Apple turns down Cell? (implications for PS3)

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Zinn

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I just read this on the front page... forgive me for not registering with nytimes.com, but I think the posted quote may have high implications for the next-generation console war:
An executive close to Sony said that last year Mr. Jobs met in California with both Nobuyuki Idei, then the chairman and chief executive of the Japanese consumer electronics firm, and with Kenichi Kutaragi, the creator of the Sony PlayStation. Mr. Kutaragi tried to interest Mr. Jobs in adopting the Cell chip, which is being developed by I.B.M. for use in the coming PlayStation 3, in exchange for access to certain Sony technologies. Mr. Jobs rejected the idea, telling Mr. Kutaragi that he was disappointed with the Cell design, which he believes will be even less effective than the PowerPC.
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I think this is an interesting viewpoint since Microsoft is using a variant of the PowerPC in the XBox 360 and Sony is going ahead with Cell. Perhaps this bodes poorly for Sony?

I know that one industry exec's opinion might not mean much, (and probably Apple is sick of IBM) but this does warrant some discussion. Thoughts ppl?
 
The Xenon's triple-core design shares some DNA with the Playstation 3's Cell processor, so it's not surprising that it also embodies many of the same assumptions about the best way to wring performance out of the sorts of extremely large transistor counts that Moore's Curves have given the latest generation of integrated circuits. Like the Cell processor that will power the Playstation 3, the Xenon carries on the "RISC"-style tradition of trading programmer/compiler effort for hardware. In a nutshell, software writers who develop for Xenon must take on more of the burden of optimizing their code by making it explicitly parallel, and in return they get more execution hardware to play with.
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http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360-1.ars
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360-2.ars
No what matter what hype it has CELL is still just a powerPC variety, and in the end xbox Xeon is as well (as articles above state). Jobs switched to intel for easier devolpment, cheaper cost, less power consumption, not because of ibm's inability to make a powerfull CPU (In which the cell probubly would not be good for computers anyways.)
 
Yea thats a scary thought, if Jobs passed up the chance to have the cell proc in his machines, then it must not be good enough. Apples are a like a fined tuned porsche cars, if its not up to snuff its not going in there. So yea thats a scary for PS3. I trust Steve Jobs' opinion, he's a smart man, he has some of the best products out there.

No what matter what hype it has CELL is still just a powerPC variety, and in the end xbox Xeon is as well (as articles above state). Jobs switched to intel for easier devolpment, cheaper cost, less power consumption, not because of ibm's inability to make a powerfull CPU (In which the cell probubly would not be good for computers anyways.)
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What the hell are you talking about intel and apple...? apple still uses IBM PowerPC chips...
 
pistola said:
Yea thats a scary thought, if Jobs passed up the chance to have the cell proc in his machines, then it must not be good enough. Apples are a like a fined tuned porsche cars, if its not up to snuff its not going in there. So yea thats a scary for PS3. I trust Steve Jobs' opinion, he's a smart man, he has some of the best products out there.
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:confused:
 
Yes they still use powerpc but they are making the transition. If they could switch to intel over night they would of.
 
sergey85z said:
Yes they still use powerpc but they are making the transition. If they could switch to intel over night they would of.
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That sucks, bad move apple... bad move.

edit, Is there a link to a reliable source of this infromation, i'd like to read that.
 
I'm sure you can find it alot of places if you looked, it was stated by Apple this last Monday I believe.
 
pistola said:
That sucks, bad move apple... bad move.

edit, Is there a link to a reliable source of this infromation, i'd like to read that.
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um have u been locked in closet the past week?
 
Yet again Sony's Propaganda machine has triumphed over it's own hardwares limited functionality by exploiting the general publics ignorance.

The reason the Cell is so "Fast" is because it's less precise than a regular processor.... It's not exactly revolutionary to be able to count to 100 faster when you count by 10's (That's not really how it works, but it's the simplest example I can think of ).

