Cell - Is it really a supercomputer-on-chip?

[Aggressor Prime]

My last examination of the Cell was rather unintelligent. I too, like many others, focused on the quotes and not the facts. So let me make it up to all of you ComputerBBers with a second examination. Here are the popular raw facts: The Cell has 9 64-bit cores which all operate at 4.5GHz. The main core has Hyper Threading. The Cell uses XDR RAM. Here are the facts not spoken so much of: The main core controls the other 8, leaving you with only 8 cores to process data with. Each Cell can only have 256MB of XDR RAM. Other RAM (My opinion: "DDR?") may be aquired through an I/O controller. My opinion: "External RAM usage through this I/O device is going to suffer from the same problems as a Quad Xeon system. Even more so with the CPUs' high clocks and the RAMs' low clocks." BIG ONE: Each SPE has an IPC (Instruction Per Clock) rate of 2. All of these facts can be found in the last article I referred to in my last examination. Comparing this to the K7s which have an IPC of 9, one Cell SPE = one Athlon 1GHz. How did I get that? Performance = Clock x IPC. SPE's Performance = 4.5GHz x 2 = 9GHz. Athlon 1GHz's Performance = 1GHz x 9 = 9GHz. 9GHz SPE = 9GHz Athlon. Of course you do have 8 SPEs. But remember, games today only use one core/SPE. IBM/Sony/Toshiba plan for companies to use all 8 cores when they release their PS3. In other words, playing Doom 3 on a PS3 will be the same as playing Doom 3 on a 1GHz Athlon. It is amazing that that 1GHz Athlon is still making records. It beat Intel to 1GHz. Now its competing with the Cell. But the PS3 has 32 SPEs and 256MB of XDR RAM. If all cores were used, that would be the same as 32 1GHz Athlon rackmounts, each with 8MB of RAM. As you can see, RAM might be a problem for the PS3. But it will be a while before we use all 32 SPEs. The Cell is not built to be fast. It is built to last long. When the PS3 is launched, games will only use 1-2 cores. As time move on, games will use more and more cores. I would estimate that the lifetime of the PS3 will be around 8 years. That is considering that PS3 core usage remains in sync with PC core usage. The only application that will run best on a Cell is SETI. But if one SPE = one 1GHz Athlon, then 8 SPEs = 8 1GHz Athlons. If all 8 cores were used, it would only be 36% faster than the Opteron x80. The dual core Opterons would catch up once they reached 3.4GHz. At that speed, they would be 4% faster. The Cell would most likely not be using all of its cores by the time the dua core Opteron reaches the 3.4GHz mark.