The Cell is a mediocre CPU with several VMX-class coprocessors. It works well as a programmable DSP, but isn't that great for scalar and other branching, decision-making problems.
It's arguable whether the CPU is as important as it once was, but what kind of CPU you need depends what you want to do with it.
In the case of Amiga, we need something with a decent chipset, so we can actually build computers. Cell doesn't have any "real" chipsets, and given that PPC is difficult enough to put on a motherboard, Cell probably never will.
bloodline: 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.
Yup. A game console
could be different, if they plan ahead, but the companies that make game machines are into content, rather than technical sophistication. No matter how much they boast that their systems are more than game machines, in the end, the systems are whittled down to be cheap game platforms that can simply run non-gaming material. That's where the money is: shoveling content to the masses, instead of giving people the tools to write software themselves. Amiga certainly would get no help from Sony to write drivers and other low-level essentials an OS is supposed to handle, so the programmers don't have to.
You can bet that the Linux that comes with PS3 will be crippled and badly crafted, even if it is a turn-key installation. The XP that comes with the X360 is in the same boat. Will a decent SPE compiler even be available, or is PS3Linux simply a content platform?
AmigaBlitter: The Cell can be used also as a coprocessor card. I don't mean at the Cell "only" as a primary processor. The Cell can be a secondory processor (a coprocessor) like the old amiga coprocessors.
So? The Amiga has plenty of coprocessor cards as it is. We need a new base machine in which to put those coprocessors. Besides, I'd rather not saw-up my A1200, and I don't want to have a heatpipe connecting my favorite all-in-one desktop to a refrigerator.
Of course, as a coprocessor, your lovely Cell would be much like the Phys-X card, but not as efficient, as the Cell is not a purpose-built design.
Anyway a single Cell board has show up to 250 Gflops of computing power. Don't you think that is a dream machine for general purpose computing?
Theoretical performance when doing low-accuracy, highly parallel math... and if you really know what you are doing. That kind of work is much more rare in the PC world except for, uh... games, and streaming video. Cell is a good workhorse, but is way too expensive as a desktop coprocessor.
Coldfish: I'm guessing we'll be having this same conversation in 5 years when PS4 comes out, boasting magic-super-wonder-chip. The implications for the Amiga will be just the same.
Probably. For some idiotic reason, people are still whining about what kind of hardware is proper for Amiga, but nobody seems to know what to do with it other than the same things they did with OS3, but "better," or just like Windows and OSX, but "better."
Software comes first, please. Wasn't OS5 supposed to be out by late 2000? :-)
Grover: It has been designed ground up for use not JUST as a games machine.
Yeah, you might use it for web browsing, chatting, or e-mail. Aren't we already able to do that on a Pentium 90? Is Sony willing to shell out highly sensitive hardware information to let people write an OS that will compete with the content platform that will be included with PS3, especially if there's the possibility it may somehow defeat DRM and other forms of lock-outs Sony may include with the system?
Too much risk for Sony, unless Amiga could offer them a $100 million contract or something.
Coldfish: It remains to be seen how useful those 7 SPE's will be...
Hint: man uses his highest technology to amuse himself. I expect physics, realtime deformation, procedural graphics, and the usual glob of eye candy. Using fractals as texture maps would be
really cool, but I don't think people are really thinking in that direction, even by gaming standards.
If a real OS was running on Cell -- I dunno, maybe it would defrag your hard drive really fast?
Seriously, database indexing and other forms of searches would probably get a real kick from SPE processing. But, the PPE is still a bottleneck. Transmeta processors run entirely off a vector engine, and those chips are hardly known for performance. I remember when Amigans were fired-up about using the Transmeta processor.
Coldfish: In any case, "Cell" is just an umbrella term used to cover an architecture not a single specific chip, so making statements about cell's physical attributes are a waste of time as Toshiba's and IBM's devices could be significantly different to anything Sony produces.
The vector capabilites of ATI GPUs are similar to Cell, as they use many, many parallel vector units sharing information on a circular bus.
Coldfish: Wasnt he the guy that said PS2 would render Toy Story gfx in realtime?
The lack of proper anti-aliasing and the constant presence of dancing textures killed that theory completely. :roll:
