VG247 » cell

Sony patents Cell-based Emotion Engine emulation

Patrick Garratt — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:34:43 +0000

Sony’s patented an Emotion Engine emulation system for PS3′s Cell processor.

Meaning? That PS3 could play PS2 games without any hardware changes, in theory.

Get details and diagrams from SiliconEra.

What? PS3 price cut, Firmware 3.0, PS3Slim and PS2 emulation all before the end of the year? What’s that?

Thanks Robo_1 and Blerk.

Cell powers fastest ever computer

Patrick Garratt — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:47:43 +0000

According to this Newsday report, IBM’s built the world’s fastest computer based on the PS3 Cell chip.

The machine, nicknamed Roadrunner, is built of 7,000 AMD Opteron processors and 13,000 Cell chips. It’s twice as fast, apparently, as the last holder of the record, Blue Gene.

Roadrunner can punch through one thousand trillion calculations per second. Imagine Lara’s hair on one of those, eh?

45nm Cell to reduce power consumption by 40%

Patrick Garratt — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 08:40:43 +0000

According to Tom’s Hardware, “Sony is apparently working on a 65 nm to 45 nm migration of its Cell Broadband Engine. Sony claims that the chip area size will be reduced by 34% and the 45 nm Cell will consume 40% less power than the 65 nm generation. The company also works on improving the design for manufacturability (DFM) for Cell to simplify the CPU production process.”

The Cell processor, obviously, powers PS3, although quite what a 40% reducrion in energy consumption would mean for the machine, apart from being good for the environment and you console not getting so hot, isn’t clear. Someone will tell us soon enough, we’re sure.