Anyway, the Cell is so (relatively) imprecise, and requires so much special programming that it is pretty much useless in a regular PC or Mac. If they put Cell's in regular PC's they would either do absolutely nothing without each program being specifically written to exploit them, or else the core processor and the OS would have to be completely re-designed to make them automatically use the Cell processors effectively. Either way it's far too drastic a change to ever hope to make a profit or even to have a reasonable hope of providing a significantly faster, AND backwards-compatible computer.
 
arentol said:
Yet again Sony's Propaganda machine has triumphed over it's own hardwares limited functionality by exploiting the general publics ignorance.

The reason the Cell is so "Fast" is because it's less precise than a regular processor.... It's not exactly revolutionary to be able to count to 100 faster when you count by 10's (That's not really how it works, but it's the simplest example I can think of ).

Anyway, the Cell is so (relatively) imprecise, and requires so much special programming that it is pretty much useless in a regular PC or Mac. If they put Cell's in regular PC's they would either do absolutely nothing without each program being specifically written to exploit them, or else the core processor and the OS would have to be completely re-designed to make them automatically use the Cell processors effectively. Either way it's far too drastic a change to ever hope to make a profit or even to have a reasonable hope of providing a significantly faster, AND backwards-compatible computer.
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Sorry, bud, but the reason Cell is so fast is not that it is less precise. I'm not saying it's the future of all processor architectures, but it is very well designed. I'm a computer engineering student doing a little bit of research in this area, so I have a bit of experience with designs similar to the Cell. I'm willing to answer any questions about it that you may have. First though, do a little bit of reading before you make a fool of yourself. ;)
 
Sorry, i've been busy at work. Thanks for the links. This makes me sad, I don't like intel and im a long time apple user, I might just stop using them now.

Edit although after reading those articles I take back my retarded statements, this might be the best move apple has made in a while. That G5 was doomed from the getgo.
 
pistola said:
Sorry, i've been busy at work. Thanks for the links. This makes me sad, I don't like intel and im a long time apple user, I might just stop using them now.

Edit although after reading those articles I take back my retarded statements, this might be the best move apple has made in a while. That G5 was doomed from the getgo.
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Heh heh, how things change! It'll be scary seeing the new "Dell with Mac OS X" budget systems!... :(
 
Remember the announcement by Dell a few weeks ago that they would be creating a new product which would be the "Lexus of their lineup," even above the XPS? Think the timing of that announcement has anything to do with Apple's transition to x86?
 
finalgt said:
Remember the announcement by Dell a few weeks ago that they would be creating a new product which would be the "Lexus of their lineup," even above the XPS? Think the timing of that announcement has anything to do with Apple's transition to x86?
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dual dual cores? and it serves cold beer?
 
ryanrule said:
dual dual cores? and it serves cold beer?
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And cuts cigars! It also cooks dinner. Yup, take it from me, I'm a HUGE (note: HUGE!) insider dude at Dell....here it is folks, the revelation of the revolution:New Dells with Mac OS X Tiger...they serve beer, cut cigars, and makes dinner!!!! It's the ultimate "entartainment, dinner-cooking, pleasure-inducing supercomputer" at least that's what they told me not to tell anyone it was going to be called... :p :rolleyes:
 
andres9606t said:
Sorry, bud, but the reason Cell is so fast is not that it is less precise. I'm not saying it's the future of all processor architectures, but it is very well designed. I'm a computer engineering student doing a little bit of research in this area, so I have a bit of experience with designs similar to the Cell. I'm willing to answer any questions about it that you may have. First though, do a little bit of reading before you make a fool of yourself. ;)
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That's the sore spot i've come across during the many cell threads (apparently the same as what arentol's been reading) . From what i gather, Cell processors are designed for single precision, they do it very well and can do it several times faster than a desktop CPU, however, when they are made to do double precision (like normal CPU's would), they can do it, but their performance plummets to just about the same (or just a bit higher) than a current high end CPU.

