Comments on: Apple Hate http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2005/06/10/apple-hate Transmissions from the Little Blue Marble Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:29:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Patrick McFarland http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2005/06/10/apple-hate/comment-page-1#comment-70 Patrick McFarland Sat, 11 Jun 2005 01:32:00 +0000 http://www.adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2005/06/10/apple-hate/#comment-70 Yeah, I over-played the Cell a little bit. But don't underestimate the power of the Cell without the vector units, its still a processor running at 3.2GHz (...even though, compared to a G4, its more like a 1.2Ghz-1.6Ghz G4 due to the stripped down nature of the core hooked up to 3.2GHz memory). Yeah, I probably should have mentioned Cell doesn't have Altivec, not that it matters. Altivec isn't something you'd normally find useful in a PS3 (and the stuff you would find useful, you can get the vector units to do). That, and I bet it wouldn't be that hard to make an execution unit for the Cell that just does Altivec (and, as I said above, IBM has no reason to, the PS3 doesn't need it, Cell isn't a generic purpose processor). SSE2/3 isn't really crude. Its not beautiful like Altivec is, but its a lot better than x87; and SSE3's MMX-alike replacement is a bit better than MMX. Yeah, I'm betting Apple will chase after the Pentium-D. I'm actually glad Intel returned to the P6 core, its one of the best x86 cores in existence; when Intel switched to the P4, they totally screwed themselves and AMD won that battle. Yeah, I over-played the Cell a little bit. But don’t underestimate the power of the Cell without the vector units, its still a processor running at 3.2GHz (…even though, compared to a G4, its more like a 1.2Ghz-1.6Ghz G4 due to the stripped down nature of the core hooked up to 3.2GHz memory).

Yeah, I probably should have mentioned Cell doesn’t have Altivec, not that it matters. Altivec isn’t something you’d normally find useful in a PS3 (and the stuff you would find useful, you can get the vector units to do). That, and I bet it wouldn’t be that hard to make an execution unit for the Cell that just does Altivec (and, as I said above, IBM has no reason to, the PS3 doesn’t need it, Cell isn’t a generic purpose processor).

SSE2/3 isn’t really crude. Its not beautiful like Altivec is, but its a lot better than x87; and SSE3′s MMX-alike replacement is a bit better than MMX.

Yeah, I’m betting Apple will chase after the Pentium-D. I’m actually glad Intel returned to the P6 core, its one of the best x86 cores in existence; when Intel switched to the P4, they totally screwed themselves and AMD won that battle.

]]> By: Anonymous http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2005/06/10/apple-hate/comment-page-1#comment-69 Anonymous Fri, 10 Jun 2005 22:02:00 +0000 http://www.adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2005/06/10/apple-hate/#comment-69 Ah, now we agree more on what the Apple/Intel deal looks like. I would still like to reiterate however that the Cell's primary CPU core, while running at high clockrates, can hardly be compared favourably to a G5 core. The G5 is a very wide processor with (among others, this is a simplification); 4 integer units (two general plus two that handle more special cases), two load-store units, two floating point units and of course the Altivec unit. The primary Cell core however is a in-order narrow design, no extra units. This basicly means that if you take a G5, clip two thirds of its functional units out and clock it up a little bit you get the Cell primary core. It won't be that impressive. Important to note also is that the Cell does not have Altivec either, so Apple would have lost that either way. On the SIMD stuff; Altivec is beautiful, SSE2/3 is crude, but it is still very much a reality that with twice the clockrate (closer to three times even) it is not really possible to glorify the vector performance of the G4 over the P4 anymore (though it should be noted that the G4 is an ancient design, it is amazing how well it has stood the test of time), the P4 beats the G4 even there (but the race is much closer than with "regular" code). The G5 (which has a somewhat worse Altivec implementation than the G4) still looks impressive in pretty much every regard though. It probably does not matter how the P4 does though, Apple no doubt has its eyes on the Pentium M, which is being retrofitted with a SSE3 pipeline as we speak. It will be interesting to see where this heads. Ah, now we agree more on what the Apple/Intel deal looks like. I would still like to reiterate however that the Cell’s primary CPU core, while running at high clockrates, can hardly be compared favourably to a G5 core. The G5 is a very wide processor with (among others, this is a simplification); 4 integer units (two general plus two that handle more special cases), two load-store units, two floating point units and of course the Altivec unit.

The primary Cell core however is a in-order narrow design, no extra units. This basicly means that if you take a G5, clip two thirds of its functional units out and clock it up a little bit you get the Cell primary core. It won’t be that impressive. Important to note also is that the Cell does not have Altivec either, so Apple would have lost that either way.

On the SIMD stuff; Altivec is beautiful, SSE2/3 is crude, but it is still very much a reality that with twice the clockrate (closer to three times even) it is not really possible to glorify the vector performance of the G4 over the P4 anymore (though it should be noted that the G4 is an ancient design, it is amazing how well it has stood the test of time), the P4 beats the G4 even there (but the race is much closer than with “regular” code). The G5 (which has a somewhat worse Altivec implementation than the G4) still looks impressive in pretty much every regard though.

It probably does not matter how the P4 does though, Apple no doubt has its eyes on the Pentium M, which is being retrofitted with a SSE3 pipeline as we speak. It will be interesting to see where this heads.

]]>