Sony and IBM Cell technology emerges

THOSE CRAZY funsters at the Wall Street Journal have decided to throw caution to the wind and unveil some of the juicy details of Sony and IBM's new Cell processor early, today. The chip is being shown off later today at the International Solid State Circuits Conference.

The WSJ outlines the purpose of the Cell processor, mentioning that the aim of the chip is to help break the Microsoft / Intel dominance of computing architectures, and to prevent it from extending into the living room. The chip is, of course, at the heart of one box that is sure to make a big entrance into the lounge later this year - the PlayStation 3.

According to papers to be presented at the ISSCC, the initial Cell chip has a single processing unit that can pass computing tasks out to as many as 8 other processors. Thus, working in tandem, it can process up to 10 sequences of instructions simultaneously. This compares well with rival Intel x86 architectures, which can process just two, according the conference paper.

According to the Journal, Sony and IBM are working on creating a Cell-based workstation for game designers and graphics animators. The big test for the architecture could well be how easy it is to programme for - games houses are unlikely to want to spent huge amounts of time unlearning what they have learned. Sony are due to present the full technical details of the machine in Tokyo next month.

Expect more announcements about Cell and the PlayStation 3 architecture partners over the coming days, as the ISSCC rolls on. µ