Sony PlayStation 3: Cell Broadband Engine Fact Sheet

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hardware

The Cell Broadband Engine processor is the digital heart of the Sony PlayStation 3 system. The Cell outperforms many of the latest PC processors and delivers up to ten times the performance of a typical home computer. In terms of real-world application, it means highly detailed and interactive environments, more enemies, larger battles, and hyper-realistic gameplay. The increased processing power of the Cell also means developers for the first time can create games closer to actual intelligence instead of artificial intelligence, giving them the ability to closely mimic human reasoning and movement.

The multi-core architecture of the Cell Broadband Engine consists of a main Central Processing Unit and seven Synergistic Processing Units to allow for parallel processing. Performing more than 200 billion calculations per second, this balanced processing structure creates an exponentially more powerful development environment than has ever been available in a videogame console. Sony PlayStation 3's cell broadband engine features:
- Performs 208 billion floating point calculations per second
- Architectural design features seven synergistic processors and a clock speed of 3.2 GHz
- Each synergistic processing unit has its own fast memory for true parallel processing.

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