Sony and IBM still together?
IBM still supports the CELL Broadband Engine, signed Sony Playstation! The official website continues to offer the chip created for the Playstation 3 and displays it proudly in the company's history with the symbols of buttons on the pad, and has signed also agreements with Toshiba (the CELL is present in his REGZA TV) and have achieved server supercomputer.
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Its a fact had Sony released the PS3 with a normal CPU and GPU like the 8800GTX, the PS3 would have easily been capable of running most of its games in 1080p @ 60fps.
While Cell is better than a standard CPU when it comes to doing graphics, thats because CELL was designed to do graphics a CPU isnt designed for that job. However against a real GPU Cell stands no chance. It would absolutely fail even against the RSX, let alone anything that was relevant at the time the PS3 was released aka the 8800GTX.
CELL tried to do everything at once CPU tasks and GPU tasks and ended up being bad at both of them. It cant compete with a Dual core CPU when it comes to general purpose tasks, while it absolutely gets devastated by 4-5 year old GPUs. Proof is in the pudding, With Sony running at the last moment to Nvidia for help. Had their been no RSX in the PS3 there was no way it was going to compete with Xbox 360 even with 2 cells on it.
Coming to the current time. It takes billions of USD to develop chips. IBM is no where near a contender in the graphics business. Even if they did update the CELL it wouldnt stand a chance against any of the current offerings from Nvidia or AMD. Hence it would be in Sonys best interest to go with a standard CPU and a good strong GPU from AMD.
AMD and Nvidia have put in years or work and billions of USD into these chips, there is no way IBM can compete in this department with either of them. Sony would be better of putting the extra money toward a better GPU than to invest in upgrading the Cells ancient design.
Edit:
Here come the disagrees lol, for the disbelievers go ahead put together a 4 year old PC with a dual core CPU and a 8800GTX watch as it will play most console ports in 1080p. Something which PS3 will barely do in 720p, despite any sort of optimization from the Cell.
Hence for the PS4 it would be in Sony best interest to drop the Cell watch and see as thats exactly whats going to happen.
Still rumour, we should wait and see.
Cell is not necessary anymore. Power series is a parallel or better to it now really. I personally believe Power7 is the successor to the Cell tech.
32 threads in 8 core Power7 Cell 2 was aimed to have 32 SPUs. What is the real difference between 32 SMT threads and 32 SPUs. Its possible the performance was equal or lesser than Power7 series CPUs that were coming out which could be the main factor in it getting canned.
Cell up to 256 Gflops.
Power7 264 Gflops and is more efficient at keeping that pace.
Power8 Could possibly stomp both of them, but doubtful Power8 is coming along side AMD APU, but it technically could. Just doesn't seem like enough room in the system.
.CELL is dead as a viable chip
.Unless you want to buy a $599 console again and Sony want to be the laughing stock for another generation... it's just better to cut expensive PS3-BC and go for an affordable console that is easy to sell
Now, when Sony unveil the PS4 and tell there is no PS3-BC, people will RAGE! and XBX8 will have another advantage compared to PS4
Unless you were expecting:
Sony: And now for our worst kept secret...the PS4!
Crowd: YEAHHHH!! HOO HOO HOO HOO!
Sony: ...to be powered by the most advanced and most complex architecture ever put into a single chip. PlayStation fans, I give you the Cell 2!
Microsoft: (laughs)
The industry needs it.
The next gen platforms will probably have barely the performance of the Cell, when it comes to some tasks, like movie-quality animation, and good physics -- its a real shame, from a CPU and gamer standpoint, that we won't see a quad-core, 16-32 SPU Cell this next gen.
The Playstation brand is the weakest it has ever been as reflected by the marketshare of each respective company.
Seeing how I hurt your feeling with a pretty innocent comment, it is clear who is the real fanboy is!
I hope PS4 has an butt-kicking graphics card where you can throw anything including aiding the cpu for some tasks, not like on Ps3 where it was the other way around. Then it can have whatever CPU they like.
although "SOME" people believe The Cell is the second coming, can cure Cancer, and get them a date with Megan Fox or Megan Good........
hate to bust your bubbles but the Cell is Dead!
