06-07-2020, 05:50 PM
Rolando wrote:
Weren't the Xbox 360 and PS3 PPC? And they outsold Apple 10 to 1. I wonder if Apple could have used those chips?
PS3 Cell processor was based on PPC, but was specialized for the processing of video/image type data. The core was a general purpose processor with 8 specialized coprocessors surrounding it. As the Cell was designed for a consortium that included Sony and Toshiba and came out a year after Apple had made the decision to switch to Intel, it would not have been available to Apple. The specialized design elements also probably would not have been suitable for use in a Mac.
For much of the same reasons the Xenon chip designed for MS to use in the Xbox 360 would not have been usable by Apple. The chip used 3 cores modified from the design for the central core of the Cell. First shipments were at the end of 2005.
Neither of these chips were very low powered. Early generation PS3 models had a 380 W PS, while the Xbox 360 needed one just over 200 W. A large fraction of that power was for the processors.