Deadmeat (Deadmeatoa@yahoo.com) on 8/8/05 wrote:
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>>I think there's some sort of circular reasoning going on here now. I'm questioning
>>Sony's methodology for counting FLOPS (because I've ran out of other more reasonable
>>explanations), but you're simply re-asserting the 12 FMAC FLOPS per cycle assumption
>>for DD2 PPE... And round and round we go.
>
>Think about it; APU Vector Unit and PPE's Altivecs are functionally equivalent,
>yet neither IBM nor SCEI claims 12 FLOPS for APUs, they only claim 8 FLOPS even
>though the APU too can issue an FMAC and FMOV instructions in parallel. This is
>your proof that SCEI is not counting FMOV as 4 FLOPS.

Did you read and comprehend what David wrote? He's not disputing whether Sony counts loads/stores as FLOPs. He is simply stating that in his opinion, Sony's figures don't make sense at all. You are trying to argue they do, but so far the only theory you had was pretty much been debunked by the guy who oversaw the design of the chip.

>Then what does PPE has that APU doesn't? It is that FPU.

Or how about the ability to handle virtual memory? Or any number of differences.

>> I either have to believe that they're unaware
>>of the Gekko addition to the DD2 PPE or that both of them are purposefully deceiving me.
>
>Probably unaware. Notice that Altivec/FPU unit is decoupled from the CPU core and
>seems to be a plug in. It was probably a custom design to satisfy the requirement
>of all three customers. Then it only makes sense that it includes the full set of
>Gecko instructions for GameCube backward compatibility.

Right, and somehow one of the lead architects managed not to notice that? That sounds more unlikely than Itanium dominating the desktop tomorrow...

Besides, there is no indication that Nintendo has any desire or need to use CELL. Their console is much less powerful, because among other things, it won't be supporting HD output (at least not at the level of the PS3 and Xbox360). So why would they ever use CELL or a CELL-like chip, when they could use something cheaper? You're entire argument is pretty irrational.

>My guess is that Gecko instructions were added to meet Nintendo's requirement,
>yet both SCEI and MS are taking advantage of it.

Dr. Hofstee was one of the people who DEFINED the CELL architecture. That would be like Bob Colwell not knowing a functional unit was added to the Pentium Pro...

That you can still spout this utter nonsense IN SPITE of the fact that David has already cited an impeccible source is simply amazing.

Honestly, I think you need to develop some new theories, and you need to accept the fact that you don't necessarily know everything.

David