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IBM Cell as GPU

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djhuber82

Member
I'm sure everyone here has heard of IBM's Cell processor (aka the PS3 processor) and its highly parallel architecture, but here's Anand's latest take on it just in case:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2379

It sure seems like the Cell would make a decent GPU. It's got ridiculous memory bandwidth, and 8 parallel DSP-like cores that run at +4GHz. Are there any GPU people out there who can tell me why this wouldn't work well? Is a modern GPU just way more parallel than this? Because if it is feasable, seems like somebody could slap a Cell and some memory on a board, write some software and have a decent 3D video card. And since the GPU would be implemented in software on processor with a well-documented ISA, there is the potential for a fully open-source video card without the need to fabricate a custom chip. Any thoughts on why this would/wouldn't work?
 
The Cell is a general purpose processor (although heavily leaning towards multimedia apps). As such any latest-generation graphics hardware will outperform it in terms of graphics processing - simply because that's what R520/G70 are designed to do.

There is a possibility, however, of some vertex processing being offloaded to any spare SPUs in the PS3. Cell would make a good graphics co-processor but just isn't suited to doing the whole job.
 
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