German computer magazine c't will have a Playstation 3 special edition.

It will include a DVD containing a Linux distribution to run on the PS3.

Additionally, they have put some examples on the DVD for what CELL is capable of.

In mandelbrot-style fractal calculations, it's six times faster than Intel's core 2 duo.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/86624

Happy switching.

So do you think this could provide some momentum both for the acceptance of Linux in the mainstream and for further development of that OS?

quote:

Originally posted by BN:
So do you think this could provide some momentum both for the acceptance of Linux in the mainstream and for further development of that OS?

LOL.

Linux doesn't need any more momentum, thank you.

What i think this will provide is a lot more momentum for the development of CELL-based workstations that will (for certain tasks) outperform anything else by a wide margin. x86 will look like a joke compared to this baby. 6 times faster than core 2 duo speaks for itself.

Great job, Apple.

LOL.

Linux doesn't need any more momentum, thank you.

Why does that rate an "LOL"? I know Linux is used in business to some extent, but I wasn't aware that it was poised to become a serious alternative to Windows in the consumer marketplace. My thought was that if it becomes common to use Linux in association with a major gaming platform, Linux could catch on with the consumer as more than just a curiosity. But my further thought is that Linux is still too geeky, complex, and hard to use. So I was further surmising that perhaps further ease-of-use development might be spawned by any significant melding of Linux with a game console. If this scenerio misses the point that you were talking about, then okay. I have no idea what a CELL-based workstation is or what its advantages might be. Is it distributed computing?

quote:

Originally posted by BN:
LOL.

Linux doesn't need any more momentum, thank you.

Why does that rate an "LOL"? I know Linux is used in business to some extent, but I wasn't aware that it was poised to become a serious alternative to Windows in the consumer marketplace. My thought was that if it becomes common to use Linux in association with a major gaming platform, Linux could catch on with the consumer as more than just a curiosity. But my further thought is that Linux is still too geeky, complex, and hard to use. So I was further surmising that perhaps further ease-of-use development might be spawned by any significant melding of Linux with a game console. If this scenerio misses the point that you were talking about, then okay. I have no idea what a CELL-based workstation is or what its advantages might be. Is it distributed computing?

No. It's just a computer with one or more CELL processor(s) inside.

Here's a Wiki article concerning the CELL processor. I guess what the hubbub is about is that this is supposed to be one kick-ass fast processor, right?

quote:

Originally posted by BN:
Here's a Wiki article concerning the CELL processor. I guess what the hubbub is about is that this is supposed to be one kick-ass fast processor, right?

Without getting too technical, what the hubbub is all about is that CELL is truly a new architecture based on the realization that

1. the real bottleneck in computers today is main memory access; You have multi-core processors running at 3 GHz that have to access RAM running at 1.something GHz - no good idea. Intel's answer is to pump up the cache to ridiculous levels which in turn requires more and more logic on the chip to manage and synchronize the cache access of the cores.

2. a lot of the development in microprocessors in the last few years was about making the chips smarter and smarter (for example out-of-order-execution, speculative branching and so on) but doesn't deliver any benefit in the real world but just makes the processors fatter and fatter. CELL doesn't have all that fat which means the programmer has to do some more thinking to program it, but the benefits are tremendous. In its first incarnation, CELL is already 6 times faster then Intel's core 2 duo in certain applications. That's quite impressive.

Thanks for the explanation, klap. This is highly technical stuff and yet we live in a highly technical world. We might as well learn about some of that "magic" at the root of it all. I read a pop book on computer microcode once (or read some of it anyway). I forget the name of the book, but I think it ultimately helped to show how important all this stuff is and how few people really understand it. It's like our DNA. We couldn't get along without it and yet who really understands how it works?

CELL is a bunch of extremely specialized, trimmed-down cores.

It does a few things faster than the Core 2 Duo series put out by Intel; so does that $150 graphics card GPU you have in your machine. That doesn't make it useful or sensible for a general-purpose computer.

Certainly, IBM could tailor it to suit Apple's needs and build a kick-ass specialty processor, but that, as we all remember, was already the idea back in G5-land, but basically IBM made it obvious over the years that Apple was an irrelevant customer. And then IBM got offers for gaming consoles selling a hundred times as many chips as Apple could have.

If IBM ever turns the Cell into an actual general-purpose CPU, rather than the specialty technical-calculation units they are right now, they might be of interest.