IBM introducing Cell chip with services

4

Author: Jay Lyman

Despite the amount of discussion about it, the Cell chip is still very much a mystery to companies, research organizations, or others who may soon be able to put the new silicon from IBM, Sony, and Toshiba to work. More and more is trickling out about the Cell technology — which, while providing the promise of a new processor architecture capable of multiple streams of data, video, audio and more, also represents the unknown as the first chip of its kind.

While the first actual details of Cell came out last November, there remained some question as to where and how the chip — billed as an “unsurpassed, high-performance processor” — would be used. We do know the processor will be the heart of the new PlayStation3. There have also been references to home entertainment and multimedia computing, as well as enterprise computing, but IBM has yet not signaled what the strategy for Cell will be.