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IBM-Sony-Toshiba Reveal New Cell Processor Details 204

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
BBCWatcher writes "The three main partners in the Cell Processor initiative announced technical details of the new architecture. IBM's documents are particularly revealing. There's much more information on how developers, including open source developers, can access the SPUs (Synergistic Processor Units). As reported earlier, Sony will put the Cell into every Playstation 3 game machine, due early next year. And yes, Cell runs Linux."
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IBM-Sony-Toshiba Reveal New Cell Processor Details More

IBM-Sony-Toshiba Reveal New Cell Processor Details

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  • Does it run... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ViaNRG ( 892147 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:21PM (#13401476) Homepage
    oh, here are my glasses...

  • SPU (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:25PM (#13401511)
    Synergistic Processor Units

    OK, who let the marketroids in the lab?
    • No marketing. This thing has synergy built in!

      I guess that means that if you develop a product on top of Cell, you are completely free to use the word "synergy" within technical documents too?

    • Re:SPU (Score:2, Informative)

      by i.of.the.storm ( 907783 )
      No, it actually means that they aren't full fledged processing cores like a regular CPU. That's what I thought when I saw it too though heh.

    • Re:SPU (Score:2)

      by bhsx ( 458600 )
      It rhymes with SVU, which is very popular right now.
      (annoying-yet-addictive-indescribable-sound):
      Donk Donk
    • Synergy - The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. (eg 2+2 > 4).

      Hmm integer unit bugs already. :(

  • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Synergistic Processor Units? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ponds ( 728911 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:26PM (#13401521)
    Synergistic Processor Units?

    That's it, the Playstation 3 will definately win the next console war due to exploiting its Synergistic Processor units and developing core competencies to sustain a long-term competitive advantage in the new paradigm. Now that word is out on the blogosphere, Microsoft should just give up.




    Bingo, BTW.
    • Meyer: Excuse me, but "proactive" and "paradigm"? Aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important? [backpedaling] Not that I'm accusing you of anything like that. [pause] I'm fired, aren't I? Myers: Oh, yes.
    • Well, we're sure the Cell processor is Buzzword Compliant.

    • Re:Synergistic Processor Units? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ameline ( 771895 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .enilema.nai.> on Thursday August 25, 2005 @05:05PM (#13401880) Homepage Journal
      Not just buzzword compliant, but confusing as hell for those of us who have been in the know for a while.

      To me, SPU always made me think "Scalar Processing unit", while PPE made me think "Parallel Processing Element".

      Of course that's exactly backwards.

      That, and I choke on words like "synergistic" because they peg my bullshiat-o-meter way off in the red.

      In my opinion one of the coolest features of this architecture are the way the reciprocal estimate and reciprocal square root estimate instructions work.

      In a single cycle you get 13 good bits of precision -- with the low order bits filled with information to be used by the floating point interpolate instruction.

      You can get a full precision (32 bit ieee float) reciprocal in about 6 cycles, and a 1/sqrt in 7 or so. Oh, and that's 4 results in that time. Averaging 1.5 cycles per FP divide, and slightly more for sqrt. times 7, times 3.2 billion per second, and the bandwidth to feed it.

      That's several orders of magnitide faster that you could do with any x86 part out there.

    • That's what I call out-of-the-box humour!
    • Primary Processing Unit and Secondary Processing Unit.

      Seems to me like the obvious names before Marketing got ahold of it.

    • Notice that "Sony will put the Cell into every Playstation 3 game machine"

      Nice of them to rule out putting it into some and letting the consumer take pot luck whether they get one or not.
    • Just for those with no strong grasp of the English language, Synergy [wikipedia.org] (and its adjective derivatives) is in fact a valid and well-accepted term to refer to things that work together to a common goal, or that work better together than they would alone.

      It is used as a buzzword, of course, for "teams" and such, but I find it a very valid use when describing a number of (almost useless) processors that when shmucked together with some PPC glue work wonders.

      Just my $0.02
      • And the term organic has a chemical definition. So by merely putting a chain or two of the appropriate molecule into silicon, then for marketing purposes, I could label my computer:

        A clever going-places mid-level management kind of guy.

        It would be technically correct, but wholely loathsome and misleading.
    • You forgot to use the word "leverage" as a verb (oh, and you misspelled a word too - curse the Wikipedia-induced desire to correct everything!)

