn[/nom]If only they released the Cell for personal PC use...[/citation]
it was used in a Toshiba laptop along with a x86. I was used to accelerate video playback with propietary software I believe

 

[Houndsteeth]

[citation][nom]joe gamer[/nom]The cell processor is a gimmick, a marketing tool and nothing more. Asymmetrical processing will never be able to compete with symmetrical processing. When you know that all of the CPU's cores are identical programming a multi-threaded app is not difficult, you simply balance the load equally. But an architecture with an asymmetrical processing load? where the processors have different capabilities and load limits? That would be a serious pain in the ass to program for, hence the difficulty of making games for the PS3. If the Cell processor was really worth a damn don't you think that someone somewhere outside of the PS3 would be using it for something/anything? It's too expensive and too complicated for efficient implementation. I wish the Sony boys would have used a standard processor, that would have cut down on the costs enormously and allowed them to sell at a much lower price point. I might even have one if that were the case.[/citation]
Ahhh...but that is where you don't quite understand...when you are developing to open architecture, then asymmetrical processing becomes a burden for the developer if there is no framework that determines the resources available on each platform and then assigns the work dynamically to the best available resource. Without that framework, the developer has to make assumptions about what resources might be available and build several scenarios for when resources are limited or not available. This is what life is like currently for developing games for the PC market.

But the PS3 is not an open architecture. Just like every console out there, the resources are mapped and predefined, and the IDEs all have toolboxes and libraries specifically developed towards these fixed architectures.

It both limits and empowers the developers; limiting because there are only so many predefined resources and methods to use those resources, but empowering because it takes a lot of the guesswork out of your development and lets you concentrate on the core of the logic for your game. Sadly, it also means that you tend to develop towards the least common denominator in your hardware lineup.

 

[techguy378]

[citation][nom]amnotanoobie[/nom]Good luck loading your Windows/Mac OSX on it. The only desktop OS I've heard that could run on Cell is Ubuntu.[/citation]
PS3's that have the "Other OS" option can run just about any PowerPC compatible operating system except Mac OS X. Besides Ubuntu you can run YellowDog Linux, PowerPC versions of Fedora and any other PowerPC flavor of Linux.

 

[badaxe2]

[citation][nom]ares1214[/nom]Cell isnt that impressive because naturally all games get MS/XBOX 360 coding. I believe the cell in the PS 3 is a 7 or 8 "core" CPU, yet since no games are coded to use it like that, only the 1 core gets used. Theres a company that makes PS3 coded games exclusively, and wow, you can really tell the difference.If it picked on with the software, it would be superior,but until then, xbox graphics are better. It would also be nice to see the cell adapted to mainstream use, IBM could be a real power house if they did this and got their own OS/coding from say, Android?[/citation]


A lot of graphical stuff can be offloaded onto the Cell BE, as Naughty Dog and Sony Santa Monica have done-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CC1Yhsq2zc

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-making-of-god-of-war-iii?page=1

http://playstationlifestyle.net/2010/03/03/god-of-war-iii-gets-a-titan-boost-from-the-cell/


[citation][nom]joe gamer[/nom]The cell processor is a gimmick, a marketing tool and nothing more. Asymmetrical processing will never be able to compete with symmetrical processing. When you know that all of the CPU's cores are identical programming a multi-threaded app is not difficult, you simply balance the load equally. But an architecture with an asymmetrical processing load? where the processors have different capabilities and load limits? That would be a serious pain in the ass to program for, hence the difficulty of making games for the PS3. If the Cell processor was really worth a damn don't you think that someone somewhere outside of the PS3 would be using it for something/anything? It's too expensive and too complicated for efficient implementation. I wish the Sony boys would have used a standard processor, that would have cut down on the costs enormously and allowed them to sell at a much lower price point. I might even have one if that were the case.[/citation]

I read that they're going to use the Cell in the first no-glasses 3D TV's. It's also used in render farms for film/graphics production, blade servers, super computers ie Roadrunner, and basically anything that needs more focused, power-efficient performance than what general purpose chips can offer. It's more code-intensive but over the long run it yields much higher numbers at a fraction of the power consumption. It's apples to oranges comparing it to traditional PC architecture.
Most developers have a handle on using Cell effectively for gaming now too. Especially Sony's 1st party studios.

 

[vider]

Why can't people read, understand, reread and only then speak/write about the topic when they have gained the complete knowledge and understanding about the product.

