Cell Processor running on Mac OS X?

[robertneville77]

Hi there PowerPC folks. So I ran across an interesting older YouTube video in which some IBM representatives are demoing the then-upcoming Cell processor running on what appears to be Mac OS X.

So what I want to get clear: Mac OS X is most-likely NOT running just on the Cell, but rather is running on a PowerMac G5 and just using the Cell as some type of accelerator card via some type of daughter card?

Also interesting to note is in the video, one of the representatives says that the Cell is 40 times more powerful than the Power Mac G5. Too bad no consumer space is really using either processor anymore.

What are your guys thoughts?

 

[iModFrenzy]

Hi there PowerPC folks. So I ran across an interesting older YouTube video in which some IBM representatives are demoing the then-upcoming Cell processor running on what appears to be Mac OS X.

So what I want to get clear: Mac OS X is most-likely NOT running just on the Cell, but rather is running on a PowerMac G5 and just using the Cell as some type of accelerator card via some type of daughter card?

Also interesting to note is in the video, one of the representatives says that the Cell is 40 times more powerful than the Power Mac G5. Too bad no consumer space is really using either processor anymore.

What are your guys thoughts?

I think it's interesting.Too bad IBM couldn't get it to Apple. Cell Processors probably would've crushed Intel.

 

[laurihoefs]

40 times faster than PowerPC in some specific (but unspecified) tasks. The video is very vague, which is not surprising, they are demoing a very early prototype after all.

Cell was probably not meant to crush general purpose Intel CPUs (or AMD or IBM CPUs for that matter), but it introduced an interesting concept: combining general purpose cores with graphics processing cores on the same die, very much like what Intel, AMD and every ARM processor manufacturer are currently doing.