      That's it, the Playstation 3 will definitely win the next console war by leveraging its Synergistic Processor units and developing core competencies to sustain a long-term competitive advantage in the new paradigm. Now that word is out on the blogosphere, Microsoft should just give up.

      There - a very nice piece of mindless marketing-speak any marketing droid would be

  • General use timeline? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:26PM (#13401530) Homepage Journal
    So when can i buy a 'pc' based on these things...

    Or even a development board..
    • the whole idea of cell doesn't lend well to pc's. It has a slower main core, in the pc its a ppc chip like the G5, and a bunch of SPE's. Good for a server? Sure. Good for OSes, programs and games of the present? No, it would be a huge step back in performance.

      Lot's of people are getting sucked into Sony's hype. Hey - I don't have an emotion chip in my computer, what gives Sony?
      • I wasnt thinking of running some sort of desktop OS/languages that we think of today, but starting work on something that would take advantage of the cell architecture.
      • It could work well in a PC. You could always make it part of a multi-core system. No one says that every core on a die must be the same. You could pair a cell+SPEs with a G5.
        You could just make it a multi processor system with each CPU a different die.
        I have to wonder if the the next step in multi core might be several very different cores on a die.
        You could have several simple RISC cpus running things like your firewall, virus scanner, and any number of integer only tasks with a few REALLY fast SPEs for th
      • Sounds a bit like the old Control Data mainframes, with their (60, later 64, bit) CPU and a bunch of (smaller wordsize) PPUs - Peripheral Processor Units.
      • It could make an awesome base for a PC! Look at it this way; 90% of the CPU load on the average PC is integer calculations. 90% of the tasks people are doing on PCs have been done fast enough for years; think web surfing, email, word processing. The few times machines hit full load for any length of time is when the user is doing something like rendering video/audio, PS filters and gaming, all areas that could shine* on the Cells SPEs.

        Intel and AMD, with market share to keep, have chosen to tackle the MHz-

    • IBM have dual-CPU blades. Haven't heard about them recently, but they have shown them off in the past and I believe they will be selling them, if they're not already.

  • hmrmm (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tkdan235 ( 909457 )
    who is the actual manufacture?

  • Ha Ha (Score:4, Funny)

    by robyannetta ( 820243 ) * on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:28PM (#13401555) Homepage
    This 'new revolutionary cell-based processor' sticks in my mind as the same 'new revolutionary cell-based processor' that Dr. Miles Bennett Dyson said would change the world in Terminator 2 and look where it got him.

    Don't forget to chain enough PS3's together to enable the "Sarah Connor" easter egg.

  • Non-soul-stealing no-registration link (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:28PM (#13401556)
    IBM = evil soul-stealing registration-required site

    Sony = http://cell.scei.co.jp/ [scei.co.jp] in EN and JP

    • Re:Non-soul-stealing no-registration link (Score:5, Insightful)

      by morcheeba ( 260908 ) * on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:33PM (#13401603) Journal
      Thanks! I still got a little soul suckage from that site, though. Check out the EULA - talk about broad (luckily I can do these things once I'm no longer using the site):

      Prohibited Conduct
      Following acts are not allowed when using this Web Site:
      (1) Infringing the legal rights (including, but not limited to, the rights of privacy and publicity) of SCEI and/or others
      (2) Causing any damages or disadvantage to SCEI and/or others
      (3) Disturbing public order
      (4) Criminal act
      (5) Defaming, disgracing or libeling SCEI and/or others
      (6) Uploading files that contain viruses or corrupted files that may damage the operation of SCEI's and/or others' computers
      (7) Activities that are unlawful or prohibited by any applicable laws
      (8) Any other activities that SCEI deems inappropriate
      • After translating their EULA to English it looks more like this

        Prohibited Conduct
        Following acts are not allowed when using this Web Site:

        There I was completely wasting, out of work and down
        All inside it's so frustrating as I drift from town to town
        Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die
        So I might as well begin to put some action in my life
        (1) Breaking the law ,Breaking the law
        (2) Breaking the law ,Breaking the law
        (3) Breaking the law ,Breaking the law
        (4) Breaking the law ,Breaking the law

        So much for t
      • Ok, let's shorten it a bit:

        Prohibited Conduct
        Following acts are not allowed when using this Web Site:
        (1) to (7) break the law
        (8) do anything else we don't like