. IBM has taken it's Cell Servers off-line
. Toshiba has no plans for the Cell in it's Next Gen TV's
. Sony has already said x86-64 for PS4
. Toshiba sold the Cell plant back to Sony and Sony will use the Cell manufacturing plant to make sensors for cameras and other parts but NO Cell manufacturing!
The Cell was a nice chip but it just doesn't fit in too nicely in a x86 world no matter how much power you give the PPE part of it!
True no PS4 News has been given but Sony saying NO to the Cell for the PS4 did slip out and you only have to read a SOny or IBM or Toshiba Financial report to know that Sony is not making any Cell Processors and Neither is IBM or Toshiba!
(hope they get the reference)
What if the APU is a custom chip using the cell technology (not necessarily the cell chip) with a weak GPU for the low end processing and an off the shelf high end GPU + APU (Previously mentioned) for high end processing. Do you think that will work.
Or what if they decide to use the cell chip as the main processor and the APU + GPU will be used for all game processing, of course in combination with the cell, could that work?
Cell2 FTW
Think about, BC and easier workflow for most developers, as they would not need to start all over again with some new hardware.
Use a more standard architecture: More happy devs, more happy players because multiplatform PS4 games don't look inferior to the same game on a next-gen Xbox.
Just don't use it's tech for a Sony video-gaming platform AGAIN! At least until the vidgaming development society as a whole is way more better acquainted with it's unique technology.
Now on to my response,
Thats why I said "vidgaming dev society AS A WHOLE" I know 1st party devs got the cell processor figured out, but the "vast majority" of games coming out this gen and well as next-gen and so on comes from 3rd party devs and also will be multi-platform, not 1st party.
If you think that Sony going to win the next-gen console race by relying ONLY on 1st party titles, Then you haven't learned anything from this gen. Why the hell you think Sony had decided to dumped the cell for the orbis anyway? Sony needs all devs supporting it's system full tilt, 1st, 3rd & independent. And that how Sony may own next-gen.
Sony needs FULL 3rd party support more than ever next-gen not only so multi-plats games won't be inferior to neXbox's, cuz the neXbox already has one great advantage coming out the gate, "full backward compatibility to x360 games"! The general hardware code should be no different than the x360's, just up-graded. So I'm sure 360 games will work on the neXbox. The
orbis won't share that luxury this time. But with traditional x86 AMD PC-ish hardware Sony should have a much better chance at competing with Microsoft & maybe win back some of the dev support x360 took away from them this gen.
Seriously, the development community has had 6 years to become acquainted with it. If they haven't done so by now then nothing is going to change that. It's only going to happen if it is forced on them, similar to the way the Emotion Engine caught on because it was dominant in the PS2.
Major 3rd party developers aren't hacks. They are extremely talented and can figure this stuff out.
Now, all that being said, you are right on your main point. Given the trends in development today, it makes much more sense to go with what is easier for the devs.
However, the cell processor itself is a beast for doing things that are necessary for games. The current mindset of x86 is just to throw more power at it and make more efficient use of architecture to increase processing power. It will eventually come to a breaking point, at which time new things will be needed. The cell itself was designed to scale along this nature, thus it was set up to be a long term solution. Unfortunately it came out too soon, and had too much resistance among the community that it was supposed to help.
Cell in this instance is more of a concept rather than an implementation.
What you ask about was from a 2009 report, however IBM stated that they only stopped development of a particular chip (the 32 SPE model IIRC).
Incidentally, at that time IBM did state that they were working on the PS4 CPU. However that chip was supposed to be ready in 2011 I believe, and 2 years can change a lot of things. OTOH, if it was supposed to be ready at the end of 2011, then it's only been just over a year since it was ready. That would be about the right amount of time to design the rest of the system around it.
Just, nooooooooo.
