The PS3 Bandage That Never Was

There's no denying that the PlayStation 3 is a complicated beast. One of the most finicky of the thousand-plus components in that concave box is the much-touted Cell processor, which uses high technology to speed the system along. And according to the Cell's maker, if things go wrong, the chip is smart enough that you won't even notice - in theory, at least.

[THE TRUTH]

alittle more info on Cell

PS3 Chip a Developer's Dream?:

http://www.n-philes.com/for...

Turn Down the Heat … Please

http://www.reed-electronics...

my comments about this article

The article crearly explains that cell has only a 10-20% of yields. Obviously, that figure is refering to the cell, with 8 fully working SPE´s. He then clearly stays that the yields percent increases to 40% when redundancy is applied. So, what is the redundancy that he is talking about? mthe original redundancy on cell chips that Ken Kutaragi originally explained, and that is using only 7 spes for the ps3, so that if a chip doesnt have 8 fully working SPEs, but 7 of them still work, they can be used in the console. The eight SPE is the redundant one, so taking in account that the eight SPE could be damaged but only seven of them are needed then the chip is still usable. Obviously, you have a higher percentage of having chips with 7 workings SPEs than having onces with 8 fully working ones.

Those with 8 fully working SPEs, whose yield rate is between 10-20%, are the one that are being used for military and medical agencies.

And before someone starts jumping the gun about the 40% yield rate still being too low, thats the same yield rate of the A64 chips.

And now regarding faulty PS3s. that article clearly explaings that sony is spending quite a fortune to assure that there are no faulty cell chips with their ps3s.

How are they achieving this? the article clearly states that they are using burn-in every chip, and that could cost as muchs as 1 dollar per chip. 6 Million ps3s in the end of march 2007, means at least 10 millions dollars spent just making sure that the chipos are not faulty. As much as 10 millions cuz not all the chips will be ok after the process.

If you want to know what is Burn-in, check this link:
http://www.anandtech.com/gu...

[PS360PCROCKS]

this is the same story for the 3rd time from a different source, just like the one below this about backwards compatible it was just pulled from this interview, geesh how bout we check the news before it's posted mod.

[jedicurt]

yes because having multiple sources reporting the same news does nothing /end sarcasm.

all it does is add support for the statements, i like the fact that multiple sources are reporting it, that is a positive and give is more validity.

[Schmitty07]

I don't want to hear about this new technology anymore. It's getting so boring. Can we just wait till release?

[Islandkiwi]

This isn't a positive article. It's talking about how the PS3 could have had a redundant spe built in in case of breakage, but it doesn't. Add to that the story of one spe being utilized at all times by the OS (which will constantly run in the background) and you're now down to 6.

What does that mean to programmers? No idea...but I thought the redundancy was a good idea.

[THE TRUTH]

Do the research, don't make stupid post on how "This isn't a positive article" and then say "What does that mean to programmers? No idea...but I thought the redundancy was a good idea." How on one hand you have no idea what the article is saying and then say it is bad?

Add to that the story of one spe being utilized at all times by the OS (which will constantly run in the background) and you're now down to 6.

This is really old news but if you know about the OS PS3 is planning to use than maybe you can see why they have one spe dedicated to it. Do some research.

The article crearly explains that cell has only a 10-20% of yields. Obviously, that figure is refering to the cell, with 8 fully working SPE´s. He then clearly stays that the yields percent increases to 40% when redundancy is applied. So, what is the redundancy that he is talking about? mthe original redundancy on cell chips that Ken Kutaragi originally explained, and that is using only 7 spes for the ps3, so that if a chip doesnt have 8 fully working SPEs, but 7 of them still work, they can be used in the console. The eight SPE is the redundant one, so taking in account that the eight SPE could be damaged but only seven of them are needed then the chip is still usable. Obviously, you have a higher percentage of having chips with 7 workings SPEs than having onces with 8 fully working ones.

Those with 8 fully working SPEs, whose yield rate is between 10-20%, are the one that are being used for military and medical agencies.

And before someone starts jumping the gun about the 40% yield rate still being too low, thats the same yield rate of the A64 chips.