Note that i'm not tech savvy, this is just what i've been reading in the various forums as well as the few articles i've come across. The articles were rather vague on this issue, but it's pretty consistent across most of them,leading me to believe that it may be of some concern.

What's the difference between a native double precision vs a precision multiplier? I've asked this before but nobody answered :(
 
You can't believe a word that madman Jobs says, did you catch his reasoning for switching to intel processors in Macs? More work per watt. LOL@that. I mean jesus, has he never heard the nickname presshot? Even the Intel !!!!!!s know that intels recent cpus are excellent heaters. If Jobs wasn't high on dogfood all the time he would have gone with a64 dual cores, as they are obviously the best solution currently.

It doesn't suprise me about the cell processor though, I don't think Jobs wants the mac to be a cablebox.
 
7718 said:
You can't believe a word that madman Jobs says, did you catch his reasoning for switching to intel processors in Macs? More work per watt. LOL@that. I mean jesus, has he never heard the nickname presshot? Even the Intel !!!!!!s know that intels recent cpus are excellent heaters. If Jobs wasn't high on dogfood all the time he would have gone with a64 dual cores, as they are obviously the best solution currently.

It doesn't suprise me about the cell processor though, I don't think Jobs wants the mac to be a cablebox.
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Umm did you even take a second to think why he would say that? Apple is probably thinking now is the time to make a major push into the mobile market. With powerpc they could never do that but with intel it is a huge possibility. Hence the more work per watt and the "now that we have intel we can design the products we really wanted" comment.
 
7718 said:
You can't believe a word that madman Jobs says, did you catch his reasoning for switching to intel processors in Macs? More work per watt. LOL@that. I mean jesus, has he never heard the nickname presshot? Even the Intel !!!!!!s know that intels recent cpus are excellent heaters. If Jobs wasn't high on dogfood all the time he would have gone with a64 dual cores, as they are obviously the best solution currently.

It doesn't suprise me about the cell processor though, I don't think Jobs wants the mac to be a cablebox.
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pentium m?
 
andres9606t said:
Sorry, bud, but the reason Cell is so fast is not that it is less precise. I'm not saying it's the future of all processor architectures, but it is very well designed. I'm a computer engineering student doing a little bit of research in this area, so I have a bit of experience with designs similar to the Cell. I'm willing to answer any questions about it that you may have. First though, do a little bit of reading before you make a fool of yourself. ;)
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Let me clarify what I meant...

Sony claims the Cell processors in their PS3 will provide 218 GFLOPS of processing power (that is theoretical though, reality is that all processor considerably under-perform their theoretical limit). However IBM specifically stated that the Cell was single precisions whereas a regular CPU is double precision. They also specifically stated that it was forced to calculate something at double precision it would run at about 1/10th the speed. So that would drop the PS3, for instance, down to 21.8 "traditional" GFLOPS of processing power.

That is still very fast, and incredibly impressive, but it is not even CLOSE to Sonys claim of 218 GFLOPS. So I am not saying it isn't fast and capable, I am saying it's not nearly as fast as Sony tries to make it sound because it is single precision, and I am saying that because it is single precision it would take a shit-load of work to make it remotely useful in a "regular" PC or MAC.
 
7718 said:
You can't believe a word that madman Jobs says, did you catch his reasoning for switching to intel processors in Macs? More work per watt. LOL@that. I mean jesus, has he never heard the nickname presshot? Even the Intel !!!!!!s know that intels recent cpus are excellent heaters. If Jobs wasn't high on dogfood all the time he would have gone with a64 dual cores, as they are obviously the best solution currently.

It doesn't suprise me about the cell processor though, I don't think Jobs wants the mac to be a cablebox.
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We shouldn' t believe what Steve Jobs says, but we should believe you?

Which multi-billion dollar company are you CEO of again? :rolleyes:

Jobs is an innovator, and Apple as always been at the forefront of technology and design. I'm willing to bet that we are going to be very surprised at what happens because of this transition. The more marketshare Apple can grab on to, the more competition Microsoft will have. Technology can only benefit from this.
 
arentol said:
Let me clarify what I meant...

