Folding@Home on PS3 - Also news on the GPU client

I assume its working chips per wafer, where working means 7 out of 8 cores working.
Links:
-Cell yields 'horrible', sources claim
-PS3 Cell yields are in the toilet
Obviously being the Inq accuracy comes a distant second to getting a scoop so i don't usually read into it too much but with cell being such a complicated design i can well believe they might have been getting 20% yeilds at some point, although presumably its now a lot higher.

You must have a very interesting job to be on the front line working with these things, i admire you.
 
Joe42 said:
Links:
-Cell yields 'horrible', sources claim
-PS3 Cell yields are in the toilet
You must have a very interesting job to be on the front line working with these things, i admire you.
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:rolleyes: It can be a double edged sword .. lol .. Im mainly in the service sector of capitol equiptment < the machines IBM, AMD, Intel, TSMC, UMC etc etc, use to manufacture their devices>. Our mission is to improve upon our tool sets to aid in overall FAB performance.

As Calvin from Intel says, Yeild is a very tricky subject, but is one of the main focal points of any production line. However, yeild figures are nothing more than a product of simple data analysis. It depends on how the yeild is calculated to determine it's real street or application value. Using the Cell chip as an example:

8 Core Yeild: 10 - 20%
7 Core Yeild: 20 - 40%
etc etc etc

At some point, the yeild will hit 100%, say maybe 4 to 5 cores < just an example figure, no data to back that up with >, but how many cores does the device have to yeild before it meets its performance spec, then how much of the core functionality is 100% utilized. There's a ballance between 100% Utilization on 8 Cores and meeting the demand of the application, in the case the CPU for the PS3, and the degradation of cores against a measurable or noticable impact on system performance.

oceaness said:
I suspect he got the info off a lot of summarised posts on blogs and such.

I found a slightly more indepth one http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/77909774/m/361004600831
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These are good links. Calvin paints a very clear picture, which bascially says, one could present / advocate a good yeild picture or a bad one based on how the data is represented. Additionally, he points out that technology shrinks are a key factor in reducing defect impacts which translates to improved yeilds and overall system performance.

The proof in the pudding is, how does the chip perfom against it's intended function. If the device requires 8 Cores to run at their maximum potential, then I would say the device is way under developed or the application is over intensive for the device.

[EDIT]

Bottom Line: It's Sony, IBM & Toshiba's problem to sort our the yeild and deliver us with the PS3's :D And at 500 dollars a pop .. those will make a nice F@H farm.. :p

I've just ordered 2x ATI 1950's to go in my A8R-MVP .. I'm glad I'm on the F@H Beta Team. CrossFire PWR .. look out Mr. Berserker !!

[/EDIT]

Just my two pence worth :D
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It's really just a matter of waiting and seeing how and when the PS3 arrives.

I doubt I'll get one to be honest though. My sister won an Xbox 360 which is a wonderful piece of kit and works brilliantly as a Media Center Extender.

I think it will be too exspensive, a basic PS3 package is reported to be about £410.

You can purchase an Xbox 360 premium kit for £280 and you can purchase the High-Definition DVD drive addon for about £100. Bearing in mind we have a long wait before games can make effective use of the power of the 360 let alone the PS3, when it arrives.

Incidently I'd love to see F@H on the 360 as well :(

Edit: And yes I will be using the excuse that all my graphics cards are old (which they are, the newest being an FX5600) and need replacing ;)
 
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oceaness said:
It's really just a matter of waiting and seeing how and when the PS3 arrives.

I doubt I'll get one to be honest though. My sister won an Xbox 360 which is a wonderful piece of kit and works brilliantly as a Media Center Extender.

I think it will be too exspensive, a basic PS3 package is reported to be about £410.

You can purchase an Xbox 360 premium kit for £280 and you can purchase the High-Definition DVD drive addon for about £100. Bearing in mind we have a long wait before games can make effective use of the power of the 360 let alone the PS3, when it arrives.

Incidently I'd love to see F@H on the 360 as well :(

Edit: And yes I will be using the excuse that all my graphics cards are old (which they are, the newest being an FX5600) and need replacing ;)
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http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17620807

aparently it seems that next gen games own the pants off the next gen consols :(
 
Joe42 said:
Completely off topic, but i've never understood why are wafers round and not square? Don't you waste the ones on the edge when its round which wouldn't happen if it was square? :confused:
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The edges could be like a carpet edge on a roll of carpet, nothing special and kinda scrappy :confused:
 
Zip said:
The edges could be like a carpet edge on a roll of carpet, nothing special and kinda scrappy :confused:
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Surely you would still get more if it were round?
I mean think of it like this, you have a cake thats to be cut into squares and you need the most squares, surely you would make a square one?

