multiple cpu machines Re: rogues galleries

[Michael B. Brutman]

aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
>  --- Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote: 
>> arcarlini at iee.org wrote:
>>>>> How about the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis? That ran
>  a
>> 68000 and Z80.
>>
>> There have been many multi-cpu consoles; the Sega
>> Saturn had two Hitachi
>> RISC CPUs for core processing, plus a host of othe
> r
>> stuff for CDROM,
>> display, sound... The PlayStation 2 is also
>> dual-CPU.  The PlayStation 3
>> is a Cell monster, 7 cores you can play with,
> 
> wrong!!! Some places state 9, but the last
> *official* CPU diagram I saw has 8 cores.
> One main core (slightly larger than the others)
> and 7 co-cores. (Does that make sense?)

More like, it depends.

A standard Cell ASIC has a dual threaded PowerPC 64 core and eight SPU
cores.  On a Playstation only seven functioning SPU cores are
guaranteed/required.

So depending on how you count, you can get 8, 9, or 10 cores.  I'd go
with 9 -> 8 SPU and a dual thread PPC.


Mike