Hardcore Overview of Xbox CPU
This just got slashdotted:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-fpfxbox/?ca=dgr-lnxw06XBoxStory
Looks like it was seriously designed to complement the GPU - rather than the Cell "Media streaming" model Sony ar fond of. They have added lots of instructions for doing things they do lots of (like dot products) and the cores have been designed for procedural geometry - expect lots of curvy GFX. Interesting that they need that given the ATI does lots of procedural stuff. I wonder if its because ATI's unified pixel and geometry shader has actually got its hands full at High def doing just pixel stuff. For those that don't know ATI have made a song and dance about integrated shaders and Nvidia are going dual shaders. I buy Nvidia's argument - the bandwidth and calculating requirements of the two operations are grossly mismatched at present. However the ATI approach can probably gain if the CPU can take up the burden of geometry. Their flexible approach will give an edge if the requirements shift over time - as happened with Halo 1 -> Halo 2 where pixel shaders played a much bigger part than geometry.
It will be interesting to see how it splits out...
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-fpfxbox/?ca=dgr-lnxw06XBoxStory
Looks like it was seriously designed to complement the GPU - rather than the Cell "Media streaming" model Sony ar fond of. They have added lots of instructions for doing things they do lots of (like dot products) and the cores have been designed for procedural geometry - expect lots of curvy GFX. Interesting that they need that given the ATI does lots of procedural stuff. I wonder if its because ATI's unified pixel and geometry shader has actually got its hands full at High def doing just pixel stuff. For those that don't know ATI have made a song and dance about integrated shaders and Nvidia are going dual shaders. I buy Nvidia's argument - the bandwidth and calculating requirements of the two operations are grossly mismatched at present. However the ATI approach can probably gain if the CPU can take up the burden of geometry. Their flexible approach will give an edge if the requirements shift over time - as happened with Halo 1 -> Halo 2 where pixel shaders played a much bigger part than geometry.
It will be interesting to see how it splits out...
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