3 ms·
I didn't gain direct experience with Cell, but given that description of the tooling, I'm unconvinced that the issue is fundamental to many-core, or that the au
by crq-yml 2y ago
I didn't gain direct experience with Cell, but given that description of the tooling, I'm unconvinced that the issue is fundamental to many-core, or that the author's assertion of non-composability holds up under scrutiny. Composition in "flat" processing architectures is, in principle, exactly what is already seen on a circuit diagram. It recurs in the unit record machines of old, and in modern dataflow systems.
That architecture does have particular weaknesses when it is meant to interface with a random-access-and-deep-callstacks workflow(as would be the case using C++) - and CPUs have accrued complex cache and pipelining systems to cater to that workflow since it does have practical benefit - but the flat approach has also demonstrated success when it's used in stream processing with real-time requirements.
Given that, and the outlier success of some first-party developers, I would lean towards the Cell hardware being catastrophically situated within the software stack, versus being an inherently worse use of transistors.
- petermcneeley 2y agoThe outlier success of some first-party developers indicates that focus and talent on this exotic hardware was required to demonstrate its fully potential. As they say this was an "expert friendly system" and this was because it was complex and it was complex because it was heterogenous. As for "inherently worse use of transistors" one would have to look at how the transistors could have been used differently. The XBox360 is a different use of transistors.