    • Non-soul-stealing no-EULA link (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      http://cell.scei.co.jp/e_download.html [scei.co.jp]

  • secret info (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mahou ( 873114 ) <made_up_address_ AT hotmail DOT com> on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:33PM (#13401599) Journal
    it's parts of the goku, vegeta, freeza, king cold, piccolo, tienshinhan processors put together into one super processor

    in other news, rumors spread about Intel's new gohan processor

  • Well, it finally happened (Score:5, Funny)

    by glwtta ( 532858 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:37PM (#13401637) Homepage
    SPUs (Synergistic Processor Units)

    They finally have a TLA with "synergy" in it... doesn't that Godwin the technology, or something?

    Incidentally, are they fresh spu? Most civilized people can't stomach spu fresh.

  • PS3 Runs Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nukem996 ( 624036 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:38PM (#13401643)
    I heard a rumor awhile back that the PS3 will be running a stripped down version of Linux, just like the XBox/XBox 360 run a stripped down version of Win 2k. It does seem to make sence since the Cell processor runs Linux and NVIDIA(the PS3 will use a NVIDIA graphics card) has been known for great Linux and OpenGL support(I also heard all PS3 games will use OpenGL).

    • Re:PS3 Runs Linux? (Score:3, Informative)

      by psavo ( 162634 )

      I heard a rumor awhile back that the PS3 will be running a stripped down version of Linux, ...

      Eh? Stripped down Linux? It's just customized linux. eg. they have it ported to Cell and have some weird periphernalia supported (likely half-assed and builtin as contra to modules). It may be that they don't have X running (though in theory they could be running Xgl if PS3 is really such an OpenGl bunny) and use plain OpenGl to draw all applications (eg. dvd-player + other non-game content).

      Actually Xgl may be

      • 'It may be that they don't have X running (though in theory they could be running Xgl if PS3 is really such an OpenGl bunny)'

        Since ps3 will be running opengl 2 and their are no OpenGL 2 drivers running on linux at the moment this may be very good for linux.
        • Since ps3 will be running opengl 2 and their are no OpenGL 2 drivers running on linux at the moment this may be very good for linux.

          really? then i guess my drivers are lying to me.

          $ glxinfo | grep OpenGL
          OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
          OpenGL renderer string: GeForce FX 5900/AGP/SSE/3DNOW!
          OpenGL version string: 2.0.0 NVIDIA 76.76
          OpenGL extensions:
      • I know I know it was a poor chose in words. What I ment to say is its running a customized version of GNU/Linux. Its not gona be running Fedora, just the simple things to get it running.

    • Re:PS3 Runs Linux? (Score:4, Funny)

      by tktk ( 540564 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @05:01PM (#13401833)
      I think that rumor started when Ken What's-His-Name started talking out of his ass during an interview.

      He said that basically said that the PS3 was more than just a game console and could run Linux, Mac OS X, clear up your skin, cure cancer, find you a date..., etc.

      Sorry, can't remember the link.

      • http://www.misinformer.com/archive/2001/01/15/ [misinformer.com]

        an excerpt

        mis: I've noticed there are a few thrillingly exotic looking integrated modules on this machine that I've never seen on any console before. What is this first one on the left here labeled "internet?"

        Sony: Whaa? Are you a stupid man? It isa internet in the port!

        mis: So you mean, you can plug a phone line into it, and play multi-player games online, like with the Dreamcast?

        Sony: Dreamcast? Ha ha, funny stupid yankee! You dishonor me with y
    • It does seem to make sence..

      I believe you meant "scents." Of the malodorous variety.
    • A note to Sony, IBM, whomever. I haven't bought a game console since the original Atari 2600.

      If PS3 runs Linux & Firefox & Thunderbird & Emacs & Open Office; and has access to a network and a hard drive, I will buy one and probably use it as my primary computer both at work and at home.

      (from a former Apple / NeXT / Amiga fan who doesn't mind spending "too much" on interesting architectures)

    • Re:PS3 Runs Linux? (Score:4, Informative)

      by doctor_no ( 214917 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @05:46PM (#13402264)
      I heard a rumor awhile back that the PS3 will be running a stripped down version of Linux, ...

