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Selling Gamers on the Cell

by Chris Remo, Aug 18, 2005 1:20pm PDT
Related Topics – Sony, Games: Console, John Carmack

1UP has a interview with IBM's Dr. Phil Hofstee discussing the pros and cons of Cell processor, developed by Sony, IBM, and Toshiba and featured most prominently in Sony's upcoming PS3. Apparently, conceptual work on the Cell began in the summer of 2000, before the PS2 was even released in North America.

PH: We looked at a number of alternatives--a rather broad number, some of them being sort of more in line with what you would expect from general trends in computing. I think it was Mr. Kutaragi who said that we should go beyond that and do something that was more specifically suited for media and gaming in this new space that is supposed to support a new vision of interactivity.
Many game developers have expressed their concern that multi-core programming will be an enormous headache in comparison to traditional single-core methods, and with the Cell processor's eight cores those concerns are even more worrying. Dr. Hofstee claims that "it takes programmers about three months to become familiar with it and become very enthusiastic", but noted programmers such as id's John Carmack have been very vocal about the difficulties in programming for such systems, claiming that people have been trying to solve the problem for decades with little to no success.


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