IBM adds video-game chips to mainframes

The Associated Press ^ | April 26, 2007 | The Associated Press

[Wuli]

ARMONK, N.Y. (AP) — The powerful "Cell" microprocessor that fuels Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 video game console will be available in IBM mainframe computers so those high-performance machines can run complex online games and virtual worlds.

Jointly developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba Corp., Cell is touted as a "supercomputer on a chip" because of its design, which includes one central processing unit helped by eight additional processors working on specific tasks.

Because of that unusual architecture, Cell's use outside of PlayStations has been limited to specialized hardware for graphics-intensive functions such as military or medical applications.

[taxed2death]

Whopper

[TruthFactor]

This is a very good idea and strategy for IBM. Using this to accelerate Virtual Worlds and game-like applications for use in business is going to be a fast growing area in the next 5 years. PS3/Cell has already taken over the folding@home lead as the platform supplying the most computing power by far.

[texas booster]

Cell's use outside of PlayStations has been limited to specialized hardware for graphics-intensive functions such as military or medical applications.

Folding@home is a distributed computing platform that folds proteins to aid researchers in Alzheimer's Disease, BSE and some cancers.

The Cell processor in the PS3 is much faster that any other chip used in the research. While it is the fastest chip out there for this application, the cell is very narrowly focused on certain types of protein functions.

What the Cell processor does, it excels at it. So far it will not completely replace other CPUs in the fight.

[texas booster]

Folding@home currently shows 29,000 active PS3s folding, out of 262,000 active systems.

Those 29,000 PS3 (11% of all systems) contribute over 50% of all teraFLOPS for the Folding project.

The Cell requires specialized programming knowledge, but it was “fairly easy” to port F@H over to the Cell. The Cell processor even beats the high end ATI R580 chip used in the X1900XTX series of video cards.

We do expect that the new R600 video chips from ATI will surpass the Cell in pure speed when released next month.

Check it out here:

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats

[Billthedrill]

So I get to play Super Mario Brothers while I’m doing protein matches? Cool.

[AngelesCrestHighway]

Oh good! now I can play games on the mainframe at work...I don’t need no stinkin P.C....

[GreenLanternCorps]

Would you like to play a game?

Let’s play Global Thermonuclear War.

[taxed2death]

I wuz wondering when someone would figure that out.