[KR...]

Cell's designers say their chip, built from the start with the burgeoning world of rich media and broadband networks in mind, can deliver 10 times the performance of today's PC processors.

The new chip is expected to be used in Sony Corp.'s next-generation PlayStation game console.

Cell is said to run at clock speeds greater than 4 gigahertz, which would top the 3.8 GHz of Intel's current top-speed chip.

read the rest here: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=479168

 

[null]

I'm drooling... but I wonder how much of the stuff that they claim will be true...

 

[radicaltothemax]

Yea...I feel as if they are overstating it's abilities

But its compatibility with PPC architecture should mean the G6 will be flying!

 

[Buffalo Bill]

XBOX 2, what?

 

[D-EJ915]

Of course Dvorak thinks Sony's gonna bust it into a fully-fledged computer, at 2Gigaflops they very well could, lol.

Remember: IBM got out of the PC business, and is still working on this

Quote:

IBM Corp. has said it will sell a workstation with the chip starting later this year.

That's gonna haul ass, lol.

 

[jpr703]

Early reports are stating 10x the power of current desktop processors:

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews...07_160318.html

 

[lini]

Well, the thingy sports quite a few cores and has a lot of power for simd operations - it will surely be very fast in certain applications. Upcoming designs based an Cell should be quite interesting.

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

 

[taylor]

I'm not so concerned with the chip itself (My P4 is far from the bleeding edge, and I don't plan on upgrading soon) but rather it's implications on AMD and Intel. It should make them push up the release of their fancy new chips, and more fancy new chips means that the old stuff gets cheaper, which means I can pick up perfectly good Athlons and P4s cheaper. And cheaper processors means I can buy more of them, and if I buy more, I get to make all sorts of fun new servers.

 

[GokieKS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by taylor I'm not so concerned with the chip itself (My P4 is far from the bleeding edge, and I don't plan on upgrading soon) but rather it's implications on AMD and Intel. It should make them push up the release of their fancy new chips, and more fancy new chips means that the old stuff gets cheaper, which means I can pick up perfectly good Athlons and P4s cheaper. And cheaper processors means I can buy more of them, and if I buy more, I get to make all sorts of fun new servers.

The Cell processor(s) won't have much of an impact on the desktop processor market - it's based on the PowerPC (RISC) architecture, so unless they implement an x86 emulation layer (not likely) or a PPC version of Windows is released (even less likely), people will still be using AMD/Intel processors.

On the server side, it's more interesting, as Linux support is more or less a given, and IBM themselves will (probably) be pushing mid/high range servers based on these processors.

As for the performance claims, right now it just brings back memories of early information on the PS2's EE.

~KS

 

[Czilla9000]

Quote:

Originally Posted by radicaltothemax Yea...I feel as if they are overstating it's abilities But its compatibility with PPC architecture should mean the G6 will be flying!

Ya...I hope Apple uses this.

 

[Buffalo Bill]

from the picture it looks like a miniature holographic trading card... what does that do? Is that the un-usable side or the side that's is set onto the motherboard? This technology is amazing, I'm suprised to see it being used first in something that, 20 years ago, was perdicted to go out of fashion, and today, it's primary use demogrpahic are kids. Maybe I'm thinking to hard... I mean, the thing looks like a miniature holographic trading card...

 

[aeriyn]

Judging by what Sony said about the last "revolutionary" processor they used, I doubt this is nearly as awesome as they claim.

 

[D-EJ915]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aeriyn Judging by what Sony said about the last "revolutionary" processor they used, I doubt this is nearly as awesome as they claim.

Don't assume that, IBM's working on this one, and their Power5 processor is amazing.

 

[aeriyn]

Like the article says, unless Microsoft changes windows to allow for a PPC type processor to work (unlikely as they probably have agreements with Intel), CELL is going to go nowhere but in Macs. Which unfortunately will not be enough to actually contend with Intel and AMD.

 

[GokieKS]

It's actually not *that* likely that the Cell processor, at least in it's currently-known configuration, will appear in Apple computers either - since the introduction of the G4, Apple has been pushing heavily the AltiVec instructions, and has been writing the OS and programs to take advantage of it (and persuading 3rd party developers to do the same). Cell, on the other hand, is not known to have a strong AltiVec unit (based on current info, anyway).

~KS