Amiga and CELL - What you think about

[bloodline]

boing wrote:

As for game vs desktop, it's just semantics. Look at how many arcade units used 68000 and Z80. Both found on desktops. The Amiga started life intended for games and it's the neatest computer I've yet to see.

The industry has changed since the Amiga... In the begining games were just like normal desktop applications with pretty graphics (very linear with simple logic puzzles)... now games are a totally different breed of software (usually complex simulations, with advanced physics and 3d representations), pretty much unrelated to desktop applications.

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Fransexy_ wrote:

bloodline wrote:

boing wrote:

As for game vs desktop, it's just semantics. Look at how many arcade units used 68000 and Z80. Both found on desktops. The Amiga started life intended for games and it's the neatest computer I've yet to see.

The industry has changed since the Amiga... In the begining games were just like normal desktop applications with pretty graphics (very linear with simple logic puzzles)... now games are a totally different breed of software (usually complex simulations, with advanced physics and 3d representations), pretty much unrelated to desktop applications.

You are true today games are different.Today games are the most complex and demanding task that a computer can run.In fact when you run a 3d game you are running all the posible desktop apps in one (music, graphics, 3d, internet.....) .

But they are demanding in a very specific way. The cell was an idea started a few years ago, to merge a CPU and a GPU onto the same chip, it was a nice idea but it doesn't really work... Both the CPU and a GPU are hugely complex and can't really share silicon at this time, without sacrificing something. Now nVidia and ATI are thinking of adding physics engines to thier GPU's... the GPU will become vastly more complex... at the same time as CPU's go dual core... there still isn't enough silicon space.

Or what desktop app do you know that need the requirements of any modern game?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You really don't know anything about games programming do you... :-(

I use Logic Pro 7.2, it requires vastly more CPU resources than any game ever has... but it doesn't use the GPU at all... Oblivion on the other hand doesn't even use 50% of the CPU time available on my Dual Core, but the GPU is maxed out.

-Edit- A Cell would has the Vector ability needed to run something like Logic Pro, but it certainly doesn't have the General Purpose ALU needed.

Sincerely i don´t understand the people that says that is not suitable for desktop!! my only logical explication is that that people only always like to disagree

Or they have a better understanding of the problem than you...

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AmigaBlitter wrote:
There are many comments from the CELL programmers sound like this:

Programming the Cell is like programming the old Amiga. An spe unit is like the copper of the Amiga... and so on.

Well, that's not right... The task the copper did is totally different to the SPE. Frankly the world the Amiga Chipset was build for simply doesn't exist anymore.

John Carmak, said that the PS3, is something like the old Amiga computer.

 ;-)

The PS3 != The Cell...  THe PS3 is an expensive device over encumbered with hardware for throwing polygons at a TV screen. It is not a general purpose computing device.

I really can't understand why people still harbour fantacies about games consoles... history has show that these devices while perform really well at running games, they are useless for general purpose computing. The strength of the Amiga was that even though it was a games machine, it was also a powerful general purpose device (this did not happen by accident, if you read the history of the thing).