Really, this is not happening. If anything defeated PS3 over the long term, it was not the cost or the late release, it was the absurd difficulty of taking advantage of the Cell. Sony would be insane to put Devs through an even more complex development pipeline to get games on their console next gen.
That's my 2 rupees at least.
Say what you will, disagree, whatever, the above words are truth.
Some multiplats are better on 360, some are not.
Which does prove something I guess.
The main thing that let the PS3 down, was the RSX. Not the cell.
If the PS4 had the same cell now and 4gb ram and a hefty GPU. It would easily pump out some decent games.
Think about it, main thing that bottlenecked the PS3 was bandwidth of RSX, problems with foliage in games. Lack of AA because of bandwidth.
all RSX is 128bit 7800.
I'm surprised tbh that Sony did not carry on with cell. Hit the ground running.
We'll see in due course.
It was their own production, would have been cheaper in the long run. Why get a RSX from Nvidia if it was so bad?
Sony must have known something you dont to have taken the RSX from Nvidia despite Nvidia being so costly.
@elhe they were just rumors,it's unclear if they are using amd tech but before rumors started saying Sony was to use amd tech,there was one saying that they were going to use a updated cell and powervr series 6 gpu,it's interesting because it named the psvita before it was announced,the rumor is from late 2009,the title is Sony gets Unequalled Graphics.
The tools and technology should be there already. It would not require the massive R+D investment up front, which Sony can't afford this time around. It'd make backwards compatability a lot easier - which is going to be a bigger issue given how much stronger the PC space is right now compared to last time.
It makes perfect sense if Sony does it that way. Sony can keep the PS4's cost down and those that want BC can buy the upgrade. If I recall Sony had come out with a relating patent several years ago. Who knows what may come of it?
It's a beast at crunching numbers, these same coded numbers that maybe have to run through as a "gate" (safety measure) in order to be read and processed by another processor set GPU/CPU, which in turn will make pirating PS4/Orbis games best impossible to play on EVERYTHING, that's not a PS4/Orbis...
But then again, I remember reading that its easier to daisy chain Cell processors, compared to standard processors, and if Sony decides to take the route of having a console that has always followed their trend of being 10 times stronger than its predecessor, then I can say there is absolutely nothing that I have to worry about for the next gen PlayStation Home Console....
Stated!
Do you also realize xenos is based off cell right?
" If they would have gone with a tradition cpu, they could have put a better gpu in the console at the price point they sold the ps3 at."
and if they did , How does that make your 1st party developer's ready for the new refinement's of the new cpu/gpu Hybrid chipset's that will or was coming out in the next 6-7 year's?
It does'nt. Take a look at 1st party effort's by Microsoft and take a look at 1st party effort's by Sony. out of both companies which companies 1st party effor's are better suited for Multi-core Hybrid chip development, to get the most out of the chip's.
Name a 1st party developer of Microsoft that really pushed the xbox360's hardware, for their 1st party development like the 1st party over at Sony has pushed the PS3 hardware. Its not just about sales. do you want your team of software engineer's to grow in skill or remain mostly static?
there is nothing wrong with the Quality of the xbox360 game's just like the PS3's quality in software that's not the point, its mostly about getting their software teams that are 1st party to offer them a better chance of being better software developer's, with cleaner code, you cannot do that unless their challenged!
" cuz the neXbox already has one great advantage coming out the gate, "full backward compatibility to x360 games"!
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Hum..what? Did I miss some news here? How do you know that please?
When you play the current 360 game on the nextbox it will also improve the graphics too (or so the article claimed) seeing that the newer Xbox has an upgraded DirectX version (DirectX 11 maybe?) compared to the DirectX 9.1 the 360 has at the moment.
Meaning EVERy 360 game will have a slight face lift on new console.
When I first read this I was sceptical to see how MS were going to pull this off.. And as the new generation draws near one can do nothing but wait to see if its true!
http://www.slashgear.com/xb...
http://kotaku.com/5063787/r...
Watch this space...
Also would be nice if our PSN accounts could be accessed & used of PS4, and all bought Store content could be transferred over or re-downloaded onto the PS4, without any extra charges.