We recently reported on Nicholas Blachford’s astounding analysis on Sony’s Cell-processor and now some more news has reached us.
The fact that this analysis shouldn’t thought of as a final walkthrough of the processor’s architecture and potential was some thing we tried to put very clearly and it appeared to be well justified.
At Ars Technica they have published an article by a, in these circuits, well renowned man, Hannibal. In his article he has tried to clear up some faulty and overoptimistic claims in Blachford’s original article.
Among others the information on the processor’s calculating performance, but also some faulty claims about the architecture itself.
“These are just three of the many basic flaws in this article. Furthermore, the article is chock full of wild-eyed and completely unsubstantiated claims about exactly how much butt, precisely measured in kilograms and centimeters squared, that the Cell will kick, and how hard, measured in decibels, that the Cell will rock. I’m as excited about the Cell as the next geek, but there’s no need to go way over the top like this about hardware that won’t even seen the light of day for a year. And it’s especially ill-advised to compare it to existing hardware and declare that we have a hands-down winner.”
Blachford’s article is in in many ways still interesting since it contains much good and useful information for those who wants their curiosity stilled.
As we said earlier it is to be taken with a pinch of salt and Blachford himself has published a follow-up where he clarifies som faulty or clumsy statements. Among others it discusses the Cell-processor’s possibility to emulate a PC. You can find it here.
Ars Technica’s article can be found here.
