Author: Gregor Overney
Date: 00:15:46 05/16/99
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>Speaking of specialized chips, I recently read a spec for a 128-bit cpu >with a floating point performance of 6.2 Gigaflops. A new chip to compete >with massively parallel Intel-based systems? No, this is the cpu >powering Sony's next Playstation home video game system, due out next >year. :)) These systems are invariably designed to be sold at around >$200, otherwise parents won't buy it for their kids for Christmas. >If this an indication of specialized hardware performance for $200, >and comparing the leap from the first to second generation Playstation >hardware, what Hsu will be able to offer for $200 in the coming years >will easily beat the world champ, if the first iteration doesn't already. 6.2 GFlops. A huge value. But is it 32 or 64 bit? (There are no tables for GFlop for 128-bit in the industry.) What was the matrix size used for this benchmark? Usually a small matrix size allows those chips to hold the complete benchmark in their L1/L2 cache. (A p6/200 runs at roughly 80 MFlops at 64-bit when the dimension of the matrix is sufficiently small. Otherwise the performance breaks down to 15-20 MFlops.) Most of the high performance, yet general purpose DSP's are reaching into the GFlops (see TI and Analog Decives). But those chips run in the GFlops only with 32-bit precision and smaller dimension for the eigenvalue problem. The complexity of designing a chip that runs a high GFlop is much "easier" than to produce a chip that is capable of playing chess with a very high USCF rating. I would assume that this playstation chip is mainly used for high speed 3D rendering (VRML or OpenGL or whatever). A much more trivial task than actual image _recognization_, or for that matter, chess. Speaking of 3D image rednering, ATI also came out with a new 128-bit version of their Rage PRO CPU. I would certainly not use this thing to play chess (nor would I recommend a standard DSP) :-) Gregor
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