The first laptops to make use of the SpursEngine, a multimedia co-processor derived from the Cell chip that powers the PlayStation 3, will go on sale in Japan in July. Toshiba will launch its Qosmio G50 and F40 machines with the chip, which contains four of the "Synergistic Processing Elements" from the Cell Broadband Engine processor. The Cell chip used in the PlayStation 3 has eight of the SPE cores plus a Power PC main processor. The SPE cores perform the heavy number-crunching that makes the console's graphics so stunning. The SpursEngine SE1000 will work in much the same way in the laptops. The operating system will run on an Intel Core 2 Duo chip and the SpursEngine will be called on to handle processor-intensive tasks, such as processing of high-definition video. This arrangement means the laptop should be capable of some tricks that haven't been seen on machines until now.
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Member since:2008-06-03
Member since:2006-01-16
Member since:2005-07-07
To answer your question #2: The Cell processing units are not comparable to a rendering pipeline found on a GPU. They are not capable of an API like OpenGL. Also the Playstation 3 has a dedicated GPU from nvidia.
But there are already efforts being made to use the the GPU as a vector unit (see Apple's OpenCL for example). Add to the fact that the GPU's shader language is so complex (and Turing complete?), this suggests to me that it should be possible to use the current crop of GPUs in a Cell-like fashion.
I don't know how exactly the current crop of GPUs differ from the Cell, but from glancing at the tech specs of the latest nVidia and ATI chips (wth, 128 cores? I remember having 4 pixel pipelines and being impressed) I can't see how they would be different from a programming point of view.
Granted, I haven't done any graphics programming since DirectX 7 in '00 and so I could be just talking out of my @rse. But I think I remember your nick from the old Gamedev and Flipcode forums so you'd probably be able to enlighten me
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-01-16
Ok, now I was talking about the other way round (specific question from the OP).
Sure you can do many processsing tasks with today's high end and perhaps even mid-range GPUs. They have several APIs for that already.
But the question is how efficient that is. If you have a powerful GPU lying around in your PC doing nothing special anyway, it is a great idea to utilize it. If you don't have that per-se, which is especially the case for laptop computers, it's a different case. Then it could be worth it for several reasons to only use an integrated GPU and instead try these nifty Cell SPUs.
Edited 2008-06-24 16:43 UTC
Member since:2006-10-10
Member since:2006-01-16
I wonder where you are drawing that conclusion from.
I see three parts in action there:
- the Core 2 doing all the stuff which other's don't
- the Cell parts which can be used for specific
tasks like video decoding, physics calculations,...
- the GPU which brings everything on the screen,
like blitting the video data and OpenGL rendering
The advantage of the cell part is that you don't need a powerfull GPU to accelerate the video decoding. In most laptops such a GPU is not available, for example because of power consumption. Perhaps the cell units are better suited in that regard.
Also you can have a cheaper, less powerfull, less powerconsuming CPU and still watch HD video.
Wether or not this is marketing fluff or really worth it depends on how well the system is balanced out hardware-wise and how well the Cell parts are really utilized.
Edited 2008-06-24 16:36 UTC
Member since:
2006-01-16
You are right, there should be a more detailed look on this.
To answer your question #2: The Cell processing units are not comparable to a rendering pipeline found on a GPU. They are not capable of an API like OpenGL. Also the Playstation 3 has a dedicated GPU from nvidia.
You need to program these units directly for their specific tasks. For example, there could be a driver for DirectVideo which uses these units for processing of the video signal (filters, stitching). But they are better used for decoding of the video stream rather than bringing it onto screen (which is already accelerated by modern GPUs or could also be done with OpenGL).