IBM, Sony, Toshiba to reveal ‘superbrain chip’

Financial Times ^ | 2/6/05 | Chris Nuttal

[wagglebee]

Semiconductor designers from International Business Machines, Sony and Toshiba will reveal on Monday the inner workings of a “supercomputer on a chip” they claim could revolutionise communications, multimedia and consumer electronics.

The Cell microprocessor has been under development by the three companies since 2001 in a laboratory in Austin, Texas.

Its unveiling at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco has been eagerly awaited and products containing Cell including Sony's PlayStation 3 games console are expected as early as next year.

Advance reports suggest the chip is significantly more powerful and versatile than the next generation of micro-processors announced by the consortium's competitors, Intel and AMD.

The two leading chipmakers are just moving from 32-bit to 64-bit computing and to dual-core processors essentially two “brains” on a single chip.Cell is understood to have at least four cores and be significantly faster than Intel and AMD chips.

“This is probably going to be one of the biggest industry announcements in many years,” said Richard Doherty, president of the Envisioneering research firm. “It's going to breathe new life into the industry and trigger fresh competition.”

Cell is being presented as an architecture capable of wide-ranging functions and powerful parallel processing that will allow it to distribute its work among the different cores in order to perform many tasks at once.

The consortium says this will improve the quality of video delivered over the broadband internet and increase the fidelity of computer games. The Cell developers have already produced a prototype of a computer workstation with supercomputer capabilities.

High-definition TVs from Sony and Toshiba, a Sony home server for broadband content and the PlayStation 3 all featuring Cell are due to appear in 2006.

Cell's architecture is described as scalable from “small consumer devices to massive supercomputers”.

The consortium's rivals have questioned whether Cell's potential can be realised and are working on alternative multi-tasking methods. Intel has just brought forward to this year the release on desktop PCs of virtualisation technology known as Vanderpool. This can split a microprocessor into any number of virtual processors to perform different tasks across a network from a central location.

IBM is expected to begin pilot production of the Cell chip at its 300mm wafer plant in New York state in the first half of this year.

[ken21]

kewl.

[Kenny500c]

I guess this is why Intel's stock can't get out of its own way.
Caveat Emptor.

[AgThorn]

From IBM.com's website:

---

STI cell processor
Next generation processors

Just as the cells in a body unite to form complete physical systems, a "Cell" architecture will allow all kinds of electronic devices (from consumer products to supercomputers) to work together, signaling a new era in Internet entertainment, communications and collaboration.

The Vision:
Breakthrough microprocessor architecture that puts broadband communications right on the chip.

Markets:

·	Next-generation communications
·	Consumer multimedia applications

STI cell processor defined
Two years ago, Sony and Toshiba and IBM (STI) announced that they had teamed up to design an architecture for what is termed a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design. Code-named Cell, chips based on the architecture will be able to use ultra high-speed broadband connectivity to interoperate with one another as one complete system, similar to the way neural cells interoperate over the brain's network.

Market demand for STI cell processor
IBM expects Cell to define an entirely new way of operating. Cell's underlying architecture will enable it to manifest itself into many forms for many purposes, helping to open up a whole new set of applications. Incorporating this architecture, chips will be developed for everything from handheld devices to mainframe computers.

IBM strategy with STI cell processor
IBM has an unmatched history and capability of building custom chips and believes the one-size-fits-all model of the PC does not apply in the embedded space; embedded applications will require a flexible architecture, like Cell. Cell also brings together, for the first time, many leading-edge IBM chip technologies and circuit designs developed for its servers.

STI cell processor benefits
Cell will take advantage of IBM's most advanced semiconductor development and process technologies. These cells will deliver high performance while consuming small quantities of power.

  Learn more

	Go to: All emerging businesses
	Visit: IBM Microelectronics Web site
	Visit: Microelectronics, Technology Breakthroughs Web site
	Visit: Microelectronics, System-on-a-chip Web site
	Press Release: Sony, IBM and Toshiba join to develop "supercomputer-on-a-chip" for the broadband era
	Press Release: IBM, Sony, SCE and Toshiba to Jointly Develop Chip-Making Process Technology (Tokyo and Fishkill, NY - April 2, 2002)

[dennisw]

IBM, Sony set to release details about the "Cell" processor Tom's Hardware Guide PlayStation 3 Cell chip aims high ZDNet

 

 

IBM, Sony set to release details about the "Cell" processor

By Wolfgang Gruener, Senior Editor

February 3, 2005 - 20:04 EST

Chicago (IL) - Sony and IBM will provide details about their jointly developed Cell processor next week during the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2005. One of the most anticipated products of the year, the chip will likely make its debut inside the next Playstation and later move into workstation and server systems.