And now regarding faulty PS3s. that article clearly explaings that sony is spending quite a fortune to assure that there are no faulty cell chips with their ps3s.

How are they achieving this? the article clearly states that they are using burn-in every chip, and that could cost as muchs as 1 dollar per chip. 6 Million ps3s in the end of march 2007, means at least 10 millions dollars spent just making sure that the chipos are not faulty. As much as 10 millions cuz not all the chips will be ok after the process.

If you want to know what is Burn-in, check this link:
http://www.anandtech.com/gu...

[Islandkiwi]

It's not a stupid post, look at the title of this article: "the ps3 bandage that never was".

You're looking at this from a Johny-come-lately perspective. When the PS3 was first introduced it was announced as having 8 functional Spe's. Then it was reduced to 7 to allow for this bandage feature...there would still be 8 functional spe's, but only 7 would be utilized. That way if one failed, there was a redundant Spe to take it's place, and you wouldn't have to repair or replace the console.

But then the story changed again. Because of the relatively low yields they were getting, so long as 7 of the 8 spe's were functional, it was going to be used in the ps3. Poof, no more bandage.

Now, from a programming point of view I have no knowledge of the ramifications of this, which I freely admit. But I have followed the history of this quite closely. So please don't tell me to "do my homework", or that I "make stupid posts". My homework is done.

[Marty8370]

Even with 6 SPE's free PS3 is still more powerfull than Flopbox360.

[Islandkiwi]

And you know the processing power of an spe? I'd love to hear about it.

[THE TRUTH]

http://www.blachford.info/c...

your answer is here, much too long and detatiled to be posted here!

[Islandkiwi]

There's information on Spe's at wikipedia as well, but they don't go into a comparison of power versus the 360. PS3 fan was saying how much more powerful the PS3 was than the 360, even when using 6 Spe's. That's the data I'm interested in.

[THELANDSOFSAND]

so the cell chip will lie to its users?

lol

fitting.

[PS360PCROCKS]

wow that was interesting atleast I know how "THE CELL" works now...it's actually quite simple, the CPU is only used to be a mediator basically, starting programs and delegating all the tasks to the SPE's to run all the calculations, and each SPE is 4GHZ and can do 32 Gflops of floating point and that's how Sony got their number of 256 Gflops of floating point, amazing.

[THELANDSOFSAND]

http://www.news4gamers.com/...

NJ is a racist liar and multiple account user who censors posters against him.

[TheMART]

LoS is right. Have seen him doing that before.

Furthermore, the Cell has only 10 to 20% succes rate. So the 8 so called cores will be for sure only 7. Hopefully. Who says they just don't put the 6 so called fake cores Cells in the units because otherwise the shortages will be too large?

And we all know, this Cell has a large problem. All that data processing power, but only 2 threads on the main core.

While the 360 has 3 real cores, with each 2 threads, makes 6 in total. The output power will be better then on Cell, which has to calculate things in small pieces on those fake core setup simultanously, but then the problem arises...

Two threads can't get it done afterwards. So there you are with all that raw power that sit's and does nothing but waiting.

Really it's the most sh*ttiest design ever. 360 has the best working hardware design. Sometimes it's not only the specs of one part, like Sony lies about the Cell. It's the combination of it all and working together including the software.

360 just wins in that view, it can deliver more because the parts work together better and the programming environment is so good.

PSZero will get beaten even with their 'so great' Cell with peakpower. My car also has much peakpower untill it blows up

[achira]

you xrats forgot, that the xcrapbox reserves also cpu power for the OS. so your point is bs. the ps3 is still 2 times powerfuller.

[bung tickler]

i dont have the link anymore but ther was an article about how the ps3 os is to take up about 20% of the ps3 resources where as the xbox360 os, which is made by the number 1 software company in the world on uses about 3% so that statement is just plain stupid. second there is a reason why apple stopped using IBM chips, and yes they looked at the cell and said... this sucks and they made a deal with intel to start using there chips instead. so no the cell is not the best design out there. end of debate.