Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PS3 - A Hardware Discussion
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on June 24, 2005 4:05 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Consoles and their CPUs
The CPUs at the heart of these two consoles are very different in architecture approach, despite sharing some common parts. The Xbox 360’s CPU, codenamed Xenon, takes a general purpose approach to microprocessor design and implements three general purpose PowerPC cores, meaning they can execute any type of code and will do it relatively well.
The PlayStation 3’s CPU, the Cell processor, pairs a general purpose PowerPC Processing Element (PPE, very similar to one core from Xenon) with 7 working Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) that are more specialized hardware designed to execute certain types of code.
So the comparison between Xenon and Cell really boils down to a comparison between a general purpose microprocessor, and a hybrid of general purpose and specialized hardware.
Despite what many have said, there is support for Sony’s approach with Cell. We have discussed, in great detail, the architecture of the Cell processor already but there is industry support for a general purpose + specialized hardware CPU design. Take note of the following slide from Intel’s Platform 2015 vision for their CPUs by the year 2015:
The use of one or two large general purpose cores combined with specialized hardware and multiple other smaller cores is in Intel’s roadmap for the future, despite their harsh criticism of the Cell processor. The difference is that Cell appears to be far too early for its time. By 2015 CPUs may be manufactured on as small as a 32nm process, significantly smaller than today’s 90nm process, meaning that a lot more hardware can be packed into the same amount of space. In going with a very forward-looking design, the Cell processor architects inevitably had to make sacrifices to deal with the fact that the chip they wanted to design is years ahead of its time for use in general computation.
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tipoo - Wednesday, August 6, 2014 - link
That was such bullshit. RSX was worth under 200Gflops, Cell about the same and much harder to extract that much from, Xenos was over 200, Xenon was around 100. Nothing was near the terraflop range except in marketing bullspeak.LanceVance - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
#59"Does every xbox game needs to be playable? No."
"How many of you still play your old games? Market research shows not a lot."
Backwards compatibility is a feature. It's just like any other feature on a mass market consumer product. Some people value it and others don't.
You clearly don't value that and won't consider it when making consumer decisions.
Other people clearly DO value that and you are trying to persuade them not to. That's none of your business. If people value a specific feature they have every right to consider it in their buying behaviors.
Sorry, I know this post has now gone way off topic from the original article of technical analysis. Beautiful article; but any open forum on such a political topic is doomed to degenerate into this.
knitecrow - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
software emulation is difficult and takes a lot of man power to get right.The main advantage for microsoft was that they didn't have to stuck with poor business and engineering design choices of the past.
Does every xbox game needs to be playable? No. I don't care for games like "big rigs"
I abviously want halo to work, but also the lesser known good titles on xbox ... like Panzer Dargoon Orta, Kingdom Under Fire, Otogi 1 & 2 and so on.
How many of you still play your old games? Market research shows not a lot.I have an 80+ games library for the xbox. I don't mind.
BenSkywalker - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
milomnderbnder21-They are flipping consumers off. Sony and Nintendo at this point are both adding costs to their consoles to incorporate hardware to make certain that their systems have full compatability with the prior generation. MS has decided that you and I are not good enough to offer that same assurance. They have decided to save themselves a couple of dollars and render useless all of their games they can't get running on their new platform so they can save a few dollars. They will take a shot at software hacks- if they don't work we are out of luck. They are also stopping production of current gen XBox hardware. I have about thirty games for my XB currently, what do I do with them if my XB dies and they aren't supported by XB360(which there is no assurance they will)? I keep my legacy hardware around, back to my 2600, and my games.
Olaf van der Spek - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
> Compared to the built in 5X CAV DVD drive in the Xbox, the hard drive offered much faster performance. With the Xbox 360, the performance demands on the hard drive are lessened, the console now ships with a 12X CAV DVD-DL drive.Aren't all read-only DVD drives dual-layer?
Starglider - Saturday, June 25, 2005 - link
I'm a game programmer and I take issue with the statement on page 4 that BSP collision detection benefits from branch prediction. It doesn't; it's one of the rare types of code where the branches are effectively impossible to predict. The algorithm /does/ benefit heavily from speculative execution, but as I understand it neither the XBox360 or the PS3 are capable of this. As such this is one area where PC style processors have an advantage; neither console is going to beat a modern PC at SuperPi.devilzblood - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
altho this is my first post at anandtech, i have been reading ur articles from the geforce 3 launch.newayz.....im posting here coz im wondering if neone knos this.....what degrees do Anand and Derek hold?? they seem to be such a bank of information, i never thought it was humanly possible to know so much about computers..needless to say im impressed by u people..and all i would like to say about the article is that it was an informative and enjoying read
milomnderbnder21 - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
#46MS is by no means "flipping off it's supporters" with regards to backwards compatibility. They have flat out stated that it is there goal that EVERY Xbox game be compatible on the 360, but they simply cannot guarentee it. In any case, look for a majority of them to be so. And if they can't get everything working, I'm not going to miss outlaw golf on my 360...
MDme - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
#50Sony WILL support 1080p. They are supporting it so that they can BRAG about it. It's all about the hype, even if they only have 1 game supporting it, they will BRAG about it. heck, if you really think about it, if sony played a video (H.264) at 1080p then ran the game at 720p they will still claim, WE HAVE SUPPORT FOR 1080p. It's all marketing. Even X360 can claim this.
finbarqs - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
bla bla bla, which one is better?