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However, because of the vector processor's ability to handle several data elements at once, IBM resurrected this design for the Cell. Despite this limitation, advances in scalar design and performance have made the use of vector processors very rare these days in most computers. Scalar processors can only work one data element at a time. They were commonly used in the 1980s in large, powerful, scientific supercomputers and were created as a faster alternative to the more common scalar processor. Vector processors are designed to quickly process several pieces of data at once.
The SPEs used in the Cell processor are each SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data), 128-bit vector processors.
The core then assesses the work that needs to be done, looks at what the SPEs are currently processing and decides how to best dole out the workload to achieve maximum efficiency. The computational workload comes in through the PowerPC core.