      According to Sony's Ken Kutaragi, his plan was to pre-install a version of linux onto each HDD unit that ships, so it will be recognized as a computer, rather than a mere console. A marketing ploy? Most likely. . .but a cool one.

      http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23878 [theinquirer.net]

  • Soft Cell (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:39PM (#13401657) Homepage Journal
    Sony offered Linux on the PS2 [playstation2-linux.com] partly as PR stunt, partly as a way to offer a cheaper dev system than their $100K dedicated HW. But they distributed it with only a proprietary "BIOS"/bootloader, which meant developers couldn't distribute bootable discs even if they blew off the license which said they weren't allowed to, not without Sony's approval. And they distributed their proprietary boot disc only bundled with their $200 ethernet/HD. Plus it only worked with a select few "sync on green" monitors. So the whole thing was mostly a really tiny niche hobby, rather than a new Linux architecture. Let's hope Linux on PS3 has a chance to play with the big dogs.
    • I know what you're saying 'cause I have one. It was available for something like a day and bought a copy. It's a pretty nice complete kit, but yeah, I had a hell of a time finding a sync-on-green monitor (and I had 3 sonys!) and once everything was up and running, it was something of a dog, performance-wise.

      But all that aside, what bugged me the most was that Sony didn't really bother to include any kind of SDK for the Emotion Engine. There were some header files in there, sure, but very much "figure it out
    • i'm glad people aren't able to program the computer chips they paid good money for.

      i mean what would happen to the world if people could just ingore companies' business models? the world would suck shi* if people could own property.

  • Jem. Jem is excitement! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Showtime Synergy!"

    Sony better watch out for Nintendo's "Misfit" processor. It's songs are better.

  • Synergy (Score:5, Funny)

    by Limburgher ( 523006 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:51PM (#13401744) Homepage Journal
    So it will be utilizing synergy. That's good. I like my solutions to be customer-focused, and above all synergized. :)

  • Developers is developers! (Score:5, Funny)

    by greythax ( 880837 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:52PM (#13401750)
    There's much more information on how developers, including open source developers...

    HOW DARE YOU! You can't include open source developers as a sub category of developers! When you say developers, you better mean closed source developers! We don't let that open source scum use our compilers and such, so we refuse to let the word "developers" mean "all developers". Don't you go insinuating that it should include OTHER TYPES OF DEVELOPERS when we say DEVELOPERS!

    And while we are at it, Perl Developers aren't developers either. Lump them in the cryptographers, we don't want them.

  • Trouble in Techland (Score:2, Interesting)

    by augustz ( 18082 )
    When your "technical specs" are filled with marketing buzzwords, you KNOW you are in trouble.

    These look like multi core CPUs with modified Altivec instructions to handle some extra elements.

    My impression is that this is an optimized chip for situations where you have a known compiler (no branch prediction) plus known hardware and workload (games + gpu).

    So they are likely to get swank game performance, but not sure this is a revolution as much as a nice optimization for a specific tasks.

    • Re:Trouble in Techland (Score:2, Informative)

      by leoval ( 827218 )
      I would recommend that you read the specs. This is indeed a truly revolutionary processor. In fact what you get is 9 processors in a single chip, but instead of the classical SMP, you get 1 PPE that is optimized to run an OS (basically a PowerPC core), and 8 SPE's that are optimized for media rich applications (which of course includes heavy math ones too) but can not run an OS.

      The PPE has full access the the main memory, while the SPE's only have direct access to local 256Kb memory areas that you can use a
    • When your "technical specs" are filled with marketing buzzwords, you KNOW you are in trouble

      No way. their synergistic units orchestrate dynamic e-services, as well as expedite enterprise relationships and grow e-business solutions.

      To think that you can't embrace magnetic action-items or empower vertical applications shows you lack of understand of the Cell processor.

      As a great philosopher/gangsta rapper once said:

      "e-enable interactive e-tailer vortals,
      productize 24/7 portals,
      envisioneer distributed niches
      wo

  • SPU? (Score:4, Funny)

    by warlockgs ( 593818 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @04:54PM (#13401763)
    SPU? Sounds like something I do every few saturday nights, after ingesting too many alco-beverages.....

  • We'll start with 3D... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ViaNRG ( 892147 )
    Not to be a buzz kill, but it looks like [blachford.info] we'll have to wait for a lot of development and middle ware maturity before we see the real potential in cell processors.

