Turning the CPU-GPU Hybrid System on Its Head

Re:Turning the CPU-GPU Hybrid System on Its Head by jandrese on Saturday November 17, 2018 @03:02PM (#18477084)

The big problem with Cell is that it didn't come with a graphics stack. Sony apparently thought developers would be OK with building their own geometry/T&L/etc... engines and then were kind of surprised when that idea turned out to be unpopular. They were then forced to bolt a traditional GPU on the side to appease the developers.

Even if someone was crazy enough to build the entire graphics stack on the Cell, performance would likely not have been as good as a regular graphics card. It's hard to compete with hardware designed from the ground up for the task.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Turning the CPU-GPU Hybrid System on Its Head by rbanffy on Saturday November 17, 2018 @05:59PM (#18477841)

Software support (I took an IBM workshop on them) was atrocious. If they had a way to share parts of the SPU memory with a small block shared between adjacent units, it'd be much easier to build a GPU-like thing out of them. The way they were delivered, it was just torture.

[ Parent | on HN ]