Edit: Perhaps this'll tell me... Wikipedia on wafers
 
VeNT said:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17620807

aparently it seems that next gen games own the pants off the next gen consols :(
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Any dev could write a game that's so graphically and physically intense that it would own the pants off a supercomputer.

If a PS3 that's supposedly 10x more powerful than a PC can't play it then how is a PC going to play it? ;)

The answer is through optimisation, it's optimised for Microsoft's Directx 10 which Vista comes with. It is also said to work on 9 which is what we're currently using, though it wouldn't look very good.

The point is it's optimised for PC if they choose to they could optimise it to use 4 or 7 cores instead and it would work better on a console :)
 
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Joe42 said:
Surely you would still get more if it were round?
I mean think of it like this, you have a cake thats to be cut into squares and you need the most squares, surely you would make a square one?

Edit: Perhaps this'll tell me... Wikipedia on wafers
Click to expand...
It all confuses me and i lost attension one i saw this on wiki :o

For instance, wafer cleavage typically occurs only in a few well-defined directions.
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Wafers have Cleavage now :eek:
Computer Pron!!! :p
 
Zip said:
It all confuses me and i lost attension one i saw this on wiki :o



Wafers have Cleavage now :eek:
Computer Pron!!! :p
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Even if it was square there is a good chance they wouldn't go to the edges anyway, meaning just as much material may be lost!

SiriusB
 
Why don't they leave a gap on the edges of the round ones then?
Even if they didn't go to the edges on a square one they wouldn't bother to make chips on the edges so they wouldn't waste money doing that whereas they do with round ones.

Theres got to be a really good reason why they use round ones because its a great waste. I'm truly mystified.
 
Joe42 said:
Completely off topic, but i've never understood why are wafers round and not square? Don't you waste the ones on the edge when its round which wouldn't happen if it was square? :confused:
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Well .. one reason is since the birth of using semiconductor substrates <Silicon Wafers> the ingots have been grown from a crystal seed which ultimately makes a round Ingot. Virtually all present day wafer processing equipment is designed to process round wafers.

Here's an example: Silicon Wafer Ingot

Here's How Wafer Process Works: Silicon Wafer Processing

It could be argued both ways that squares on squares is more productive from a base materail / substrate stanpoint, but what about the waste on the raw Ingot side when shaving the the cicular Ingot to make it square?

Then many, many processing machines are based on cicular motions for their process application: CMP ~ Chemical Mechanical Planarazation.

It would cost the semiconductor industy hundreds of billions of dollars to change over from Circular Substrates to Square Substrates.

There's been allot of company's that have modeled the square concept. I'm sure a little digging could find some concreate data to support both staying circular as well as moving to squares substrates.
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Thankyou very much indeed for that KE1HA. :)
So having read that i think basically the reason they aren't square is its more complicated to produce and the cost of that plus upgrading everything far outweighs the benefits of square wafers, which makes sense.
 
PlayStation 3 Euro launch delayed

PlayStation 3 Euro launch delayed

The PlayStation 3 was expected to be a major Christmas seller
The launch of Sony's long-awaited PlayStation 3 games console in Europe has been delayed until March 2007.

Ken Kutaragi, head of Sony's global computer entertainment division, said the machine would still be launched in November in the US and in Japan.


Rest of the story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5319190.stm
 
Sony are the worst for promising and not delivering on time, original release date 2 years ago was summer 2006 now its march 2007, gran turismo 3 and 4 were both delayed by over a year, their online gaming is the worst thing ive ever seen, and before everyone yells xbox fanboy, i bought my original xbox over a year after its launch, but my ps1 and ps2 at launch, psp at launch, but thanks to sony ripping us gamers off i will only be buying their console to sell on ebay, as for folding, it will kill your console, consoles are designed to last 2-3 years with regular play, with folding i'd give it 6 months
 
BillytheImpaler said:
Says who?

/lovingly strokes 20 year old NES and 10 year old N64.
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yeah well that was back in the good old days when they made consoles properly, my ps1 still works even though its a launch console and ive hammered it for the first 2-3 years of its life, same goes for ps2 but that now makes so much noise when running it looks like its gonna die any sec, friends of mine have went through 2-3 PS2's. One is on his fourth, by regular play i mean at least 15 hours a week, As for x-box's the originals were built to last, but my first 360 died, the second just seems funny to me, the noise it makes is awful, compare it to your n64 which makes ZERO noise at all, lasers burning out are very common, or lazy lasers which go slightly off, also if you use your console upright the drive motor has to work harder to move the laser and drive which also burn out, nowadays if your console lasts 3 years its a good thing, as for folding on ps3 why would sony allow you to do that? think about it your ps3 dies soon after warranty has expired, what do you do? oh yeah buy another one and mr sony laughs his ass off at the fact your £600 console didnt even make it to the next gen.
 
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