[geeks] PS/3's, Linux, etc, was: Second Life is not a game?

[nate at portents.com]

> I may be wrong, but I assume that if I can get the same GPU for a PC,
> there is a good chance I can get more and faster RAM, better disk access
> and so on, even if the it's just because the PS/3 is now several years
> old from a design point of view, and I can get a PC designed in the
> last few months. :-)

I don't really like Rambus as a company in terms of their sordid past with
the rest of JEDEC, however I will grant they have some interesting
technology, technology which is not currently available in desktop
computers.

The PS3 has an NVIDIA 6800 based GPU, which isn't all that special
anymore, however that's just the GPU, it has the CELL processor, which
heavily leverages Rambus technology, namely two channels of XDR memory for
25.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth and a FlexIO bus interface (which has
'FlexPhase' and Differential Rambus Signaling Level) made up of 12 byte
lanes, with each byte lane being a set of 8 bit wide, source synchronous,
unidirectional, point-to-point interconnects configured asymmetrically
with 7 byte lanes outbound from the CELL and 5 byte lanes inbound to the
CELL, providing 44.8 GB/s of raw outbound bandwidth and 32 GB/s of raw
inbound bandwidth (and with the PPE and the SPEs being able to snoop
traffic going through the EIB, and that coherency traffic able to be sent
to other CELL processors via a coherent interface, means you can build a
FlexIO based coherency switch with the CELL).

One of the reasons I'm leaning toward purchasing a PS3 over an XBox 360 is
specifically because I can get Linux for it and play around with some of
this tech.

- Nate