Playstation 3 chip nears completion : 'supercomputer on a chip'

ZDNet UK ^ | Tuesday 6th August 2002 | John G. Spooner, CNET News.com

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Cell, a radical new processor designed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba and dubbed a 'supercomputer on a chip', could enter production in 2004 .

Collaborating engineers from IBM, Sony and Toshiba have wrapped up the design for the inner workings of a mysterious new chip called "Cell."

The new multimedia processor, touted as a "supercomputer on a chip," is well on the way to completion, IBM says. The chip could end up inside the PlayStation 3, and elements of its design will be seen in future server chips from IBM.

Cell has nearly "taped out" -- an industry term meaning that the chip's pen and paper design and layout have been completed. Soon these will be handed over to engineers in manufacturing, who will craft samples. Meanwhile, engineers have been testing various sub-elements of the processor, both separately and together, before the manufacturing unit connects them inside actual Cell chips. At this rate, commercial production of Cell could come as soon as the end of 2004.

While details remain vague, Cell will differ from existing microprocessors in that it will have multiple personalities. The chip will not only perform the heavy computational tasks required for graphics, but it also will contain circuitry to handle high-bandwidth communication and to run multiple devices, sources say.

Ultimately, Cell will provide a "much more interactive way of delivering content, including advertising, sports and entertainment such as video," to a wide range of Internet-ready devices, said Jim Kahle, director of broadband processor technology and a research Fellow at IBM.

This esoteric approach is possible because a single chip will contain multiple processing cores (hence Cell), a design concept rapidly gaining steam, sources said. Communications features expected to be in the chips will also allow devices to form powerful, peer-to-peer like networks, some analysts believe.

"It's sort of like having a group of handymen who are able to raise the roof (on a building) or do plumbing if it's needed," said Richard Doherty, analyst with Envisioneering.

More than games So far the chip triumvirate of IBM, Sony and Toshiba, which pledged $400m to the project and sent engineers to a joint development center located in Austin, Texas, has been short on details of how Cell could benefit each company.

The processor has always been associated with Sony's PlayStation 3 and peer-to-peer computing, but will do more than allow players to battle opposing characters in multiplayer Internet games, Kahle said.

But Cell will go "beyond gaming to just entertainment in general," Kahle said.

From his own analysis, Doherty believes Cell will create a new extensible computing platform. A set-top box containing a Cell chip could, for example, combine to share processing power with a Cell-powered high-definition television to render the graphics of an animated movie.

"It's like a beehive -- cell components can also be ganged together," he said.

This ability to change rapidly between states will make devices more flexible, but also give the living room a big boost in computing power when devices interact, making for much livelier games, movies and other entertainment-related experiences.

While Cell will provide a lot of PlayStation 3 opportunity for Sony, what will IBM and Toshiba get out of it?

For IBM, Cell represents a technology showcase. The new chip will not only illustrate IBM's design prowess, but it will also display the company's manufacturing expertise. IBM will use its bag of chipmaking tricks, including silicon-on-insulator (SOI) processes and low capacitance dielectrics, to mint Cell.

Analysts say it's not as clear what Toshiba will get from Cell. The company could also use Cell to create new consumer devices such as high-definition televisions. Or, it could use Cell in its components business; Toshiba sells a wide range of components for set-top boxes and other consumer electronics products.

What's behind Cell? While the processor's design is still under wraps, the companies say Cell's capabilities will allow it to deliver one trillion calculations per second (teraflop) or more of floating-point calculations. It will have the ability to do north of 1 trillion mathematical calculations per second, roughly 100 times more than a single Pentium 4 chip running at 2.5GHz.

Cell will likely use between four and 16 general-purpose processor cores per chip. A game console might use a chip with 16 cores, while a less complicated device like a set-top box would have a processor with fewer, said Peter Glaskowsky, editor in chief of influential industry newsletter Microprocessor Report. Some of these cores might perform computational functions, while others could control audio or graphics.

But not everyone thinks this approach is groundbreaking, given that some processors already use inter-chip multiprocessing. "I just don't see that Cell is revolutionary, except in its marketing impact," Glaskowsky said

Indeed, a host of other chipmakers produce chips -- known as system-on-a-chip processors -- that use multiple processor cores to power systems ranging from networking equipment and automobile electronics devices to cellular phones.