    • Re:We'll start with 3D... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Slashcrap ( 869349 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @05:13PM (#13401977)
      Not to be a buzz kill, but it looks like we'll have to wait for a lot of development and middle ware maturity before we see the real potential in cell processors.

      Yes, but why worry about something so trivial when we've got anti-gravity technology?

      http://www.blachford.info/quantum/gravity.html [blachford.info]

      And faster than light travel?

      http://www.blachford.info/quantum/fastlight.html [blachford.info]

      Blachford is just as qualified to talk about processor technology as he is about physics. He's an attention seeking charlatan lacking either the experience or qualifications to contribute anything but hype and bullshit. And he's becoming just as ubiquitous and irritating as that Piquapelle prick.
      • Well, his FTL thing just looks like an oversimplified variation of Alcubierre's warp drive. The latter might actually work, if we had a supply of negative mass of galactic order of magnitude. Van den Broek came up with a refinement of Alcubierre's idea that only requires modest energy requirements -- but still in the form of negative mass.

        Alcubierre's and Van den Broek's solutions do fit within Relativity -- although quantum loop gravity may break them.

        Blachford's gravity thing, though -- that's just out
        • His FTL idea isn't the "standard" warped-space thing either, though it looks like it at first glance.

          It's even simpler than that. With positive gravity in front and negative gravity behind, you get zero gravity - and therefore zero weight - in the middle. And since zero weight is the completely the same thing as zero mass in every respect, you can accelerate to lightspeed and beyond without needing infinite energy :-)

          Not just out to lunch, but wandering around lost looking for something to eat.

        • Well, his FTL thing just looks like an oversimplified variation of Alcubierre's warp drive. The latter might actually work, if we had a supply of negative mass of galactic order of magnitude.

          And my car might actually be able to travel back in time, if I had a flux capacitor to put in it.

  • About the "Synergistic" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HishamMuhammad ( 553916 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @05:00PM (#13401821) Homepage Journal
    Earlier in the design, the SPU's were called Streaming Processing Units (you know like SSE [wikipedia.org], Streming SIMD Extensions). However, they didn't want to give the impression that the SPU's were designed only for "streaming data" kind of tasks, so they decided to change its name.

    I guess "SPU" had already stuck with the developer team, so they just switched the word to "some meaningless word with S" so they could keep the acronym. And as far as meaningless words with S go, "Synergistic" fits the bill quite nicely. ;)

    After the fact, of course, they can let the marketroids make up explanations on how the name is actually about the "synergy" between the main processor and the SPUs, blah blah blah... :)

  • Main question still unanswered (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vlad_petric ( 94134 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @05:07PM (#13401904) Homepage
    How do you program those SPUs, besides hand-coded assembly ? For media / game apps, it's probably acceptable to handcode vector instructions for the performance-critical parts, but for everything else you're going to use - at best - the 2 generic execution contexts and the SPUs will sleep idle.
  • an in-order ppc core with 8 memory-starved simd units.

    i find it hard to believe they spent billions bolting on a set of vector processors to a non-out of order ppc cpu.

    maybe they spent most of the money on marketing and writing the software/apis.

  • 3 Things. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adam31 ( 817930 ) <adam31@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Thursday August 25, 2005 @06:44PM (#13402682)
    From a PS2 perspective there are 2 things that hit me as really cool improvements.

    First the SPUs have the ability to initiate DMA. That means they can do stuff like calculate memory-mapped addresses and request more data, or select different destinations for a calculation. Or even load in a different program to do specialized execution. All independent of the main processor. BIG improvement.

    2nd is the integer instructions. They really have everything... shifts, rotates, all SIMD. One of the big problems with PS2 VUs was that you had to resort to real sorcery to do simple things like shifts. But these seem to be real actual general-purpose CPUs. There's nothing that really strikes me as "OMG, I can't believe they didn't include X! Idiots!" Branch prediction, maybe.

    • Yeah, it looks like the three biggest reasons why VU0 was hardly ever utilized by most games have been addressed: 1) much more useful connection to main memory without bothering the main CPU, 2) writing your code in C/C++ is now a reasonable option due to a more complete set of instructions, and 3) much more local memory (vs 4K!)

      I kind of think they still have to worry about 4) lazy programmers...

