This is a response to the supposed 20 percent yeilds that they are getting with CELL. I figured it wasn' t as bad since this is with the full eight cores. You might remember that Sony announced a while back that they were reserving one of the eight cores for redundancy. So in actuality the ps3 only has 7 SPEs. In all probability the CELL chips that are bad most likely only have one defective core out of eight which does not affect the yeilds for ps3 as Sony can use the chips that have 7 good cores. Remember that CELL will be used for other things as well. The CELL in ps3 only has 7 cores, the other one is just extra that is never used even if you have it.
If you get one with a defective core the experience won' t change as the ps3 is only meant to use 7 anyways. Even if you get a chip with 8 good cores, the ps3 still only uses 7. The spec for CELL on ps3 is 1 PPE and 7 SPEs not 8 SPEs.
This is not a new practice, many CPUs would be much more expensive if they didn' t do this. In the computer I' m using (my Moms computer) it has an Athlon
3100 XP. This isn' t a cpu you could ever buy in retail because it' s not an official spec. The 3100xp was supposed to be a 3200xp but was downgraded to a 3100 because half the cache was defective. So instead of throwing it away they renamed it. The 3200xp is clocked at 2.2 with 512kb of cache, the 3100xp is 2.2ghz with 256kb of cache.
Sony anticipated that most CELL chips would have one core defective so in order to increase productivity and save truck loads of money they made the ps3 spec with only 7 SPEs so they can use the CELL chips with one defective core. Games will be programed to take advantage of only 7 cores. No ps3 will never use 8, even if they have it. This what sony meant by 7 cores, one being reserved for redundancy.
< Message edited by Game Junkie -- 7 Aug 06 19:59:17 >