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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."

7 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Please Help! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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."

    What in the hell does that sentence mean? I can handle a couple of spelling or grammatical problems, but seriously! What the fuck does that mean? Are 3 companies working together to create this Cell processor, or are there three different Cell processors...

  2. Well.. by oexeo · · Score: 5, Funny
    multiple processor cores and should give performance ten times of conventional processors.

    About 10 processor cores, right?

    They should have enough power to divide by zero by now, right? or is that still to "difficult"

  3. Playstation3 vs. XBox2 by grungeman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like Playstation3 vs. XBox2 will look like a battle between a Terminator T1000 and Clippy.

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    Signature deleted by lameness filter.
    1. Re:Playstation3 vs. XBox2 by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      XBox2: PowerPC-based CPU made by IBM.

      PS3: POWER-based CPU made by IBM.

      Looks like a good time to own IBM stock...

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      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  4. A bit more on PS3 by Sai+Babu · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Will be interesting... by TommyBear · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I currently work at a game studio here in Melbourne Australia and we're looking at next gen stuff (currently we develop xbox, ps2, PC games). Anyway, today at a meeting, one of the senior developers told our group that 4 had been selected to go to a little show and tell by IBM/Sony in Melbourne, where some of the secrets of the "Cell" processor would be demonstrated/explained to the group. Apparently we were only able to get 4 spots at this event.

    So I'm exicited looks like the tech in just around the corner and so are the multi-core platforms (like XBOX2 and PS3).... yay!

  6. Believe the hype!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Cell processor is going to rule!

    After all, look how accurate Sony's hype about the PS2 was:

    The PS2 will be able to render 75 million lit, shaded polygons per second!

    The PS2 will be able to run games at HDTV resolution (1280x960) out of the box with no performance loss!

    We will build professional workstations out of 32 Emotion Engine chips which will be able to render movies in realtime and take over the professional graphics industry!

    Since all the hype turned out to be completely 100% accurate, I'm sure we can expect the same for the PS3 / Cell Processor.

    I suppose it's also possible that it will be another massively over-hyped disappointment with builtin Sony patented lameness that sucks even harder than ATRAC. But you'd have to be a real fucking cynic to believe that!