yeah, right.

CELL is the future! the future is distributed computing. We saw the benefits of distributed computing in folding@home. PS3's Cell has a dominant performance compared to any other computing CPUs.

think, play, and go B3yond

When you compare "performance" you ofcourse mean single-percision floating point performance. In scalar operations it's not tough to beat the Cell. The Cell wouldn't make a very good server processor.

You missed the most important factor: Is the software built to maximize the potential?

Running an application such as Winrar or rendering video, all 4 of my cores are being put to good use. Run a game like Crysis or Supreme Commander, and I get little CPU activity, but it is evenly spread between the 4 cores. Once games are built to take advantage and once the requirements are there (there's no game I've seen that can max out a decently rated Core 2 processor, be it duo or quad) we will see a huge performance boost from multiple cores.

Yeah, it has multiple cores, but I think this article is talking about processors with multiple CPU's and not SPE's like the Cell has.

Lol, I CANNOT believe someone disagreed with you. It was a f*cking question. I swear, they just do it to cause problems...

The Cell processor is a multi thread CPU. It has one CPU with 8 mini helpers (1 disabled on the PS3 for yields). The cool thing about the Cell processor is that you can add or subtract the amount of SPE required for the task.

True multi core processors have multiple cores not additional helpers. If I took a Duel Core chip and disabled one core the computer would still run on the other core. With a Cell processor if you disabled the cpu the SPEs could not do the job.

Let me throw in another opinion. Multicores (and their predecessors SMP) are design in a coherent way, where each core is transparent in the way, that its ISA (instruction set architecture) is the same across the CPUs and the data and instructions can be shared dynamically between CPUs. Multi-Core now moves these CPUs a bit closer, actually on to the same die (that's the piece where the actual "transistors" are located), rather then multiple cpus. By doing so, what makes "Multicores" different from SMP is, that they are not only located on the same die, but they (obviously) use local interconnects (cache coherency is external for SMP), and they share the caches (and thus simplify cache coherency problems - but introduce new once with each core added. You can imagine, that two cores sharing that cache is "easy". 4 is a bit more trouble, and so on).

This cache problem is exactly the reason why multicore will reach its boundaries the same way high frequency cpus did. At some point, it is simply not feasible to share that cache across n cores. Well, I have no idea to what level this becomes a real problem. I think Power6 uses 16 cores already and so does some Sparc (Niagra), but that's just what I remember so far. I also do not know if these cpus share the caches, or have per core cache - but non the less, you have to sync those caches thru all cores to guarantee data integrity.

Well, compared to that the CELL is a pretty new idea. It does not have multiple cores. It has one (on the roadmap I think to remember to have seen a 2 core PPU cell with probably 12 or 16 SPUs). "Multithread" has nothing to do with it. A common CPU has usually 2 or 3 special execution units, those being integer, floating point and (sometimes) vector units (SSE or VMX or the like - while early SSE was actually a reconfigured fpu). Multithreading in that respect usually refers, that the instruction units can run in parallel. That's at least the case on the CELL (that said, you can execute an integer and an floating point instruction at the same time). Basically it depends if the instruction pipelines end up in their own execution unit. If so, each pipeline can execute at the same time (e.g. multiple integer units or the like). Maybe somebody has a reference to a more accurate description. This is just basic. These are not full cpus, but rather part of the same cpu can execute at the same time, while "multicore" means real multiple cpus - they always run in parallel.

The idea of the SPUs was, to reduce the risk of cache coherency. That's also why the SPUs do not come with their own cache nor do they allow direct memory access. The SRAM is, what they call a "software controlled cache". You could "abstract" the spus to behave like a real core, but all load/store operations need to be simulated in SW, also, a jump cannot reach outside of the SRAM address space. Now, I have no idea how far these new "spu" kernels are, but they hide a lot of those issues already and allow you to treat the SPUs like real multi cores. This is confusing, because in the traditional sense, the CELL is not a multicore cpu, however, new CELL kernel(s?) make it a virtual multicore cpu.

The second argument for the CELL/SPU was size. Cache and the additional control logic needs space. The spus are pretty small. Not a lot of additional logic is required. This is also the reason why it scales very well, by keeping die size and yields (?) low. There are still nine cpus on that chip, on a size which is smaller then current x86 counter parts.

So, the cell and GPUs share the same approach. A high number of small special purpose cpus. That's what I called "massive" parallel above. The SPUs have the more general ISA, while the GPUs have very specific instructions. Sooner or later both concepts, CELL and/or GPUs will melt, and this will be these (what I would call) node cpus. Intel has something similar, BTW.

GpGPUs showed, that such a solution does not necessarily need to be dependent on the ISA. Both ATI and NVidea have introduced their shading language - well not cross compatible - but still, seems they still work thruout their whole product range. Something like that could be the base for future node cpus, IMO.

Could. We'll see. So, I'd say, Multicore is a myth, same as frequencies. The technology, however is not. I am curious how this will turn out eventually.

The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.

Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.

15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.

Let me be clear. This is sarcasm