Topic: Ps3 Less Powerful In 2007? (Read 195 times)

Dr. P. Cipriano · « **on:** June 14, 2006, 08:11:00 AM »

the Cell shrinks is the news all over the internet today and every where iv'e looked they all say suff about cheaper manufactering and a possible price reduction but by taking the Cell from 90nm to 65nm deos that mean that the Ps3 will be less power full in 2007?

?
I really have no idea at all what this really means or what effect it will have if any on the PS3's power and it's spec's by shrinking the CEll

? And how much lower in price do you think they will go

?
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/uhh.gif)

This post has been edited by Dr. P. Cipriano: Jun 14 2006, 03:28 PM

mikedavis2838 · « **Reply #1 on:** June 14, 2006, 08:22:00 AM »

The move from 90nm to 65 nm will not make the cell less powerful. The benifit is that it will be cheaper to make and require less power to run. The xbox 360 is actually doing the same thing http://www.afterdawn...rchive/7494.cfm

Someone who knows how to explain the difference would be better to describe it than me.

ConteZero76 · « **Reply #2 on:** June 14, 2006, 01:56:00 PM »

Consider tracks inside a CPU like pipes and transistors like valves.
90nm processors have valves that are 90nm "large" while 65nm processors have valves that are 65nm.
This means that you've to use less water (energy) to fill a valve (thus the CPU is "eating" less) and that that there's less pressure inside the pipes (thus less heat).
Last but not least using smallest valves you can shorten pipes and, consequently, concentrate the entire system in a smaller space.

Sum of all: less space used (you can fit more CPUs in one wafer), less power consumption, less heat and (since "water" have to "run" less) maybe more speed.

This post has been edited by ConteZero76: Jun 14 2006, 08:57 PM

KAGE360 · « **Reply #3 on:** June 14, 2006, 02:18:00 PM »

while what has been said so far is true, dont expect any more speed from the new revisioned chips. By running cooler, the CPUs will run better, but their speed wont be improved.

ConteZero76 · « **Reply #4 on:** June 14, 2006, 02:51:00 PM »

That's right, by design every console have to perform exactly like the first, otherwise incompatibilites and other oddities can happens.
When you step from one process (90nm) to another (65nm) you've two ways:

1. raise the clock keeping the same power absorbion
2. keep the same clock speed, lowering alimentation power (sort of "undervolting")

The second way is what you could expect from both MS and Sony but, keeping this as a fact, some mod could tweak the power board to boast speed raising clock and "overvolting" the CPU.
This is useless for original games but can be useful when dealing with homebrew applications that drains a lot of CPU power (for example a video transcoder),

As a side note PART of the choice is done by the engineers because, since when you're narrowing the distance between tracks you also make the CPU more sensible to "track jump".

incognegro · « **Reply #5 on:** June 15, 2006, 04:54:00 PM »

Am I the only that believes this is bs?

More like early 2008

Ickypoopy · « **Reply #6 on:** June 16, 2006, 09:32:00 AM »

QUOTE(incognegro @ Jun 16 2006, 12:01 AM)

Am I the only that believes this is bs?

More like early 2008 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

I believe they will be moving to 65nm as soon as they possibly can. The cell processors are so big that they are going to get crap for processor yields (They are going as far as making a chip with 8 SPEs and disabling one of them, the defective one, to increase yield). The 65nm process will make the chips so much smaller, that it will substantially increase processor yield, and save them boatloads of $$$.

ConteZero76 · « **Reply #7 on:** June 16, 2006, 03:05:00 PM »

AFAIK there isn't really too much of a difference (in die size) between Xenon and Cell.
Xenon uses 3x PPC+VMX (stripped down, no OoOE for exanple) and 1 Mb cache while Cell use 1x PPC+VMX (stripped down too), seven "dumb" processors, and 512Kb cache...

