The Mystery of Cell Processors

LucidBeast writes "Consumer appliances requiring more computing power Sony, IBM and Toshiba started 2001 developing "Cell"-processor that comprises of multiple processor cores and should give performance ten times of conventional processors. Now the CNN Money reports that details of the processor will be released Feb. 6-10 at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. Also reported by EE Times. Rumors also tell that Sonys PS3 development platform has already been shipped to some developers equipped with the cell processor."

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Article text

[mrhandstand]

Chip power, times 10
Sony, IBM, Toshiba disclose details of new processor that will run next-generation electronics.
November 29, 2004: 6:13 AM EST

TOKYO (Reuters) - IBM, Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. on Monday unveiled some key details on the powerful new "Cell" processor the three are jointly producing to run next-generation computers, game consoles and TVs.

Cloaked in secrecy and the object of much speculation since the three conglomerates announced the project in 2001, Cell will be 10 times more powerful than conventional chips and able to shepherd large chunks of data over broadband networks.

In a joint release, the three firms gave a glimpse of their respective plans for Cell-powered products, but were mum on technical details, which will be revealed Feb. 6-10 at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.

IBM (Research), Sony (Research) and Toshiba are investing billions of dollars to develop and prepare for mass production of Cell, which is a multicore semiconductor composed of several processors that work together to handle multiple tasks at the same time.

"In the future, all forms of digital content will be converged and fused onto the broadband network," Ken Kutaragi, executive deputy president and COO of Sony, said in the release. "Current PC architecture is nearing its limits."

IBM said it would start pilot production of the microprocessor at its plant in East Fishkill, N.Y., in the first half of 2005. It will use advanced 300 millimeter silicon wafers, which yield more chips per wafer than the 200 mm kind.

It also announced plans to first use the chip in a workstation it is developing with Sony, targeting the digital content and entertainment industries.

Sony said it would launch home servers and high-definition televisions powered by Cell in 2006, and reiterated plans to use the microchip to power the next-generation PlayStation game console, a working version of which will be unveiled in May.

Toshiba said it planned to launch a high-definition TV using Cell in 2006. Top of page

A bit more on PS3

[Sai Babu]

But UNC's Zimmons has his doubts. "I believe that while theoretically having a large number of transistors enables teraflops-class performance, the PS3 [Playstation 3] will not be able to deliver this kind of power to the consumer," quoted from /. referenced article.

Zimmons talks the details.

Re:And this article tells us WHAT?!!

[TheRaven64]

The article on El Reg has a bit more information content. The chip is POWER-based, and supports multiple cores, each of which can run a separate OS. This is the first POWER chip to be produced in volume (I'm not counting workstation / server chips as volume). This, combined with the PowerPC-based XBox2 may mean that the unit cost of POWER/PowerPC chips drops enough to make beige-box POWER/PowerPC systems cheap enough to be a viable alternative to x86.

Small problem

[Craig Ringer]

There's only one small problem with your contention - Linux /does/ scale out to at least 512 processors - hardly 'a few' - and is heading up to multiple thousands with SGI's current work.

Of course, one could argue that the Linux folks have more than one insane genius among them...

Re:What language do they use?

[sleepingsquirrel]

Linux Insider is running a couple of editorials speculating about running Linux on the 'Cell' processor. The bold prediction? 'the Linux developer community will, virtually en masse, abandon the x86 in favor of the new machine.'