The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    STI Cell v. Intel Nehalem

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by eurasianbro, May 7, 2009.

  1. eurasianbro

    eurasianbro Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    176
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I haven't heard anything about the cell since its debut in the PS3. I hear it's scalable enough for use in the PS4 but other than that, I never heard the news about its implementation into Toshiba laptops and IBM servers...

    Perhaps I completely missed the news about its flop in the computer industry.

    So what happened? Is it weak compared to Intel and AMD's processors now?

    How does it compare to the quad cores?

    I'm interested in seeing how well it has held up against time. Three years is a long time in the processing chip industry.
     
    eurasianbro, May 7, 2009
    #1
  2. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    2,389
    Messages:
    10,552
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    456
    You can't really compare a cell processor and current CPUs/GPUs since they operate on different principles. The cell processor is good at what it does (linear processing for number crunching), but wouldn't be able to handle the complexity of tasks that are required in computer usage (open processing).
     
    sgogeta4, May 7, 2009
    #2
  3. Ayle

    Ayle Trailblazer

    Reputations:
    877
    Messages:
    3,707
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    106
    The Cell is a PowerPC chip... Are there any comparison between the Cell and the late G5?
     
    Ayle, May 7, 2009
    #3
  4. eurasianbro

    eurasianbro Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    176
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Interesting, I thought it was a new venture between the three, and I don't know of any comparisons...

    But what sgogeta said is in line with these articles from summer:
    http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-9971001-64.html
    http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/16/1819248&from=rss

    I can't find much information, but it looks like a powerful accelerator.


    Even if it runs on different principles, couldn't it be benchmarked on its performance in some way?

    I'm surprised that Tom's Hardware didn't attempt to put it side by side with something.
     
    eurasianbro, May 7, 2009
    #4
  5. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    2,389
    Messages:
    10,552
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    456
    It has been been compared in terms of Gflops, I believe. But the problem is this isn't directly proportional to performance. It might have way higher values than say a GTX 280M, but it won't beat it when you play a game. Toshiba uses it to help accelerate encoding and other very specialized tasks that it excels in, but in terms of general performance, it's a lot harder to measure.
     
    sgogeta4, May 7, 2009
    #5
  6. eurasianbro

    eurasianbro Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    176
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Thanks for the reply, do you know if Toshiba is still using it in their Qosmios? It's pretty old news...
     
    eurasianbro, May 7, 2009
    #6
  7. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    2,389
    Messages:
    10,552
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    456
    No idea, check out Toshiba forum?
     
    sgogeta4, May 7, 2009
    #7