Is it correct to say that IBM's cell is a multi-core architecture? I have to give a presentation on "Multi-core architectures" and was wondering if I could focus on the Cell processor.
I think he meant has multiple processors, not multi chilled.
Samuel
2009-03-30 01:00:25
Ha ha :-)
paxdiablo
2009-03-30 02:08:03
+5
A:
Yes, it is. It contains 9 cores: 8 SPUs (Synergistic Processing Units), extremely simple, but fast 128-Bit SIMD processors, kind of like MMX on x86 or AltiVec on PowerPC, and 1 PPE (PowerPC Processing Element), a stripped-down version of the PPC970 (this is the same processor that the G5 in Apple's PowerMacs was based on) without out-of-order execution. On the PlayStation 3, 1 of the 8 SPUs is deactivated, this allows Sony to ship chips with defects in one of the SPUs, thus giving a higher yield and driving costs down.
The way it is supposed to be used, is that the PPE is only used to distribute work to the SPUs, all the real computation is done there. While the PPE is based on the PPC970, it is much simpler and much slower than its big brother: a lot of the branch prediction logic, out-of-order execution, caches and so on has been removed to drive costs and more importantly power consumption and heat generation down. Also, you need chip real estate for the SPUs.
Jörg W Mittag
2009-03-30 01:06:00
Great detailed answer +1, can you give some links to add credibility?
David Waters
2009-08-20 09:04:37