IBM cells out, allegedly

Cell BE was originally developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba for use in consoles. By using multi-core architecture and ultra high-speed communications capabilities, Cell BE computers, usually Blade servers, can produce super-computer like performance.

Although the system, IBM BladeCenter QS20, has been tested in the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, France, Japan and Korea, for a while Big Blue has been reluctant to release an out of the box version, until today.

One of the beta users at the University of Manchester said it gave the outfit improved performance, took up less space, and consumed less power.

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