“The Cell processor… could have 10x the capability of current PC processors. The Cell processor is a member of the PowerPC family that was jointly developed by Sony, IBM, and Toshiba. Sony’s goal was to design a new kind of processor optimized for the next generation Playstation, but the Cell processor has implications for the entire computer industry,” Dan Knight writes for LowEndMac. The Cell has the potential for “a lot of power, and it’s going to run at high clock speeds. As [Tech writer] Nicholas Blachford observes, ‘The speed difference is so great that nothing short of a complete overhaul of the x86 architecture will be able to bring it even close performance wise.”
Knight writes, “The Cell processor will run at speeds over 4 GHz (4.5-4.6 GHz is often mentioned as a top speed for the current design). That’s faster than anything Intel or AMD offer, and nearly twice the CPU speed of the fastest G5 [and] the Cell will be relatively energy efficient, according to PCWorld, and should work with air-cooled designs. Steve Jobs has got to love that!”
There are some drawbacks, of course, if Apple adopts the Cell, Knight explains, “The Cell processor is a member of the PowerPC family, and although IBM claims it can run programs written for the PowerPC, that doesn’t mean they’ll run the same way. While the Cell is very powerful and very efficient, there are differences that will have to be taken into account when optimizing software for the new processor… The Cell needs very, very, very fast memory, and the two architectures supported run at 3.2 GHz (XDR) and 6.4 GHz (FlexIO). That’s probably going to mean very expensive memory.”
“With IBM already claiming the Cell processor can run current PowerPC software, it’s not hard to imagine Apple adopting it for future CPUs. A single 4.0 GHz Cell processor in an iBook or Mac mini would undoubtedly run circles around today’s 1.25-1.33 GHz entry-level Macs, and a quad processors Power Mac at 4.0 GHz should handily outperform today’s 2.5 GHz Power Mac G5,” Knight writes. “In fact, if ‘the mother of all thermal challenges’ stymies Apple long enough, it’s conceivable that when the PowerBook moves from a G4 CPU it will instead adopt the Cell. All speculation, of course, but the Cell opens up a bunch of possibilities for Apple – not to mention for the rest of the personal computer industry to move away from costly Intel and AMD CPUs and the malware magnet known as Microsoft Windows.”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Merrill ups Apple price target on likely Cell chip use, Apple up big in pre-market trading – February 15, 2005
Intel has no answer to the ‘Cell’ processor; will Apple use it in Macs? – February 09, 2005
Will Apple use the ‘Cell’ processor in Macs? – February 09, 2005
Will Apple take advantage of powerful new ‘Cell’ microprocessors? – February 07, 2005
First post!
And Apple will rule the world… Muuaahahahahahahaha!
I remember when they said the Power PC chip would leave Intel in the dust… didn’t happen. Will have to wait and see if this ‘CELL” processor lives up to the hype.
i want my PowerBook Cell now!
i remember when people didn’t say first post
Third post – wow – arren’t you impressed?
how late is the 3ghz powermac?
I will believe it when I see it
Does anyone else find it amusing/disturbing/pitiful that MDN is now basing entire articles on quotes from other mid-level Mac fan sites? Dan Knight from Low End Mac? Give me a break.
(Disclaimer: I mean no offense to Dan Knight or his very useful site, but it’s not Reuters or the Associated Press.)
Cell would be incredible, provided Intel isn’t running at 8GHZ by the time we’d see it.
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As far as memory goes, would it be possible to support slow inexpensive memory, and let users upgrade as the prices drop? Just run a fast system bus to get the benefits down the road. At least a memory bottleneck could be easily dealt with.
To Dennis: no, I don’t.
“…not to mention for the rest of the personal computer industry to move away from costly Intel and AMD CPUs and the malware magnet known as Microsoft Windows……”
roflmao
I dunno if Michael Dull et al .. can see the handwriting on the wall.. but, if His Steveness does go for the Cell..the WinTel world might find itself in an unrecoverable tailspin !!
Well, one can dream, cant one ?
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We will have the Cell. That’s why we haven’t seen the 970GX yet. Why release a little G5 bump when you can release a mega-update like the cell? It’ll blow the doors off the G5 in some things.
The cell isn’t as good as the G5 at handling single-threaded stuff, but for background rendering or distributed computing it’ll rock. Developers will have to thread their applications.
I expect the Cell to be a bit faster (1.3x) not 10 times for all tasks, but there will be other tasks where it’ll fly. The concept is great and I expect different customers, like Apple, will want to change the design a bit for their own needs.
A PC processor that does word processing and Web surfing uses integers more than floating point numbers and far fewer vector calculations. The G5 is good at the latter two. Apple would benefit from more integer units although clock speed would be a good improvement.
I can see Apple going with a 3 or 4 core Cell, but with AMD and Intel coming out with multi-core processors (fully-functional cores) the speed advantage won’t last long if it ever appears.
AMD and Intel have been demoing their working multi-core processor designs.
