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Sony wanted high-performace integrated graphics a full generation before such things were really feasible. I think that's ultimately why the CELL was such a fai
by kmeisthax 6y ago
Sony wanted high-performace integrated graphics a full generation before such things were really feasible. I think that's ultimately why the CELL was such a failure - it was trying to do way too many things too ineffectively.
Also, building a GPU out of multiple tiny CPU cores on a ring bus just seems incredibly wrong. Even back then, the way you built a GPU was to have one instruction stream controlling many ALUs and register files. Intel made the same mistake with Larabee too - I guess everyone just assumed all the fixed-function bits would disappear eventually? (Meanwhile, ray tracing means even more fixed-function units...)
- monocasa 6y agoCell's problem was the end of Dennard scaling hit them as hard as it hit the Pentium 4. It was designed in an era that was expecting to be able to get 5Ghz+ easily out of (albeit premium) consumer electronics chips. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling#Breakdown_of_Dennard_scaling_around_2006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling#Breakdown_of_D... By the time they figured out that they weren't going to be able to cash the metaphorical checks the process side had been writing up until that point, it was too late to go back to square one. The design unfortunately had to be pigeon holed out of it's designed niche, and they had to strap that anemic Nvidia GPU to the side of it just to have a shippable product. Turned out really well given all those factors working against it.