> I'd never realized how much of a role out of order execution
> and branch prediction played in modern CPUs until you quoted
> those figures.

The Cell PPE while being an in-order design does have branch prediction. See minator's reply where he says that out-of-order execution capability is not a prerequisite for branch prediction.

> I really had much higher expectations of the Cell BE's
> performance before that.

The Cell's special performance comes from the SPEs, if used properly that is. The benchmark figures I quoted take only the PPE into account, the SPEs are ignored.

> It also points to one of the reasons most PPCs have an
> inherent advantage over ARM CPUs.

As it seems you missed what minator and I tried to tell you: there have been in-order ARM CPUs with branch prediction for at least a decade, and since early 2010 there're also out-of-order ARM CPUs. So what's this reason and advantage you're talking about?