User talk:TheN1Armyguy

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Hello, TheN1Armyguy, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on this page and ask your question here. Again, welcome! ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 22:52, April 11, 2007 (UTC)

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[edit] Concerning Cell

You have to separate core from hardware thread, and the PPE and the SPEs are completely different type of cores and does not run the same kinds of threads. The PPE is a PowerPC core and run PowerPC code, the SPEs can only run instructions especially written for them. A core is a piece of processing unit that can work independently from other units inside a chip. It can read and write from memory without other stuff butting in. A core that can handle two cores can take on two instructions at once and can run those in parallel if the facilities inside the core can be utilized completely in parallel. More often than not this is not the case. If the core only has one floating point unit (as the case of the PPE) and the two instructions need it, the second thread will have to wait until the FPU is done working on the first thread.

A complete, nine core, Cell processor can run ten threads at once, eight SPE threads (one for each SPE) and two PowerPC threads (on the dual threaded PPE core). The Cell processor in PS3 lacks a SPU so it can only run nine threads each cycle, 7+2. The chip runs at 3.2 GHz, which means that all nine cores run at 3.2 GHz. IBM could have made them run at different frequencies but it makes sense to run then in lock-step so there won't be timing issues between the cores. The SPEs are streaming processors which means that one SPE can complete one instruction on a piece of data and then pass the result directly on to the next SPE who does some other instruction on the same piece of data. As such each SPU can keep doing the same instruction on pieces of data that keep being passed around the SPUs until the desired effect is complete. The SPUs doesn't need to be issued a new instructions each cycle, a context switch that takes a lot of time. If the cores didn't run i lock-step then this would be very complicated. The Cell processor's SPUs are quite similar to the pixel pipelines in a graphics processor. You think that 9 cores are much, but the latest GPUs, like nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX have 128 cores dedicated to do stuff.

Now time for metaphors:

You can look at the Cell as a food court restaurant. The waiter is the PPE and it can take two orders at once, and around him there's eight independent restaurants with one stove each (the SPUs). The waiter can fetch drinks and snacks for you but doesn't do any of the heavy cooking, he can direct the separate kitchens if you want him to, but you can order directly from them if you like. The eight kitchens can work independently if they chose, but if you ordered a five course meal then they will do "stream cooking" and have it delivered to you one platter at a time by the waiter.

All cores are not created equal. The PPE is good at taking complex orders and order people around but he won't cook fast. The SPUs are very fast at cooking great meals, but you wouldn't want them to wait on you. The shader-cores in a GPU is extremely good at doing simple tasks in the kitchen, like hacking cucumbers or peeling potatoes, but not that great at preparing a complete meal and could not carry plates to the patrons of the restaurant if their life depended on it. -- Henriok 17:53, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