Taken from Wikipedia:
"The first major commercial application of Cell was in Sony's PlayStation 3 game console. Mercury Computer Systems has a dual Cell server, a dual Cell blade configuration, a rugged computer, and a PCI Express accelerator board available in different stages of production. Toshiba has announced plans to incorporate Cell in high definition television sets. Exotic features such as the XDR memory subsystem and coherent Element Interconnect Bus (EIB) interconnect appear to position Cell for future applications in the supercomputing space to exploit the Cell processor's prowess in floating point kernels. IBM has announced plans to incorporate Cell processors as add-on cards into IBM System z9 mainframes, to enable them to be used as servers for MMORPGs."

and

"The Cell Broadband Engine—or Cell as it is more commonly known—is a microprocessor designed to bridge the gap between conventional desktop processors (such as the Athlon 64, and Core 2 families) and more specialized high-performance processors, such as the NVIDIA and ATI graphics-processors (GPUs)."

But I would rather look at a certain product that was released by Leadtek and was reviewed here on Tom's.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/leadtek-winfast-pxvc1100,2523-7.html

Anyone could see that the reviewed product has advantages.

The same product reviewed by a different site, shows clearly that the CELL processor can handle intensive workloads.

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1590&pageID=7095

 

[husker]

Cell architecture looks a lot like CUDA cores to me.

 

[joe gamer]

[citation][nom]badaxe2[/nom]A lot of graphical stuff can be offloaded onto the Cell BE, as Naughty Dog and Sony Santa Monica have done-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CC1Yhsq2zchttp://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ [...] iii?page=1http://playstationlifestyle.net/20 [...] -the-cell/I read that they're going to use the Cell in the first no-glasses 3D TV's. It's also used in render farms for film/graphics production, blade servers, super computers ie Roadrunner, and basically anything that needs more focused, power-efficient performance than what general purpose chips can offer. It's more code-intensive but over the long run it yields much higher numbers at a fraction of the power consumption. It's apples to oranges comparing it to traditional PC architecture. Most developers have a handle on using Cell effectively for gaming now too. Especially Sony's 1st party studios.[/citation]

So the Roadrunner supercomputer owned by IBM uses the cell processor, so what? Is it the fastest? Nope. It is a proof of concept for IBM to try and sell more product. Thousands of supercomputers all around the world and only one was ever built with cell processors.

Standard procs crush cell in single task performance and GPU architectures like Cuda crushes it in threaded apps. IBM tried to make a hybrid to do both but specialization is king. The fastest Supercomputer in the world right now The Tianhe-1 uses Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs to create performance that blows Roadrunner away. Again I say if the cell processor offered cost effective performance it would be found in more places. Been out for what a decade now? Yet it's still found in only a few niche products.

 

[pandemonium_ctp]

[citation][nom]pandemonium_ctp[/nom]That has to be subjective. PS3 outputs at 1080p, while Xbox is only capable of 720p/1080i.[/citation]

Holy crap guys. Voted down because I stated facts? Did I hurt some fanboi egos that can't take the truth?

 

[pandemonium_ctp]

[citation][nom]vider[/nom]Why can't people read, understand, reread and only then speak/write about the topic when they have gained the complete knowledge and understanding about the product.[/citation]

Because American society likes to take things out of context to appease humoristic attempts that will likely destroy any amount of factual information you may have since they get butt-hurt so easily while tweeting from their iCraps in their fuel inefficient Cadillacs and Camaros. Learning the truth is something Americans can afford to ignore (or so they think).

 

[dEAne]

Cellphone will be gone.

 

[pandemonium_ctp]

[citation][nom]joe gamer[/nom]So the Roadrunner supercomputer owned by IBM uses the cell processor, so what?

...

The fastest Supercomputer in the world right now The Tianhe-1 uses Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs to create performance that blows Roadrunner away.[citation]

And was the first supercomputer to break the petaflop barrier and held the record for over a year. That's obviously nothing to be astonished by.

I'll also have you know that IBM was developing 45nm die chips long before Intel even announced they were.

[citation][nom]joe gamer[/nom]Is it the fastest? Nope. It is a proof of concept for IBM to try and sell more product.

...

Again I say if the cell processor offered cost effective performance it would be found in more places. ... Yet it's still found in only a few niche products.[/citation]

Congratulations for pointing that out conveniently right after the title changed hands. Were you sitting around waiting for that to happen? Sell more product... You own IBM products and don't even know it. So I don't see the point of saying that.

A few niche products includes almost every console system out today? POS systems used in every restaraunt or commercial retail sales system? Just because you don't hear about it doesn't mean it's only "a few niche products". Perhaps you should do some research prior to assuming such things. You are, after all, on the internet where information is readily available at your fingertips.

[citation][nom]joe gamer[/nom]Been out for what a decade now?

...

Thousands of supercomputers all around the world and only one was ever built with cell processors.[citation]

Probably because the Cell has only physically been around for 5 years. Anyone that does anything with computers knows that software is progressively falling further behind hardware. Five years is hardly enough time to adapt current software to accomodate the processing capabilities of the Cell; much less hardware adaptation that's involved.

