IBM Gears Cell Chip for Industry and Game Systems

SAN JOSE, Calif.—IBM chip designers said that the Cell processor it is developing with partners Sony Corp and Toshiba Corp. will be suitable for vertical industry applications as well as gaming systems.

IBM engineers briefed attendees of the In-Stat Fall Microprocessor Forum here Wednesday on the technical details of the chip design and on how to optimize its performance for multiple applications.

Formally introduced in February at the International Solid State Circuits conference in San Francisco, the 64-bit Cell processor that will be used first in Sony's PlayStation 3 game console.

However, Chelmsford, Mass.-based Mercury Computer Systems Inc. has announced it will build Cell-based computers for use in the medical and aerospace industries.

IBM and Sony Computer Entertainment talked in May of last year about co-developing workstations built around the Cell; they said in November that this first Cell-based workstation had "powered on."

The main design goal for the Cell is to produce up to a tenfold increase in performance for most applications, said David Krolak, the lead IBM engineer on the Cell project.

The Cell is composed of a 64-bit PowerPC processor core called the PPE (Power Processing Element) running at 3GHz to 4GHz frequency surrounded by eight special-purpose SPE ("synergistic processing element") cores.

Krolak noted that the Cell could be configured for usage in game console systems, blades, HDTV sets, home media servers and supercomputers.

To connect the separate elements of the Cell, IBM designed the Element Interconnect Bus.

Read the rest of this PC Magazine story: "IBM Gears Cell Chip for Industry and Game Systems"

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.