Cell Processor

Designed for the PlayStation 3, Sony, Toshiba and IBM's new "Cell processor" promises seemingly obscene computing capabilities for what will rapidly become a very low price. In these articles I look at what the Cell architecture is, then I go on to look at the profound implications this new chip has, not for the games market, but for the entire computer industry. Has the PC finally met it's match?

To date the details disclosed by the STI group (Sony, Toshiba, IBM) have been very vague to say the least. Except that is for the patent application* which describes the system in minute detail. Unfortunately this is very difficult to read so the details haven't made it out into general circulation even in the technical community.

I have managed to decipher the patent and in parts 1 and 2 I describe the details of the Cell architecture, from the cell processor to the "software cells" it operates on.

At this point we do not have any performance figures so any figures given are derived from either the figures in the patent or the 4.6GHz given for the chip itself. All performance figures are thus estimates based on hypothetical maximums.

Cell is a vector processing architecture and this in some way limits it's uses, that said there are a huge number of tasks which can benefit from vector processing and in part 3 I look at them.

The first machine on the market with a Cell processor will steal the performance crown from the PC, probably permanently, but PCs have seen much bigger and better competition in the past and have pushed it aside every time. In part 4 I explain why the PC has always won and why the Cell may have the capacity to finally defeat it.

In part 5 I wrap it up with a conclusion and list of references. If you don't want to read all the details in parts 1 and 2 I give a short overview of the Cell architecture.

* This article is based on the interpretation of the original 2002 patent application by Masakazu Suzuoki and Takeshi Yamazaki.

Source: http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.html