Cell = 4-5 times faster than 2xQUAD CPU single percision, about 1.5 x faster @ Dp

[FarCry]

I been holding off on this for a while, (well to be honest I did post this in one of the threads where someone said that a quad core CPU would slaughter the Cell when it come out). Anyway it is offically benchmarked that the following comparison has been made for 2xWoodcrest quad and Dual Blade Cell.

 

The results where:

 

IBM just published a paper about a financial app on Cell, their end result was a Dual Cell blade beating a dual Xeon (Woodcrest, quad core) by 11X on single precision, 3X on double precision.

 

Thanks to Adex on Beyond3d for this one:

 

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=36058&page=11

 

(more details and great discussion on the seeming impossibility of these results on beyond3d and why the Cell is just that much faster).

 

Just wanted to add this quote to see the impact of this test:

 

What its essentially saying is that a single SPU is 50% faster than a 3Ghz Core2 at DP FLOPS despite the fact that the Core 2 has about 4-5x higher theoretical peak and a similar transistor count advantage. Sounds a bit ludicrous to me.

 

Just goes to show that Cell = can get to its theoretical peak, X86 is lucky to get even half its theoretical peak.

 

Ok now what the hell has this to do with the Cell and the PS3 its a blade comparison you idiot Terra? (you may very well post, but I am prempting you ahah!)

 

Ok the blade is exactly the same as your Cell in your PS3 except that its 1xCell instead of 2xCell and your PS3 Cell also has one redundant SPU and one locked for the OS.

 

Sooooo taking in mind that single percision is the most important we will look at this first.

 

This means that optimised code for the Cell PS3 > Optimised code for 2xquad CPU by about 4 or 5 single percision.

 

If you half 11, you get about 5 maybe 6, now take off the (2) SPU's and your down to about 4-5 probably closer to 4.

 

So your Cell processor for optimised code (including games) will still be better than optimised code for 2xQuad set up.

 

However most games are not optimised for a particular PC CPU's due to the fact that games need to be compatible on previous cores i.e. from single core, double core, to quad etc. This means that while first party game and physics will allways be optimised for the PS3 (especally later on in life cycle) your PC cannot do the same. Meaning that the 4x greater will become maginatudes greater (twice, three times the amount????).

 

Most suprising at all but the least relevant if we follow my logic above even in double percision 1 Cell is about the same or `1.5 times faster than a 2xQuad core.

 

THUS CELL PS3 = AT LEAST 4x speed in single percision over 2xQuads and with no optimisation (to the same degree as Cell anyway) the gap will be even more apparant.

 

That means your probably looking at something like 4xQuad to 6xQuad to equal the speed that Cell is capable of processing games.

 

Which finally means that Cell is going to be allot stronger than your average PC for the next couple of years at least!!!

 

http://www.ps3forums.com/showthread.php?t=84831

[Mesqal]

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[BiSoNaSs]

You are talking about 2 different markets. With Different filosofy.

 

In the Consoles Market they are at war 4 or 5 big companies. They use all the high End Technology they can use in order to gain advantage one over the other.

 

In the Pc world its not just like that. They have the technologies to make a lot faster cpu's , Any time. But they are acting according to a plan . Intel can make a cpu tommorow 2x faster that quad cpus, or 8 cores, that are 4x faster than today quad. They know how and they admit it, BUT they dont do it. Because there is no hurry for them to do it. They say We will not make PC faster just like that, we will make it a litle bit faster this year, a litlle bit more faster next year , and a litlle bit faster 3 years after, even though they can bring the cpu tech that it will be used in 3 years , in stores tommorow. When intel Controles the cpu market can do what ever they want. Every time that i go in an intel Conference i am leaving laughing . The war between AMD and intel its not a real war. the same thing is happening to server cpus but there the tech is one step up than pc's.

 

The real war though exist in game consoles , 4-5 big time companies are trying to take share of the market, they use brand new technologies to gain advantage .

 

Intel sure does delay , because they know that if in 3 years bring out in market 3 technologies that one will be faster that the other , they will sale a lot more,

than just bring the faster technology known to them , and wait 2-3 years to find a faster one.