Topic: Around the water cooler

[KDR_11k]

Yes but then the Cell will be no different to the PowerPC CPUs used in the other consoles except that it takes different code. Sony hyped up the Cell as many different things and now they conceeded that it's just another CPU architecture to confuse people? I mean, does the Cell in the PS3 have any other purpose than all that false hype ("Emotion Engine" anyone?)?

Hm, considering that IBM source said Sony and MS get the same CPUs and MS is going for a multicore approach, perhaps the Cell is rather close to a PPC and MS is going to use it as well?

[boggy b]

Sony never really hyped Cell. It was more of a PS2 scenario where others did all the hyping, but Sony never really denied it, so Sony get the blame. They say 'oh, yeah, aiming for 1TFLOP performance' (or something similar), and suddenly every Sony fanboy on the planet starts hyping it up that it's a supercomputer-on-a-chip with the ability to fly and cure cancer. At the end of the day, it's still a microprocessor, and has to operate in the same or a very similar way to every other microprocessor on the planet.

Also, IBM never confirmed that they would be using the same CPU for both. That was a rumour. All I know is that if I was a Sony or Toshiba, I'd be pretty pissed off to be paying IBM billions of dollars to 'make' a CPU that they already had! Not to mention that the 'rumour' has already propogated all over the internet, so if it were true Sony would know it by now. Oh, and on top of that, Sony and Toshiba both manufacture their own microprocessors and have been closely involved with Cell production, so they'd have to be pretty thick not to notice that it wasn't just the PPC architecture (you know, what with them helping to design it).

Until we hear further news on Cell, I don't think it's correct to assume that it will even use PPC cores, let alone that it's an identical chip to the Xenon.  

[KDR_11k]

Yes but it could have evolved from the PPC. After all, why reinvent the wheel? Or the processor, for that matter? The Cell isn't just a clustering system or a purpose switcher, it has to have some old-fashioned CPU circuits in there. Taking an existing instruction set would make development for the system easier as well. And there's really no reason to make up a new instruction set when you already have some perfectly fine ones available.

About the hype: It doesn't matter what Sony said directly, they knew which statemants to make to make the people assume the Cell would be the second coming. Sorry for the politics example but George W Bush never said there was a link between the WTC attack and Iraq yet somehow the majority of the people believe this after listening to him. Why? Because marketing people know how to drop "hints" that, while under proper linguistic analysis, are perfectly true but when read without such advanced analysis seem to say something false. Since the false information is only in the mind of the reader the speaker isn't (legally) spreading false information. This is also VERY popular with the yellow press.

[boggy b]

Thankyou for repeating back to me what I already said. I had already pointed out that it's still a microprocessor, it still does microprocessor type things in a microprocessor type way. It's not going to fly, it's not going to cure cancer etc. It's possible that they started with PPC architecture, but that's not to say it will simply be PPC architecture. And let's not forget even custom CPUs (such as the Emotion Engine) use existing instruction sets (it uses MIPS-3 with some MIPS-4 and 5 entensions), so just because the archtecture is not the same as other CPUs is not to say that it wont use an existing instruction set, so there's not going to be an issue there.

Hype, I'm not going to get into. But I blame Sony's fans far more than Sony. XBox and GCN both had similar comments made about them by Microsoft and Ninty respectively (and the press shots of the early graphics wre both way above what the systems can realistically achieve), and neither got as over-hyped.

[Stimutacs Addict]

Quote
Originally posted by: boggy b
( the press shots of the early graphics wre both way above what the systems can realistically achieve),.

this holds tru for MS, but I don't recall seeing any GCN demos that misrepresented teh system's power . . . remember Nintendo even lowballed the polygon figures they gave in press releases.

[KDR_11k]

It's not going to fly, it's not going to cure cancer etc.

Heh, and I'd bet that's what the engineers tried to tell PR for at least a year now. They pretended the Cell would make a difference to us yet in the end it doesn't and that's why I think of this whole thing as a PR stunt. They could just have sat back, put the Cell in there and release the system but instead they decide to build up hype for the Cell in the PS3.