Cell processor (kind of O.T.) 2005-02-10 - By Roman Ormandy
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IBM announced plans to put Cell in desktop workstations on multiple OS's. We
are following that closely, if that happens, many aspects on next version
trueSpace would be accelerated, not just rendering.
Roman
-- --Original Message-- --
From: hans_k [mailto:hans_k@(protected)]
Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 12:09 PM
To: truespace@(protected)
Subject: [TSML] Cell processor (kind of O.T.)
I read about the new Cell processor yesterday. It is something
like 10 times as fast as current PC processors. It has a PowerPC
"front end" that manages 8 special processors. All in one circuit.
But there are no plans to put it in any ordinary computer,
because to get more than a PowerPC out of it, you have to care
for that in the programs. So there is no backwards compatibility.
First I thought that it could be a good idea for Caligari to
make a special purpouse computer and a special tS version.
But of course that is not realistic - who wants to pay for a
special computer that can only run tS?
So what about a pci-express card to put in an ordinary computer
to boost tS?
Then I thought about what in tS could benefit from being boosted.
Well its the DirectX/OpenGL part and especially the rendering.
But DirectX/OpenGL is cared for by Nvidia et al, and they are
already at 1/3 of the Cell processor speed. And the rendering
is the render engine peoples business, so it is they who should
make a Cell processor card to speed things up.
The Cell processor will be used in PlayStation, so maybe there
should be a render engine programmed for that...
- Hans
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