# PS3 has Dual 7 Core PowerPC Processors!



## Vexel (Jan 30, 2005)

HOLY!

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/05/17/ps3/index.php

7 CORES! I'll take one for my iBook


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## green_ears (Feb 26, 2005)

Vexel said:


> HOLY!
> 
> http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/05/17/ps3/index.php
> 
> 7 CORES! I'll take one for my iBook


WoW! Everyone in the gaming console world is switching to PowerPC chips... Maybe we'll get some PowerPC CPU price drops in the near future??? =)

Viva la revolution RISC!


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## Guest (May 17, 2005)

Doubtful we'll see price drops ... Cell processors are a far cry from the PowerPC 970's

Also a 7 core processor has it's uses, but I don't think you'd want one in your laptop  LOL

Mark


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## NBiBooker (Apr 3, 2004)

What I can't understand is if the game makers can get high power PowerPC chips into their boxes, why can't Apple get the G5 into a laptop?


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## kent (Oct 18, 2003)

Virginia Tech should upgrade to 157 P3s instead - haha. Anyone smell a G6 on the horizon, especially now that the iMac is catching up so quickly ... I wonder how much heat that bad-boy pumps out? Wow ... I bet Microsoft isn't so proud of their new xbox any more - yikes!

NBiBooker >> they can't put a G5 chip in a PowerBook b/c the heat issues are too extreme. It comes down to the 90 nm barrier - a modern-day equivalent to the 4 minute mile. Let's hope IBM has some Roger Bannisters in their midst. The current 130 nm chips pump out ridiculous amounts of heat: look inside a dual G5 PowerMac and you'll see 9 fans and or liquid cooling + an open grille front and back. You can't just throw a G5 PowerPC into a confined space with other heat-generating hardware: graphics cards, HDDs, RAM etc and expect the thing to magically cool itself - quietly. As I've read repeatedly on ehMac, people can't handle fans and I'm sure Apple knows this. Until engineers can break the 90 nm barrier [90 nm circuitry doesn't need to dissipate as much heat as 130 nm circuitry] or find a really effective, compact method of cooling the case and components it's all about the G4 [which, BTW gets really friggin hot]. You can be sure that there are some of the finest minds on our planet trying to figure this one out. I suspect our hero Steve, will have a new PowerBook option come June - may be something none of us suspected.


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## TroutMaskReplica (Feb 28, 2003)

i'd settle for a 7 core g4 in a powerbook


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## Commodus (May 10, 2005)

Read the article carefully. Only one of the chips in the PS3 is the actual processor; it's the Cell. The other is the _graphics_ chip from nVidia. Graphics chipsets in the past few years have often had tremendous amounts of processing power, but only in their specific field. The RSX isn't any different.

Also, the talk of "cores" is somewhat misleading. There's only one full-blown core in the Cell, and it's known as the PPE. There are seven extra units in the PS3's version of the Cell, but they're SPEs, small vector units that are really good at floating-point math as well as vector instructions similar (but not equal) to Altivec. This makes the Cell excellent at what Sony needs it to do: crunch lots of game code (3D, AI, physics) in addition to decoding HD video streams. However, that also means that it's not the best for general usage. Integer-heavy code, or code that can't be vectorized, will be seriously wasted with a Cell.

So yes, it's a powerful console, but not so powerful that Apple would necessarily want to replace the G5 with it. In order to use the Cell fully, Apple and developers would need to optimize code to use as many of the SPEs as possible at once. Just try telling developers who've just finished G5 optimization that they'll need to reinvent the wheel yet again!


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

Ok, so which has the better processor setup, the Xbox 360 or the PS3?


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## i stole this name (May 9, 2005)

Well, Xbox360= 1 teraflop

PS3 = 2 Teraflops


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## i stole this name (May 9, 2005)

Additionally, the PS3 does NOT have dual cell processors! read the article properly, One cell, one GPU.


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## elmer (Dec 19, 2002)

Macworld said:


> That's 35 times the performance of the processor inside the current PlayStation 2, according to Koichiro Katsurayama, a spokesman for SCEI in Tokyo


Anyone still not believe in Moore's Law?

Anyway, who cares about which one has more Teraflops - neither of them will run Mario, Zelda or Metroid.


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## Vexel (Jan 30, 2005)

The Nintendo Revolution, is said to be backwards compatible with all games from every Nintendo Console since NES. That's going to ROCK! I'm going to have to hunt down a copy of Super Mario Kart


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## Commodus (May 10, 2005)

i stole this name said:


> Well, Xbox360= 1 teraflop
> 
> PS3 = 2 Teraflops


Not quite. The PS3 version of the Cell is listed at 218 Gflops; the RSX video chip is listed as 1.8 Tflops. While it's theoretically possible that both Cell and RSX could be working at full-tilt, RSX is only there for video rendering. Most of the time, the system will be humming well under that 2 Tflop ceiling. That's especially true given that it's rare for an app to use 100% of the potential performance of a given piece of hardware.


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## TrevX (May 10, 2005)

Vexel said:


> The Nintendo Revolution, is said to be backwards compatible with all games from every Nintendo Console since NES. That's going to ROCK! I'm going to have to hunt down a copy of Super Mario Kart


You better find a copy and practice...and practice hard. I am gonna kick your ass in MK, bud.  

Trev


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## i stole this name (May 9, 2005)

Commodus said:


> Not quite. The PS3 version of the Cell is listed at 218 Gflops; the RSX video chip is listed as 1.8 Tflops. While it's theoretically possible that both Cell and RSX could be working at full-tilt, RSX is only there for video rendering. Most of the time, the system will be humming well under that 2 Tflop ceiling. That's especially true given that it's rare for an app to use 100% of the potential performance of a given piece of hardware.


 Look, It's sony that stated the facts not me.

Plus, remember GT3 and 4? they used the full PS2 power.

The fact of the matter is, the xbox360 wont use all of its 1tflop either, so the PS3 is still double its power.


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