So far the chip triumvirate of IBM, Sony and Toshiba, which pledged $400m to the project and sent engineers to a joint development center located in Austin, Texas, has been short on details of how Cell could benefit each company. The processor has always been associated with Sony's PlayStation 3 and peer-to-peer computing, but will do more than allow players to battle opposing characters in multiplayer Internet games, Kahle said. But Cell will go "beyond gaming to just entertainment in general," Kahle said. From his own analysis, Doherty believes Cell will create a new extensible computing platform. A set-top box containing a Cell chip could, for example, combine to share processing power with a Cell-powered high-definition television to render the graphics of an animated movie. "It's like a beehive -- cell components can also be ganged together," he said. This ability to change rapidly between states will make devices more flexible, but also give the living room a big boost in computing power when devices interact, making for much livelier games, movies and other entertainment-related experiences. While Cell will provide a lot of PlayStation 3 opportunity for Sony, what will IBM and Toshiba get out of it? For IBM, Cell represents a technology showcase. The new chip will not only illustrate IBM's design prowess, but it will also display the company's manufacturing expertise. IBM will use its bag of chipmaking tricks, including silicon-on-insulator (SOI) processes and low capacitance dielectrics, to mint Cell. Analysts say it's not as clear what Toshiba will get from Cell. The company could also use Cell to create new consumer devices such as high-definition televisions. Or, it could use Cell in its components business; Toshiba sells a wide range of components for set-top boxes and other consumer electronics products. What's behind Cell?
While the processor's design is still under wraps, the companies say Cell's capabilities will allow it to deliver one trillion calculations per second (teraflop) or more of floating-point calculations. It will have the ability to do north of 1 trillion mathematical calculations per second, roughly 100 times more than a single Pentium 4 chip running at 2.5GHz. Cell will likely use between four and 16 general-purpose processor cores per chip. A game console might use a chip with 16 cores, while a less complicated device like a set-top box would have a processor with fewer, said Peter Glaskowsky, editor in chief of influential industry newsletter Microprocessor Report. Some of these cores might perform computational functions, while others could control audio or graphics. But not everyone thinks this approach is groundbreaking, given that some processors already use inter-chip multiprocessing. "I just don't see that Cell is revolutionary, except in its marketing impact," Glaskowsky said Indeed, a host of other chipmakers produce chips -- known as system-on-a-chip processors -- that use multiple processor cores to power systems ranging from networking equipment and automobile electronics devices to cellular phones. IBM entered the dual-processor core market with the Power4, the first server processor to use a multiple-core design. Power4 pairs two 64-bit PowerPC cores on the same processor, linked by a high-speed communications pathway. But efforts to create similar, more generic multiple-core processors -- including MAJC (pronounced "magic"), a very similar effort by Sun Microsystems -- have missed their intended mark. The first MAJC chip was originally slated for multimedia processing, a job similar to Cell's. But instead of selling the chip to set-top box and game machine manufacturers, Sun repositioned the dual 500MHz MAJC 5200 chip as a high-end graphics processor for workstations. Software -- the road ahead
While Cell's hardware design might be difficult, it's creating software for the chip that will be the trickiest part of establishing it in the market. "It's going to take an enormous amount of software development," Doherty said. "We believe the chip architecture is going to be on time and ahead of the software wizardry that is going to really make it get up and dance." Furthermore, creating an operating system and set of applications that can take advantage of the Cell's multiprocessing and peer-to-peer computing capabilities will be the key to determining if Cell will be successful, he said. Knowing this, the three chip partners have so far set a goal of crafting Cell as a system, creating operating system and application software alongside Cell hardware. Cell's designers are engineering the chip to work with a wide range of operating systems, including Linux. But the chip triumvirate is also developing a purpose-built Cell operating system and applications, which Cell's developers will use to test the chip's various features, such as its multimedia processing capabilities. They are also likely to form the basis of a Cell software development kit and also the Cell OS and applications for end-devices, such as game systems, sources said. Still work to do
While much of the work on Cell is complete, there's still a lot left to do. Together, the hardware and software teams will continue testing the chip's inner workings. The last stage of development work, which still lies ahead, includes completing circuit layout and then eventually testing actual sample chips. IBM is expected to begin manufacturing Cell as soon as 2004 or possibly early 2005. But as with many other details about the chip, Kahle will confirm only that the Cell project is on track to meet its 2005 schedule, which was set forth at its initial announcement. The rest of the chip's schedule is a secret, at least for now, he said.
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Talkback
can i request for a picture of the coming playstation 3 and including all its Specs. And also how much could it cost if it will be out in the market?
This is my email Address.
darell_louie@yahoo.com
Thank you and Regards!!!
Darell,
Can I have the Picture of the Sony Playstation 3? Email it tome on my email address. And also tell its price
Can i get a picture of the playstation 3 or playstation x as you would call it. and a price.
also if you have an example of the graphics that the playstation 3 is suppose to produce can you send them. and let me know when is the release date.
I WAS WONDERING IF YOU ALL COULD SEND ME A PICTURE OF THE NEW PLAYSTATION 3 BYE US MAIL TO THIS ADDRESS 87 N YALE AVENUE COLUMBUS OHIO 43222 HOPE YOU CAN BYE AND GOD BLESS YOU ALL
This article doesn't touch on cell's real abilities, it seems to me.
After having read up on it, the real groundbreaking function of this appears to be intercommunication between chips. Thinking about this, and the manufacturers involved - Sony, Toshiba, IBM, and the products they make....
Think about your Playstation 3, your DVD recorder, your TV and your computer all linked up.
Say you're doing some highly intensive task on your computer. Your DVD recorders sitting around doing nothing, so the computer could pinch its processor and do the task in half the time.
Your Playstation could grab resources from your computer and double the frame rate in the game you're playing.
Perhaps you can even add a module that just contains cell chips and shares them with everything.
The possibilities are frightening.
i really think that a playstation 3 would be great because the more hi-tech we are the better we can understand and use that technology.
this ps3 is going to be the coolest ever i cant wait untill it come out
i was wanting to know if you could send me a pic of the new playstation 3 and how much is it approxmitaly going to cost when it comes out
If this chip comes to the market than it means that we will be having 240Ghz computers and if put on a graphic card a 240Ghz graphic card. Cool. That means we can start developing Virtual Reality systems without fearing if the computer will support the new hardware. And it could mean that we could develop bio-machinery (like exo-skeletons) to do heavy work avoiding injuries and maybe, one day, a fully automated android capable to think (don't worry, robots will never be better than us. "Cell" - 1 trilion of operations per second, Human eye 100 trilions of operations per second. That's not even close to what the brain can do)
Forget the pictures of PS3 I want some of what António is smoking
When will Chip be available for Windows Computers? Is it being made to work with Windows and or Mac? Wouldn't it be great if it could work with Windows and Mac? We could dual boot Windows and Mac and have the best of both worlds.
I wonder how long it will take till someone figures out how to get Mac and Windows to work on one computer kinda like Linux and Windows and Linux and Mac.
I wonder if the Cell chip will ship with Longhorn.