New super-speed CPU is on the way

[SeeMoreDigital]

Apparently, at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco yesterday, blueprints for a new chip known as "the Cell" were unveiled.

The chip proposes to offer up-to 10 times the processing power of current rivalling CPU's and has been designed for use with Sony's PlayStation 3 video games console, but could also find its way into other A/V devices too!


Cheers

Source: The Times Tue 08 Feb 05

[mpucoder]

It's about time, Sony has been talking about this for two years now. This is an old post by The Edge (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47873)

[G-Slide]

there was 4 years ago, Sony said PS2 processor will be able to play Toy Story in real time... :rolleyes:

[SeeMoreDigital]

There's more!

According to The Times, a Sony PS3 prototype (with this chip) is being unveiled at the E3 trade show this May :eek:


Cheers

[LordRPI]

Seeing is believing, although I fear a game console will be more powerful than my baby dual 2-ghz G5.

[MaxT]

Mmmmm... /me thinks of reencoding his DVDs at that new console :D :D :D

[SeeMoreDigital]

As The Edge previously posted, the "Core" is claimed to have: -

9 cores
234 million transistors - each one highly tuned to handle A/V data.
Clock speed of over 4Ghz.
Able to handle 4 billion calculations per second.

IBM is also said to have experimented linking "Core" chips together, which allowed them to handle 16 trillion calculations per second... Imagine that :D


Cheers

[LordRPI]

It's time to take a trip to Austin, Texas to go spy on the reasearch a dev teams.

Are these chips going to be fabbed at the fabled IBM East Fishkill plant? My grandparents live in East Fishkill, NY and I'll be visiting them in two weeks :)

[Neo Neko]

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/07/2310237&tid=137&tid=136&tid=1&tid=10

Sorry RPI I don't think you are in luck.

[Doobie]

These cell chips are built with copyright protection in mind. Only one program is allowed to access the same memory area. So, for example, it will be "impossible" to digitally capture decoded information on the way to your monitor or speakers. Unauthorized game cheats are also shut down.

Also, don't expect cell-based computers to really be so powerful. There's a lot of overhead in communicating with other processors, especially of those other processes are not in the same chip package.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Doobie
These cell chips are built with copyright protection in mind. Only one program is allowed to access the same memory area. So, for example, it will be "impossible" to digitally capture decoded information on the way to your monitor or speakers.

It will never be "impossible". Difficult yes. Impossible no. Most of what I have read says it will just be "slow". But then we are both going on speculation ATM. ;)

Originally posted by Doobie
Unauthorized game cheats are also shut down.

They could be. But that would be bad for business. Sure most cheat devices are not licensed. But people do want them. Kill that off and your console just got less popular. Leave the possibility in and there is a hole.

Originally posted by Doobie
Also, don't expect cell-based computers to really be so powerful. There's a lot of overhead in communicating with other processors, especially of those other processes are not in the same chip package.

Well again from what I have read you can expect them to be quite powerfull. At the very least there is a high speed Power5 "equivalent" chip in there. And that is nothing to sneeze at. If that was not enough then it has the other 8 vector processors to coordinate with. And those are nothing to sneeze at either. The entire system is designed for serial processing similar apparently to the non-farmed variety super computer. Though not on the same scale. So at the very least this stands to be as good as current systems. At the very most ot could be a paradigm shift in personal computing/entertainment. Yes there is alot of hype in the air. And any number of things may still go wrong. But I am still pretty excited about these babys. We shall just have to wait and see after the release of the PS3 and first workstation units.

[dragongodz]

a bit more info for those interested

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119602,tk,dn020805X,00.asp

[Mug Funky]

They could be. But that would be bad for business. Sure most cheat devices are not licensed. But people do want them. Kill that off and your console just got less popular. Leave the possibility in and there is a hole.

Neo... this is Sony we're talking about here. they've proven they're not afraid to lose business through annoying protection mechanisms (minidisc anyone? those things are bloody useless)

[Neo Neko]

Yes but this is not just Sony. This is also IBM, Toshiba, and others where the chip is concerned. Also this is the Sony that finally gave in and supports MP3 now.

[shevegen]

Well the mp3 hype is another matter than gaming consoles and chips used therein.