      I hope the compiler support for vector intrinsics is better than the Dylan Cuthbert VU0 macro mode extension

  • Linux support falling into place (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iabervon ( 1971 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @10:26PM (#13403857) Homepage Journal
    Linux developers (who had evidentally already had access to the documentation, but couldn't disclose their work until it was officially made public) sent out a new version of the patches to give programs access to the SPUs. It's looking pretty likely that, as soon as you can actually get Cell processors, there will be support in the toolchain and kernel for using them effectively (provided you actually have a task that benefits from massive vectorization with very little control logic, of course). This should be great for the photorealistic rusty steel Enlightenment theme.

  • anandtech article is quite informative (Score:3, Informative)

    by t35t0r ( 751958 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @01:02AM (#13404779)
    After having read the anandtech article mentioned previously in this thread, a quote:

    Unfortunately, seeing a future for Cell far outside of Playstation 3 and Sony/Toshiba CE devices is difficult at best.

    Perhaps for the people at Anandtech but it's times like these that I feel badly for all those rendering houses and farms that built their systems off SGI's or clusters of expensive opterons/xeons/itaniums. The Cell is basically a very advanced DSP that performs extremely well at rendering and SIMD algorithms (floating point calcuations). A farm of PS3's could easily do what much more expensive grids do.

    Such a system could also be used for doing parallel calculations in various scientific applications.

  • First impression of the SPU asm docs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Terje Mathisen ( 128806 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @02:29AM (#13405168)
    I just downloadded all of the Cell pdf's to take a look at them. I posted the following analysis to news:comp.arch [comp.arch]:

    Naturally, I started reading the SPU asm manual, and that makes it
    immediately obvious that this is a cpu directly targeted at MPEG style
    video processing:

        absdb Absolute difference of bytes
        avgb Average bytes: dest = (a+b+1) >> 1 (MPEG interpolation)

        ct Carry Generate: Target = carry out of (A+B)
        addx Add word extended: Target = A+B+(Target & 1)

    Notice the last one! It uses the least significant bit of each part of
    the target register as input to an AddWithCarry operation, which means
    that you need three read ports.

    This pair of opcodes seems to me to be meant as building blocks for
    extended/arbitrary precision calculations.

    It has a full set of branch instructions that as a side-effect either
    enable or disable interrupts, i.e. critical sections are supposed to be
    handled this way.

    It seems to handle sub-register size operations with a set of opcodes,
    where one of a group of GenerateMask operations is used to generate an
    input mask for a general shuffle operation. ...
    There's a bunch of generalized three-input FMAC opcodes, all working on
    SIMD data, like fnms (T = Acc - (a * b).

    It has fsqest and frest to generate approximate reciprocal square root
    and reciprocal lookup values. However, these operations does not seem to
    deliver results in a standard format, instead each resulting element
    consists of two parts, a base and a step, so that a following fi
    (Floating Interpolate) can improve upon the table lookup results.

    I'm guessing you'd then want one NR iteration to get somewhere close to
    IEEE single precision.

    The shufb (Shuffle bytes) opcode seems like a small extension to the
    Altivec Permute, in that in addition to using 5 bits to select one of 32
    possible input bytes, and can also specify three different immediate
    values (0, 0x80 and 0xFF), which would be needed to make it work with
    the GenerateMask operations mentioned above.

    All in all a pretty general set of opcodes for SIMD data processing, it
    is particularly obvious in the way each of the possible operations has
    forms to work on either a set of input data (reg or immediate), or on
    it's complement. This saves a lot of bubble-introducing mask setup
    operations, but is normally not considered to be required on a regular cpu.

    Terje
  • Maybe it's time for Functional Programming languages to shine! synergistic processing units like the CELL is a big chance for functional programming.

    Functional programming languages have the following characteristic: the order of execution is irrelevant, because functions are free of side effects. Therefore, a CELL processor with 8 SPUs could actually execute 8 functions simultaneously, thus increasing execution speed of a functional program 800%. Of course that is theoritical, because there are other facto

    • ...with the 8 SPU's is they are essentially 8 altivec units attached to one, slow, general purpose Power based core.

      You could only achieve close to that 800% speed increase if all of the code for all of those functions was able to be vectorized.

      The reason cell is (theoretically) good for games is because things like physics and collision detection are highly vectorizable.

      Also throw into the mix the fact that each SPU has hardly any cache and any sort of general computation looks out of the question.

      Cell

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