Sorry to rain on your parade. The Cell should be cheaper though. I hope IBM can get them off the assembly line better than the PPC970.
blah,blah,blah.
Where´s the 3gig PowerMac Steve was boasting about nearly 2 years ago????
Shall we just file this Cell processor story under “BlueSky Rumors” and move on?
Someone has already written a piece on the fact that OS X wouldn’t run that well since it needs more processing power than what this processor can give. It might do well on small bits of data, especially media and games. But for crunching numbers, it has alreay been stated that this CELL just wont cut it.
What’s all the talk about leaving Intel and AMD with there costly products in the dust. Firstly an AMD64 is a lot less expensive than a G5 now. They only come down in price as they go up in performance. And the performance on average is equal. Yes I know there are certain Photoshop commands that are 3 mil. seconds faster on the G5. But there are processes that are 3 mil. seconds faster on AMD, but on average they are about equal.
Also, while it is speculation that Apple “may” or “could” use a multi-core Cell, Intel (yuk) and AMD are launching their multi-cores this summer. And XP Pro already takes advantage of the multi-core and threads.
All i have to say, is i don’t care which way the intel AMD / cell or current processor in apple wins whatever battle is bound to happen. The Mac is, always has been, and always will be, the most stable and trustworthy company for ‘out of the box’ and i will continue to be a happy customer of the products. Rumors or not, Mac lives on.
It may be 10x as fast, but it’ll also be 10x the price. As if we dont pay out the Ass for our systems as it is.
MW Make: as in IBM is going to “Make” the most expensive processor on the planet…Yet it still could be a “Tera”flop (pun intended) because the worlds infrustructure isnt up to snuff.
Despite IBM’s enviable capabilities in this area, there are signifigant barriers to getting cell (as described in the patent) to look like a conventional multiprocessor machine. Could you get linux running on the controlling cpu? Quite likely. Getting the APU’s to look like a “linux SMP system”, quite unlikely. They differ both in instruction set as well as memory behavior. If you’re willing to pay a software capacity management routine and a DMA trip for every memory operation done by the PU, then you could perhaps get a linux thread to run on it.
The PU’s are aggressively designed around a situation where the APU is running some code loop while the DMA engine is filling the next block of APU local memory that will be needed. Fantastic for graphics. Absolutey horrible for “general purpose” code.
No one can say for sure, but from where I sit, it seems much more likely that existing software will have to be signifigantly altered in order to use the PU’s on a “cell workstation”
Mac_Type_guy – “The Mac is, always has been”
Ha. Yes OS 9 was a REAL Treat to Mankind. Geez Man. OS X YES. OS 9X AND BELOW JUST PLAIN S.U.C.K.E.D.
It doesnt occur to any of you that MS would undoubtedly “follow” into Cell. Remember, if it weren’t for Intel flooding the market with shity chips 15 yrs ago, Windows would be running on RISC. NT 4 was originally built for the RISC architecture.
I have to agree with Kernel Panic. X is rock solid. So are our XP machines. They don’t crash or freeze any more or less than our X machines.
With OS 9 and below, we had to wear “crash” helmets! Same goes with older versions of windows too!
Our XP machines work fine too – never seen one crash yet.
Os9 and below – crash crap city.
I fired up an old mac the other day (Lombard 400Mhz laptop) to check to see if I had any old files I needed. Photoshop froze twice, Flash at least 3 times. Machine is running OS9.2. sheesh, what a sorry thing and to think I worked with it for a few years.
Anybody remember the Altivec engine and its current importance to Mac designs and OS X?… The Cell is a little lacking in that area.
There’s just that small matter to deal with first…
Obviously people forget or maybe have little experience …
While the MacOS pre OSX was not hyperstable, it was often due to badly written developers code. With the advent of cooperative multitasking it become a much more useable system. As with Windows, AmigaDOS and other operating systems, one had to work around some of the rough edges (e.g. memory management, runaway processes) but for the time it was a very useable system; backing up regularly is good advice on any computing system running on mains power! OS stability didn’t help when the electrons don’t move/tunnel over air gaps … 😎
MW is green, as in many folks belittled the MacOS in the old days, but were still “green” with envy on the things it could do with less effort
(compare Windows 3.1 and any MacOS release!).
>Ha. Yes OS 9 was a REAL Treat to Mankind. Geez Man. OS X YES. OS 9X AND BELOW JUST PLAIN S.U.C.K.E.D.
I ran OS 9.2 for 2 years on my G4 466 before fully migrating to OS X full time. I have had hardly any crashes in either. Difference is in OS X, it doesn’t take down the whole machine nearly as often. But then prior to Win XP, win machines were WAY less stable than any version of the Mac OS I have ever run.
I strongly disagree, Windows NT 4 and 2k were both more stable than OS 7 trough 9.22. I’ve only used these in a large scale network, at home it may be a different story, But those mac os’s were complete PooPoo. The crashing was beautiful and elegant. It was almost, pre-emptive, as if you’d know is was going to crater, And it did. why do you think Apple Killed it? They knew it was inferior.