Xbox forum - Forbs 'Super Cell' article

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Forbs 'Super Cell' article

NEXT BOX

2005-02-13, 12:42 pm

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...ec1dd0d6df251c4

Super Cell

Thu Jan 27, 6:34 PM ET

By Benjamin Fulford David Whelan

One of the most gossiped-about and eagerly awaited technologies of 2005 is a
powerful microprocessor called Cell. Produced by a consortium of Sony,
Toshiba and IBM, Cell will be the brains of the next-generation Sony
PlayStation 3, due out in 2006. If its builders' advance hype is right, Cell
promises a new era of graphics-rich computers, as well as TVsets and home
theaters capable of processing and moving large volumes of high-definition
content. "Cell will make possible a transformation in entertainment like
that from novels to movies,"says Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer
Entertainment. Technical details will be released Feb. 6 at a conference in
San Francisco.

We've managed to glean some inside tidbits. A single Cell chip is expected
to be capable of surpassing 250 billion floating point operations, or 250
gigaflops, per second, rivaling the best mid-1990s supercomputer. In flops,
it is six times as fast as Nvidia's new graphics chip.

"It is so fast there is no point talking about the number," says a Cell
engineer who spoke with FORBES on the condition of anonymity. "The beauty is
in its flexibility."Cell, he says, will be able to link millions of people
into a vibrant, lifelike virtual community on a scale never seen before.
Each Cell chip will have between eight and ten separate processing cores on
one piece of silicon (a final decision is pending), compared to two for the
latest Pentium chips.

Intel is watching Cell warily, but Intel spokesman Howard High says that
while the chip may be successful in videogame consoles, he doubts it would
reverberate beyond into the realm of PC computers. "The Japanese tend to
shoot high in terms of their goals. So far they haven't had a successful
general-purpose microprocessor," says High.

The Cell chip will go into production by midyear at IBM's East Fishkill,
N.Y. wafer factory. Sony and IBM have announced plans for a workstation
combining multiple Cells that, acting in concert, will reach 16 trillion
flops, ranking alongside the world's top ten supercomputers. It will be
aimed at engineers and Hollywood animators. This figure is "probably a p.r.
exaggeration," the Cell engineer says, but future workstations containing
racks of 32 chips will be able to attain this speed. Toshiba has plans for a
Cell-based hi-def TVset in 2006.

Cell's big public debut will likely wow conference attendees with very fast
graphics and multimedia applications on a prototype computer. "You couldn't
imagine how fast it will be," says the inside engineer. "It will be able to
make movie-quality graphics without any of the tricky engineering stuff
needed to produce such quality,"he says.

One surprise, says the engineer, would be if Cell lives up to the rumor
going around the development team that the consortium is on its way to
production using advanced 65-nanometer technology, in which transistors are
squeezed even closer together than the 90-nanometer production process that
Intel uses and that the Cell consortium has claimed to have been using so
far. The denser a chip's transistors, the more powerful the chip can be.
"For Intel, it would be a big shock," promises the engineer.

Bill Cable

2005-02-13, 12:42 pm

Sweet. I wonder what one of those 32-chip Cell computers will run. I doubt
it'll be anywhere near the cost of the other supercomputers on the top-10
list.

--
Bill Cable
Steeler Fan and Star Wars Collector
http://CreatureCantina.com <----- funny
Cable is incapable of contributing anything positive to this world - cstoj

Jan Lucas

2005-02-13, 12:42 pm

NEXT BOX schrieb:

quote:

> One surprise, says the engineer, would be if Cell lives up to the rumor
> going around the development team that the consortium is on its way to
> production using advanced 65-nanometer technology, in which transistors are

Yeah, right they got 65nm working and just waiting for the PS3 to start
using it? Or they are just predicting they will get 65nm working in time
for PS3 and will be able to reach the clockspeeds and yields they need?
Just remember how companies strugled to get 130 and 90nm working and
they will just get 65nm working with Sonys magical help or what? Just
look it up, it wasn't just Intel and AMD who struggled getting it work,
but other companies like IBM too. (BTW especially that East Fishkill FAB
that is supposed to manufacture the cell) IBM also thought they could do
3 Ghz G5 with a year of G5 introduction, and now it is more than a year
and everything we have is a water cooled (one could also say:
professionally overclocked) 2.5 GHZ G5.

Jan

NEXT BOX

2005-02-13, 12:42 pm

"Jan Lucas" <jan@lucas-berlin.de> wrote in message
news:ctuifp$74j$05$1@news.t-online.com...

quote:

> NEXT BOX schrieb:
>
are[vbcol=seagreen]
>
> Yeah, right they got 65nm working and just waiting for the PS3 to start
> using it? Or they are just predicting they will get 65nm working in time
> for PS3 and will be able to reach the clockspeeds and yields they need?
> Just remember how companies strugled to get 130 and 90nm working and
> they will just get 65nm working with Sonys magical help or what? Just
> look it up, it wasn't just Intel and AMD who struggled getting it work,
> but other companies like IBM too. (BTW especially that East Fishkill FAB
> that is supposed to manufacture the cell) IBM also thought they could do
> 3 Ghz G5 with a year of G5 introduction, and now it is more than a year
> and everything we have is a water cooled (one could also say:
> professionally overclocked) 2.5 GHZ G5.
>
> Jan

the clockspeed for Xbox Next CPU is rumored / reportedly 3.5 or 3.5+ GHz.
but the Processors based on Cell are *officially* going to be clocked at 4.6
GHz. I'll wait til it actually happens. not holding my breath. I predict
3+ GHz Cell but not 4 GHz.