Images follows:

CELL

(IMG:http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-fpfeib/Figure8.gif)

XENON

(IMG:http://images.tomshardware.com/2005/11/28/are_three_cores_better_than_two/xbox360-cpu.jpg)

Note that PS3 PPC (called "Power Processor Element") seems to be smaller than the Xenon counterpart (it should lack HT too).
512Mb L2 cache are roughly 1,5 SPE and PPE is 1,5 SPE too.
So we have 8 + 3 = 11 SPE "die size" (almost) for CELL.
Xenon has 1Mb cache (let's make it 3 SPE) and CPU's are a bit smaller, so we're about 10-11 SPE "die size" (almost) for XENON.

ConteZero76 · « **Reply #8 on:** June 16, 2006, 04:52:00 PM »

AFAIK there isn't really too much of a difference (in die size) between Xenon and Cell.
Xenon uses 3x PPC+VMX (stripped down, no OoOE for exanple) and 1 Mb cache while Cell use 1x PPC+VMX (stripped down too), seven "dumb" processors, and 512Kb cache...

Images follows:

CELL

IPB Image

(http://www.ibm.com/d...eib/Figure8.gif)

XENON

IPB Image

(http://images.tomsha...xbox360-cpu.jpg)

Note that PS3 PPC (called "Power Processor Element") seems to be smaller than the Xenon counterpart (it should lack HT too).
512Mb L2 cache are roughly 1,5 SPE and PPE is 1,5 SPE too.
So we have 8 + 3 = 11 SPE "die size" (almost) for CELL.
Xenon has 1Mb cache (let's make it 3 SPE) and CPU's are a bit smaller, so we're about 10-11 SPE "die size" (almost) for XENON.

mikedavis2838 · « **Reply #9 on:** June 16, 2006, 07:45:00 PM »

double post 2 hours apart?

ConteZero76 · « **Reply #10 on:** June 17, 2006, 05:37:00 PM »

Sorry, I saw only later that the second image was missing so I redo the post with added URL to the source.

Ickypoopy · « **Reply #11 on:** June 18, 2006, 07:12:00 AM »

QUOTE(ConteZero76 @ Jun 16 2006, 11:59 PM)

AFAIK there isn't really too much of a difference (in die size) between Xenon and Cell.
Xenon uses 3x PPC+VMX (stripped down, no OoOE for exanple) and 1 Mb cache while Cell use 1x PPC+VMX (stripped down too), seven "dumb" processors, and 512Kb cache...

Unfortunately, the images you posted are useless. There is no telling if they are scaled the same, and no good point of reference. There is no component on the two chips that we can say "should be the same size" to use as a point of reference.

I was not able to find specifics as to the actual physical size of the processor, but here is an article that says the the X360 chip is smaller and cheaper to manufacture:
http://arstechnica.c...evolution.ars/3

ConteZero76 · « **Reply #12 on:** February 03, 2020, 11:41:00 AM »

Unfortunately you're wrong... think of it...
The designing/publishing company is the same (IBM) and the technology is the same (90nm SOI) so I'm quite sure that 512Mb cache (Cell) is really half of 1Mb cache (Xenon) and that puts the processor on a scale.
Give a look starting from that, and you'll see differences and similarities.

Ickypoopy · « **Reply #13 on:** June 21, 2006, 09:30:00 AM »

Okay, so let's assume that you are correct, and the cache should be twice as large since there is twice as much. If we count the number of pieces that make up the cache (the teal bars on Cell, Purple on Xenon) we notice that there are exactly twice as many on the xenon chip. This implies that each one of the pieces holds the same amount of cache.

Now if I resize the pictures so that each of those individual bars is about the same size... I had to increase the size of the posted cell picture by about 50% to achieve this. This also makes each of the Xenon cores about the same size as the Cell's PPE, which should be the same(ish). Using this method, the Cell chip looks about TWICE the size of the xenon chip.

ConteZero76 · « **Reply #14 on:** June 24, 2006, 06:01:00 PM »

Don't you forget something ?
Xenon has 1Mb L2 cache while Cell has 512Mb cache.

Author Topic: Ps3 Less Powerful In 2007? (Read 195 times)