IBM entered the dual-processor core market with the Power4, the first server processor to use a multiple-core design. Power4 pairs two 64-bit PowerPC cores on the same processor, linked by a high-speed communications pathway.

But efforts to create similar, more generic multiple-core processors -- including MAJC (pronounced "magic"), a very similar effort by Sun Microsystems -- have missed their intended mark.

The first MAJC chip was originally slated for multimedia processing, a job similar to Cell's. But instead of selling the chip to set-top box and game machine manufacturers, Sun repositioned the dual 500MHz MAJC 5200 chip as a high-end graphics processor for workstations.

Software -- the road ahead While Cell's hardware design might be difficult, it's creating software for the chip that will be the trickiest part of establishing it in the market.

"It's going to take an enormous amount of software development," Doherty said. "We believe the chip architecture is going to be on time and ahead of the software wizardry that is going to really make it get up and dance."

Furthermore, creating an operating system and set of applications that can take advantage of the Cell's multiprocessing and peer-to-peer computing capabilities will be the key to determining if Cell will be successful, he said.

Knowing this, the three chip partners have so far set a goal of crafting Cell as a system, creating operating system and application software alongside Cell hardware.

Cell's designers are engineering the chip to work with a wide range of operating systems, including Linux.

But the chip triumvirate is also developing a purpose-built Cell operating system and applications, which Cell's developers will use to test the chip's various features, such as its multimedia processing capabilities. They are also likely to form the basis of a Cell software development kit and also the Cell OS and applications for end-devices, such as game systems, sources said.

Still work to do While much of the work on Cell is complete, there's still a lot left to do. Together, the hardware and software teams will continue testing the chip's inner workings. The last stage of development work, which still lies ahead, includes completing circuit layout and then eventually testing actual sample chips.

IBM is expected to begin manufacturing Cell as soon as 2004 or possibly early 2005. But as with many other details about the chip, Kahle will confirm only that the Cell project is on track to meet it's a 2005 introduction, which was set forth at its initial announcement.

The rest of the chip's schedule is a secret, at least for now, he said.

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Related Links GDC: PlayStation 3 - The next generation

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

First time I have heard of this development!

To find all articles tagged or indexed using tech_index

Click here: tech_index

[RadioAstronomer]

Hi!!! how are you?? Way cool post! :-)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Been buried with things!

But we are doing fine!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

This sounds more like a specialized rendering engine and communication engine than a general purpose microprocessor like we are currently familiar with!

But with that kind of floating point processing power, it could do a lot of wonderful stuff! Would take a lot of programming talent and time though!

[blam]

"-- an industry term meaning that the chip's pen and paper. design and layout have been completed. "

Ah, 'those were the days' when the chip design could/would be changed by cutting the rubylith with an Xacto knife.

[JameRetief]

Thanks for the ping.

The chips sounds interesting from the little bit said about it. I hope they provide a few more specs in the near future to get a feel for actual performance capabilities.

[realpatriot71]

And after I FINALLY managed to pick up a P2 . . . figures . . .

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

What is the or a rubylith ?

Sounds like you may know a bit about this stuff!

[JameRetief]

Rubylith is/are transparent plastic sheets with a covering of red film on top. Think of the old "3D glasses" when you were a kid, and that will give you an idea.

[blam]

This is ("Wild Man") Robert Widlar leaning on a 'rubylith'. It is clear vinyl covered with another thin transparent sheet of ruby colored vinyl 'stick-on'on top. The sheet was overlayed on top of the hand drawn design on paper and the 'ruby' part was cut out with an Xacto knike, copying the underneath design. The 'rubylith' was then photo 'stepped down' from which all the circuit masks were made.

Robert (Bob) is know as the "father of the linear intergrated circuit" and (was) such a down to earth guy that he would run around and drink at night with flunkies like me. He is a legend in what is now called, "Silicon Valley." Bob passed away at the age of 51. It was his designs that 'made' National Semiconductor.

[blam]

....The rest of the story

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Fascinating, only half way thru it though!