It's one processing unit with eight attached processing units.
I may be missing the distinction between what each of us said, because 1 + 8 is nine just like the current pentium D is 1 + 1 or 2.
Yes, the cell will be very very hard to program for, which is why Nintendo is pumping out the messege to developers that their system will be easy for this. It is new architecture, and assymetrical at that. So the promise in current PCs is little to none, but who knows what the future holds.
However, it is, if anything, new and different, which is why it seems so promising. The fact that (in a perfect world yea) it is fast, and t has to be cheap, because not many people will want to buy a >$600 console.
But yea, I'm definately of the opinion that everyone will have to wait and see, the systems don't even have finalized specs yet, I was just giving input based on their current hardware boastings.
*edit* Oh, and I just read that article, and it quotes the P3 as 256gflops, but that is per core, so Sony's stats are almost correct in theory at 2.81tflops