5 ms·

Everything from this generation (PS3's Cell included) was some sort of PowerPC, many previous gens also had consoles using PPC or MIPS. Sony and MS went x86 dur

by opan 3y ago

Everything from this generation (PS3's Cell included) was some sort of PowerPC, many previous gens also had consoles using PPC or MIPS. Sony and MS went x86 during the same generation (PS4 and Xbox One). Nintendo went from PPC to ARM (though arguably they'd already used ARM for a while because of their handheld stuff).

ericlewis 3y ago
OG Xbox was x86 and was released similar time as PS2. Then they went PPC for 360. And now back to x86.
fluoridation 3y ago
I believe the GP is referring to the entire computer architecture, not the instruction set architecture. I seem to recall that it had three distinct heterogenous processors that had to be coordinated to get the most out of the system, so porting from, say, PC to PS5 wasn't necessarily straightforward, without leaving performance on the table.
- ChoGGi 3y ago
  The xbox 360 was the one with the triple CPU, PS3 had the odd combo of one "main" CPU and 7 auxiliary ones.
  - fluoridation 3y ago
    I think the 360 had a regular homogeneous tricore CPU, so programming it was just normal multithread programming. As you say the PS3 had several auxiliary processors that all needed to be told what to do in specific, non-portable ways, which is what made it inconvenient to work with.
  - hughesjj 3y ago
    Iirc there were 8 chiplets on the cell die, one was disabled for yield rate and one was dedicated to the os itself, leaving 6 of them for gaming. Then they had the super riced out rsx (Nvidia GeForce 7000 series) for the GPU, but there wasn't really a "main" CPU was there?
    - fredoralive 3y ago
      The Cell had a PowerPC core (the Power Processing Element) as its main CPU, alongside the Synergistic Processing Element co-processor units.
jwells89 3y ago
Fun fact about the 360, MS bought a bunch of PowerMac G5 towers and installed a PPC build of Windows XP on them to turn them into Xbox 360 dev kits. Makes sense because those were the most readily available and most cost effective PPC boxes at the time, but kind of funny.

by opan 3y ago

ericlewis 3y ago

OG Xbox was x86 and was released similar time as PS2. Then they went PPC for 360. And now back to x86.

fluoridation 3y ago

I believe the GP is referring to the entire computer architecture, not the instruction set architecture. I seem to recall that it had three distinct heterogenous processors that had to be coordinated to get the most out of the system, so porting from, say, PC to PS5 wasn't necessarily straightforward, without leaving performance on the table.

ChoGGi 3y ago
The xbox 360 was the one with the triple CPU, PS3 had the odd combo of one "main" CPU and 7 auxiliary ones.
- fluoridation 3y ago
  I think the 360 had a regular homogeneous tricore CPU, so programming it was just normal multithread programming. As you say the PS3 had several auxiliary processors that all needed to be told what to do in specific, non-portable ways, which is what made it inconvenient to work with.
- hughesjj 3y ago
  Iirc there were 8 chiplets on the cell die, one was disabled for yield rate and one was dedicated to the os itself, leaving 6 of them for gaming. Then they had the super riced out rsx (Nvidia GeForce 7000 series) for the GPU, but there wasn't really a "main" CPU was there?
  - fredoralive 3y ago
    The Cell had a PowerPC core (the Power Processing Element) as its main CPU, alongside the Synergistic Processing Element co-processor units.

jwells89 3y ago

Fun fact about the 360, MS bought a bunch of PowerMac G5 towers and installed a PPC build of Windows XP on them to turn them into Xbox 360 dev kits. Makes sense because those were the most readily available and most cost effective PPC boxes at the time, but kind of funny.