IBM and Sony kept information about Cell, the codename for the processor, on a short leash. This however did not prevent the firms from making a splash with a simple announcement late November 2004 that they had powered on the first prototype Cell workstation. Next Monday, IBM and Sony will follow up and will release more details about the architecture and capabilities.

According to program of the ISSCC 2005, Cell is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) that will include multiple streaming cores built on 64-bit Power architecture. The processor is manufactured in 90 nm SOI technology, will offer a "high degree of modularity" and "achieve a high-frequency clock-rate". Cell will take advantage of software that controls data movement and instruction flow to improve data bandwidth and pipeline utilization, IBM and Sony said.

In addition to the processor itself, IBM and Sony are expected to give insight into the memory integration of the platform. Cell will integrate 6-stage pipelined SRAM in 90 nm SOI technology which uses "a conventional 6-transistor memory cell and sense amplifier."

IBM and Sony have created high expectations in the platform by stressing that a one-rack server equipped with a Cell processor system will reach a performance of 16 TFlops - a rating that would put such a system into sixth place of the current Top 500 supercomputer ranking.

"Our collaboration with Sony is leading to a new era of innovation in the semiconductor and computing industries," said Colin Parris, vice president of product management of IBM Systems and Technology Group during a November announcement. "The supercomputer-like processing and performance of the Cell processor-based workstation is just the beginning of what we expect will be a wide-range of powerful next-generation solutions resulting from our joint development efforts."

Sony considers Cell as a potential successor of the current x86 architecture. Industry analysts however are not so sure, if Cell will be able to replace current PC processors. "x86 is now around for 30 years or so. We have seen similar claims and threats in the past, such as RISC. No architecture so far was able to replace x86," said Dean McCarron, an analyst at Mercury Research.

In the end, IBM and Sony will have to deliver on their claims: "It is premature to suggest that companies such as AMD and Intel should be worried about Cell."

Related stories:
A glimpse of the Cell processor

[shrinkermd]

Let us see Shockley was the co-inventor of the transistor, among his group was Noyce who was co-inventor of the integrated circuit and founder with his partners of Intel. While at Intel Noyce brought along Ted Hoff who invented the microprocessor.

Hey! And LeForest invented the Vacuum Tube.

All of this happened quite recently if you are an old man and everyone seems to have forgotten.

[governsleastgovernsbest]

I don't see what the big deal is about a 'super-brain' chip.

Aliens implanted a chip in my brain years ago ;-)

[fat city]

.....and Microsoft is the great nullifier.

[wagglebee]

How right you are. They should market the chip to Apple.

[Richard Kimball]

Sony considers Cell as a potential successor of the current x86 architecture. Industry analysts however are not so sure, if Cell will be able to replace current PC processors. "x86 is now around for 30 years or so. We have seen similar claims and threats in the past, such as RISC. No architecture so far was able to replace x86," said Dean McCarron, an analyst at Mercury Research.

This sounds a lot like whistling past the graveyard to me. I know nothing about internal chip structure, but there's nothing sacred about x86 architecture. Also, much of the adherance to x86 is because of Windows legacy. If the new Windows (Longhorn) is more platform independent, x86 could take a big fall.

[Straight Vermonter]

Apple will be running the "Altair" version of this chip at this time next year.

IBM has every intention of being a real player in the consumer processor business. They are currently making this generation and the next generation chips for Apple and the three major game systems.

Next, they will start to market (through Lenovo) Linux/POWERPC boxes that will blow away Wintel boxes.

[theFIRMbss]

>Semiconductor designers from International Business Machines, Sony and Toshiba will reveal on Monday the inner workings of a “supercomputer on a chip” they claim could revolutionise communications, multimedia and consumer electronics

It will be to this what, say, maybe, The Knack was to the Fab Four boys . . .

[Straight Vermonter]

Ping

[tortoise]

Much more is being made about this chip than is warranted. There will be many applications in which something like an AMD64 core will still school it. This is basically a variant of a very old idea that companies like Texas Instruments have been doing for years in their processors. Take a simple RISC core, and surround it by a dozen or so simple DSP-ish cores to get massive parallelism throughput for a narrow range of apps. Great for simple CPU-bound codes, but would be a very poorly balanced architecture for a LOT of real-world codes.

[dennisw]

Next, they will start to market (through Lenovo) Linux/POWERPC boxes that will blow away Wintel boxes.
_____________

Did you read this or are you speculating? Amazing!

[ProudVet77]

When I was growing up in NYC I knew a older gent who was a technician at DeForest's laboratory in Jamaica Queens.

[JoJo Gunn]

ping

[camas]

connecting to it is the problem

[djf]

You need to buy an adapter...

[Straight Vermonter]

Just heard it in discussions with engineers at work. I'm an IBMer.