You must also understand that the Cell isn't a typical microprocessor. It's not limited to being a computational machine or graphical interface, it's basically a computer within a computer.

Intel and AMD currently hold the market in the PC and server market, but change takes time and eventually we'll see new technologies adopted with overall better performance. Specialization's days are limited.

 

[dalta centauri]

[citation][nom]pandemonium_ctp[/nom]Holy crap guys. Voted down because I stated facts? Did I hurt some fanboi egos that can't take the truth?[/citation]
You sorta just went from posting decent comments to well...being a troll.
Someone responded to your comment already, that both consoles scale it to either 720/1080p. Normally the xbox gets 720p while the ps3 get both. The only problem with that, is their both getting resolutions smaller then 720p to begin with.

 

[joe gamer]

First - I'm not talking about IBM processors I'm talking about the Cell processor which I believe I to be a dead end in it's current state and no matter what you may say the Cell processor is only used in a few niche products. Xbox = modified Intel Xeon, Wii = old school PPC both manufactured by IBM I know but that's irrelevant to this discussion.

"right after the title changed hands"

Been over a year since IBM had the crown and is currently fourth. Really a moot point anyway if you do a bit of research you'd know that only part of the Roadrunner architecture is Cell based while the rest is AMD X-86 Opteron.

"Probably because the Cell has only physically been around for 5 years. Anyone that does anything with computers knows that software is progressively falling further behind hardware. Five years is hardly enough time to adapt current software to accomodate the processing capabilities of the Cell; much less hardware adaptation that's involved."

The Intel Xeon X5670 and Nvidia Tesla M2050 used in the Tianhe-1 are both less than a year old, your argument is flawed, technology has two speeds, fast and faster. After 5 years(actually started in March 2001 but whatever) if the Cell processor lived up to half the hype it would be everywhere.


"Intel and AMD currently hold the market in the PC and server market"

Which is why no one is going to write code for Cell processors, and without code to back it no one is going to use it. Like I said the Cell processor is cool but from a business standpoint it is not cost effective enough to achieve widespread adoption, maybe in another 5 years.

 

[badaxe2]

[citation][nom]whitey_rolls[/nom]The PS3 definitely has more bells and whistle than the original Xbox 360, also ended up with a much higher price tag.I remember following these consoles prior to launch and Sony was promising the world with their cell processor. What do they say "under promise, over deliver" .... Sony did the exact opposite.I'm not saying the PS3 is bad by any means, but for all the hype I don't see any discernible difference between what the Xbox 360 can do and the PS3.[/citation]


Go to any graphics poll in gaming forums, PS3 exclusives headline every list, maybe now and then Gears of War 2 is mentioned. But that game also suffered from technical issues like texture pop in and low framerates.

Multiplayer capacity, PS3 is capable of supporting far more players simultaneously. Sure none of their games are as popular as Halo (well maybe besides the Gran Turismo series worldwide) but when it comes to exclusives they are almost always more technically impressive, because those developers are the ones who best know how to utilize Cell.

http://boardsus.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-3-Updates/How-and-why-the-3-D-HDMI-1-4-update-is-possible-for-the-PS3/m-p/45086549

-Stereoscopic 3D support for games and Blu-ray movies, the latter of which iirc require a current generation Nvidia card on PC to play back.

Folding @ Home is another thing-
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-PS3

 

[joe gamer]

[citation][nom]badaxe2[/nom]Go to any graphics poll in gaming forums, PS3 exclusives headline every list,[/citation]

I'm pretty sure PC exclusives and even some ports would top those lists. That being said the PS3 is definitely a much more versatile machine than the 360, standard replaceable HDD, integrated WIFI, free multiplayer, blu-ray and extra processing power. If only they had kept costs/prices down and not let the 360 beat the shit out of them in sales, then more games would be better optimized and not built for the 360's paltry specs.

[citation][nom]badaxe2[/nom]-Stereoscopic 3D support for games and Blu-ray movies, the latter of which iirc require a current generation Nvidia card on PC to play back.[/citation]

AMD says they will be ready once 3d blu-ray becomes more common, we'll see.

 

[schmich]

[citation][nom]Niva[/nom]it still cracks me up when people say Ubuntu these days while they really mean the all-encompassing linux label.[/citation]
He never said anything wrong. He specifically stated that the only "desktop OS" he "heard" could run on the Cell was Ubuntu. What's wrong with that phrase? Do you want him to say Linux? How do you know what he heard? As stating Linux from your phrase would be more a kernel than an operating system (the words he used!).

It cracks me up when people try to be clever and point out to others that they've said Ubuntu instead of Linux, just to show that they know the difference between kernel and OS, when Ubuntu was right in the first place