So would it make sense to add up the core speeds (not including the 2 SPEs not used for gaming) to 22.4 GHz? -- TheN1Armyguy. 21:32, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
No It would not. The speed of a processor is _not_ measured in Hz, it's just a _rate_ of how often a processor does things. What that "thing" is is different from processor to processor, or even for different computational units within a processor. The rate is still 3.2 GHz even if there is 9 cores running at that rate. Imagine a millipede with 200 feet. Each foot is moved five times a second so it's rate is 5 Hz. A human have just two feet but moves its feet a fifth of that rate, once a second, or 1 Hz. Which is faster? Who knows, because nothing of this says how long each step is. One could imagine the millipede as the fastest since it has 200 feet moving five times a second, but we know that the human is much faster.
The processor that does the most for each cycle is the most powerful one. A PPE is weak in that respect and the PPE at 3.2 GHz is about as powerful as an 1.5 GHz PowerPC G4, even if the PPE can do two things at once and the G4 cannot. A G4 needs 7 steps to complete one instruction, and the PPE needs at least 20 to do the same. This is what's called pipelining and is very important to understand if one is to understand a processor's true speed, and why the MHz isn't a good metric for measuring processor speeds.
A processors true speed is either synthetically obtained by figuring out the optimal load where each computational unit, and core is working at it's maximum, never having to wait on stuff to do, never having to fight for resources. This is speed is never reached in real life though so the true speed of a processor is measured in some sort of benchmark, and there are a multitude of benchmarks that measure different aspects of a processor or complete computer system (with software). One have to figure out which one is better for measuring what one want to use the computer for. Hz is _never_ included as a factor in such benchmarks because it's irrelevant. Hz is only relevant when comparing processors of the same type. When IBM releases it's enhanced Cell later this year (DP-Cell) it'll perform much better each cycle than the previous Cell processor. So a 3.2 GHz DP-Cell will be faster than a 3.2 regular Cell. Even when comparing such similar processors, the Hz rate is useless. Only real benchmarks will do, and only benchmarks relevant to what's interesting. -- Henriok 22:23, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Well then why do people add up the Xbox 360's cores to 9.6 GHz? What would you use to see which CPU is "better" than the other in terms of performance. I can't tell which is better, the PlayStation 3's CPU or the Xbox 360's CPU. -- TheN1Armyguy. 01:56, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Do they? In that case, they are not arguing in any usefull manner and is better left ignored. I'd measure performance in real world tests. Which console gets the highest quality picture, which console get the most awsome effects. Stuff like that.
People who's testing cars isn't rating the cars according to the numbers of cylinders that the engine have, or how many RPMs the engine can muster. They measure the actual performance, and in many metrics: acceleration, handling, comfort, breaking. This is the result of how balanced and well engineered the car is. The performance of a game console is very similar. A weaker processor can perform better than the competition if the memory architecure is superior. A complicated processor can make it hard for a developer to use the available resources. A high frequency processor with a long pipeline is weaker than a lower frequency processor with a short pipeline. An out-of-order processor is more powerful than an in-order processor. A general purpose processor is generally faster than a specialised one, but consideraby slower on those tasks that the specilized processor excel at.
When comparing the Xenon and Cell processors there are A LOT of factors included. One cannot say which one is better without specifying the metric. What is measured? The processors are quite different and they have quite different priorities. The Xenon is more of an traditional general purpose CPU and that works well is most situations. It's clearly easier to program for. It also have a very nice memory sub system and seems to communicate with the GPU in a straight forward and efficient manner. The Xbox 360 is considered to be a very balanced system, which means that the chances that a programmer can easily use the available resourses at a very high degree. It's cheaper and simpler and it would be a very nice CPU in a regular computer or a server.
The Cell on the other hand is a rather exotic design, which takes new skills to harness the available resources. It is not a traditional general purpose CPU but a CPU that's tailormade for certain things that a game and home entertainment will benefit from. The theoretical power in the PlayStation 3 is much higher than in the Xbox 360, but it's also much harder to program for so it will take the programmer more time and more skill to make useful. It' an unbalanced design it the sense that if you don't make an effort to optimize the code for the Cell then it will perform quite poorly, but if one can master the juggling then it screams and will out perform any procesosr on the market today, easily.
Game developers will learn to harness the Xbox 360 faster, but they won't be able to get as much performace out of it. It takes longer for Cell developers to get performance out of the PlayStation 3, but when they do, it will clearly be a superior platform in regards to game play, effects, and picture quality. Today, we might be at a time where the Xbox 360 seems to be the better plattform but a year or so from now, I'm certain that the tables will be reversed.
Which one is better? I don't know. Right now, I'd say that the Xenon is better, but the Cell is faster. But it has nothing to do with clock speed.-- Henriok 08:06, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notability of PlayStation Blog

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A tag has been placed on PlayStation Underground, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done because the article appears to be a repost of material that was previously deleted following a deletion debate, such as articles for deletion. If you can indicate how PlayStation Underground is different from the previously posted material, or if you can indicate why this article should not be deleted, I advise you to place the template {{hangon}} underneath the other template on the article, and also put a note on Talk:PlayStation Underground saying why this article should stay. An admin should check for such edits before deleting the article. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Please read our criteria for speedy deletion, particularly item 4 under General criteria. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. We welcome your help in trying to improve Wikipedia, and we request you to follow these instructions. MarašmusïneTalk 21:52, 13 July 2007 (UTC)