Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 2053 from 2003/6/4
Quote:
Jim schrieb:
Well I'm glad at least you get that point. It confuses me when people bring up the SPEs as if they're some sort of disadvantage.
I wonder how many PS3 game programmers ignore them completely? They don't have to be used and with an OS like MorphOS that only runs on one core these little sub units could be a neat way to off load tasks from the core processor.
Its a pity that this idea keeps getting nixed by the developers. The prospect just fires up the hacker lurking in the depths of my soul.
I think in a market as tiny as the MorphOS market a standard hardware is of particulr benefit. Currently we have ppc w/ and w/o Altivec. Better if all MorphOS maschines had Altivec. It helps to reduce the development overhead. I mean support for Cell's SPEs is not done by a simple Compiler flag. And while maybe relatively easy to program,it adds development overhead. As coder you must maintain code for a vanilla ppc, ppc + Altivec, ppc+SPE. I don't think taht is helpful.. Unless the market doesn't grow significantly I think it is better to focus on one standard as much as possible.
It is more or less a similar arguement with the XMOS X1000 stuff. The hardware basis gets too heterogene. Applications need to take care what actual hardware is present, users have to keep track what software supports their hardware, developers must decide what hardware they demand for their application and so on. The butterfly country is too little for that. If one day there are significantly more users, there may be more resources to spend to maintain variability. But not now.
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