IBM and Sony showcase next-gen Cell processor

By Alun Williams

Posted on 29 Nov 2004 at 13:44

The first 'Cell' processor-based workstation has been powered up, declare the joint developers IBM, Sony and Toshiba. The prototype workstation features the next generation microprocessor aimed at digital entertainment devices such as the next-gen gaming consoles.

'Cell processor-based workstations will totally change the digital content creation environment,' boasts Masayuki Chatani, corporate CTO of Sony Computer Entertainment. 'Its overwhelming power will be demonstrated at every aspect in the development of all kinds of digital entertainment content, from movies, broadcast programs to next generation PlayStation games.'

Cell is a multi-threading, multi-core 64-bit chip designed to be capable of massive floating point processing and to be optimised for 'broadband rich media applications', such as delivering movies. IBM and Sony anticipate that a one rack Cell processor-based workstation will reach a performance of 16 teraflops per second. Furthermore, the Cell processors will support clustering to act as one huge parallel processing unit.

To help stoke anticipation for the new chip, IBM is boasting that its work with Sony will lead to 'a new era of innovation in the semiconductor and computing industries'. According to Colin Parris, VP of product management at IBM's Systems & Technology Group: 'The supercomputer-like processing and performance of the Cell processor-based workstation is just the beginning of what we expect will be a wide-range of powerful next-generation solutions resulting from our joint development efforts.'

Despite the announcements, technical details are still rather scarce. More information is expected to be revealed at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in early February 2005. The following points of the specification have been highlighted, however: support for multiple operating systems at the same time, flexible on-chip I/O interfaces, real-time resource management system for real-time apps and on-chip hardware DRM support. It will be built using 90nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology.

'Massive and rich content, like multi-channel HD broadcasting programs as well as mega-pixel digital still/movie images captured by high-resolution CCD/CMOS imagers, require huge amount of media processing in real-time,' added Ken Kutaragi, Sony COO. 'In the future, all forms of digital content will be converged and fused onto the broadband network, and will start to explode. To access and/or browse sea of content freely in real-time, more sophisticated GUI within the 3D world will become the 'key' in the future.'

'Current PC architecture is nearing its limits, in both processing power and bus bandwidth, for handling such rich applications,' he concluded.