Industry Trio Details 'Cell' Chip

In a joint press release, IBM, Sony and Toshiba offered up the most comprehensive information to date on the upcoming "Cell" microprocessor ahead of February's International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) when the chip's technical details will be disclosed.

Cell is the code-name for an advanced microprocessor that is being jointly developed by the trio for placement in next-generation computing application and consumer electronics.

Monday's release confirmed that the chip has a multicore, multi-thread architecture, made up of a 64-bit Power processor as well was several other synergistic processor cores designed to accommodate "massive" floating point operations. Some other key design concepts include: simultaneous support for multiple operating systems; ample bus bandwidth to and from main memory or companion chips; an on-chip I/O interface; real-time resource management; integrated intellectual property protection, and a 90 nanometer silicon-on-insulator (SOI) construction.

"Less than four years ago, we embarked on an ambitious collaborative effort with Sony Group and Toshiba to create a highly-integrated microprocessor designed to overcome imminent transistor scaling, power and performance limitations in conventional technologies," said Dr. John E. Kelly III, IBM senior vice president, in a statement. "Today, we're revealing just a sampling of what we believe makes the innovative Cell processor a premiere open platform for next-generation computing and entertainment products."

First announced in 2001, Cell was designed from the ground up for rich media processing as well as parallel and distributed computing. Since it is grid-enabled, Cell can tap into high-bandwidth communications networks to distribute processing workloads between multiple devices. As a result, Cell can achieve ultra-scale high performance computing (HPC) more economically than by traditional means.

Sony COO and executive deputy president Ken Kutaragi said current PC architecture is reaching its peak for rich applications, which will require sophisticated 3D user interfaces. "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. In the future, all forms of digital content will be converged and fused onto the broadband network, and will start to explode," said Kutaragi.

Cell was designed to be versatile enough to perform a wide range of tasks from powering real-time game operating systems, PC/WS operating systems, and home entertainment applications in addition to high demand supercomputing tasks.

Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3 console and a line of its high-definition television (HDTV) systems will be powered by cell in 2006. Toshiba also has intentions to launch its own Cell-based HDTV product, an HDTV television set, in 2006. The chip is expected to be put into service throughout Toshiba's consumer electronic product lines.

IBM will begin pilot production on the Cell microprocessor in its East Fishkill, NY fabrication facility in the first half of 2005. Work on the processor began in 2001 when the companies opened a joint development laboratory in Austin, TX.