Sony claims the Cell processors in their PS3 will provide 218 GFLOPS of processing power (that is theoretical though, reality is that all processor considerably under-perform their theoretical limit). However IBM specifically stated that the Cell was single precisions whereas a regular CPU is double precision. They also specifically stated that it was forced to calculate something at double precision it would run at about 1/10th the speed. So that would drop the PS3, for instance, down to 21.8 "traditional" GFLOPS of processing power.

That is still very fast, and incredibly impressive, but it is not even CLOSE to Sonys claim of 218 GFLOPS. So I am not saying it isn't fast and capable, I am saying it's not nearly as fast as Sony tries to make it sound because it is single precision, and I am saying that because it is single precision it would take a shit-load of work to make it remotely useful in a "regular" PC or MAC.
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how much does the fast p4 do? GFLOPS wise?
 
arentol said:
Let me clarify what I meant...

Sony claims the Cell processors in their PS3 will provide 218 GFLOPS of processing power (that is theoretical though, reality is that all processor considerably under-perform their theoretical limit). However IBM specifically stated that the Cell was single precisions whereas a regular CPU is double precision. They also specifically stated that it was forced to calculate something at double precision it would run at about 1/10th the speed. So that would drop the PS3, for instance, down to 21.8 "traditional" GFLOPS of processing power.

That is still very fast, and incredibly impressive, but it is not even CLOSE to Sonys claim of 218 GFLOPS. So I am not saying it isn't fast and capable, I am saying it's not nearly as fast as Sony tries to make it sound because it is single precision, and I am saying that because it is single precision it would take a shit-load of work to make it remotely useful in a "regular" PC or MAC.
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documentation?
 
MasterShredder said:
OSX on PC's? Cool, i've always wanted to pay $60 for service packs, now i'll be able to :p
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roflmao :D
Seriously though, what is this going to do for Apples older programs? Will their x86 OS be designed to handle both the new and old Mac apps, or will they all need to be rewriten? :eek:
 
pistola said:
This makes me sad, I don't like intel and im a long time apple user, I might just stop using them now.
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You should have done that a long time ago. ;) :p

Apple Mac...because two mouse buttons are just too complex... :D
 
arentol said:
Let me clarify what I meant...

Sony claims the Cell processors in their PS3 will provide 218 GFLOPS of processing power (that is theoretical though, reality is that all processor considerably under-perform their theoretical limit). However IBM specifically stated that the Cell was single precisions whereas a regular CPU is double precision. They also specifically stated that it was forced to calculate something at double precision it would run at about 1/10th the speed. So that would drop the PS3, for instance, down to 21.8 "traditional" GFLOPS of processing power.

That is still very fast, and incredibly impressive, but it is not even CLOSE to Sonys claim of 218 GFLOPS. So I am not saying it isn't fast and capable, I am saying it's not nearly as fast as Sony tries to make it sound because it is single precision, and I am saying that because it is single precision it would take a shit-load of work to make it remotely useful in a "regular" PC or MAC.
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Of course the need for the extra precision from 64 bit doubles in gaming or end user multimedia is negligible at best.
single precision is more than adaquate for representing color and spacial values for 'entertainment' software.
The added space and reduced throughput (assuming the use of any 128 bit SIMD arch out there) from doubles makes them a poor candidate for large scale use in most cases.
Scientific computations and professional CAD type work make good use of doubles (and even extended prescision FP representations).

x87 is fairly unique these days in that there's no penalty for using doubles (other than memory space), but that is as much because it's intended to represent everything internally as 80 bit EP values as anything else.

I don't put much stock in the weak (comparative to its other number crunching capacity) double precision functions being an achilies heel of Cell. At least in most of it's uses.
And even if it were, Cell still outclasses every desktop chip out there, probably able to push 2 - 4 times the double precision calculations per second a P4/K8/G5 can manage.
 
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