Mobile/PDA About Us Advertise here


		User name	Password

		Not registered yet? Register here. Lost your password? Click here.

Browse by topic

News

Cell chip that will power PS3 unveiled

8 February 2005 1:33 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 5 comments

Sony, Toshiba and IBM have unveiled the new Cell processor which they are calling a "supercomputer in a chip". The chip is so small it could power anything from video games consoles to mobile phones. It tops clock speeds of greater than 4GHz, the companies claimed. The new chip is expected to power Sony's upcoming Playstation 3 console. Toshiba plans to incorporate it into high-end televisions and IBM has said it will sell a workstation with the chip starting later this year. The developers claim the chip can deliver 10 times the performance of today�s best processors.

Cell is comprised of several cores. A core based on IBM's Power architecture controls eight synergistic processing centres. In all, they can simultaneously carry out 10 instruction sequences, compared with two for today's Intel chips. It can also run multiple operating systems simultaneously and multiple programs and still ensure that each has enough resources to run properly.

"It's very flexible," said Jim Kahle, IBM Director of Technology for Cell Technology. "We support many operating systems with our virtualization technology so we can run multiple operating systems at the same time, doing different jobs on the system." Intel is expected to release its multicore chips later this year. The will also increase the number of instructions that can be executed at once.

The Cell designers say they are running several operating systems on the processor in their lab, but did not mention whether or not they were running Microsoft Windows on it but did confirm running Linux on it.

Sources:
I4U
keralanext.com
ABC

Permalink to this article

Nintendo DS piracy protection (7 February 2005)

Xbox 2 to be called Xbox 360? (4 February 2005)

PS3 Cell chip aiming high (4 February 2005)

PS3 chip info released, protos expect early 2005 (29 November 2004)

« Previous news article
Is the Half Life 2 EULA illegal?

Next news article »
A brief look at di.fm - Digitally Imported Radio

Post your comment

Discuss this article!
Toiletman (Senior Member) 8 February 2005 11:35
If you're a number junkie, there's more information at this link: http://ps2.gamespy.com/articles/585/585956p1.html I, however, am more interested in the games being developed for PS3! =D After all, no games means it won't Cell! n_n Haha I love my puns. [ + quote]
neewbie (Member) 8 February 2005 17:42
Heaps awesome i cant wait!!! [ + quote]
djscoop (AfterDawn Addict) 9 February 2005 13:13
very clever ToiletMan. Thanks for the link though...this chip looks awesome. With the help of this Cell chip, the Playstation will for sure blow away the XBOX line, and stay on top as the premium gaming device, just as it always has since the original playstation was introduced. Kudos Sony!!! [ + quote]
neewbie (Member) 9 February 2005 16:42
Sony has always been better than the rest imo. [ + quote]
djscoop (AfterDawn Addict) 10 February 2005 18:29
if anyone is interested, here's another, more in depth article on the cell chip http://ps2.ign.com/articles/585/585865p1.html [ + quote]