IBM's New Cell Chip Not Just for Games
Posted on: Tuesday, 28 June 2005, 18:00 CDT
Jun. 28--IBM's new Cell processor, known so far as the brains inside the upcoming PlayStation 3 system, can do more than play games.
Think about sharper radar displays, higher quality medical scans or more detailed subterranean charts, IBM Corp. and an East Coast maker of computer imaging systems say.
Mercury Computer Systems and IBM this morning announced a deal to get serious with Cell. Massachusetts based Mercury wants to embed the chip in medical, commercial, industrial and defense products that use computerized images.
The multi-year contract is the first use of the speedy Cell chip outside the video gaming industry, IBM said. It also is a major pact, but the dollar size was not disclosed.
The Cell processor won note earlier this year as the engine for Sony Group's PlayStation 3 video gaming console, due to come on the market next year.
IBM and Japanese giants Sony and Toshiba Corp. developed the chip over four years in a $400 million project. The main IBM work was done at its Austin, Texas, plant. But anywhere from 90 to 120 engineers from IBM's Engineering & Technology Services unit at Rochester also designed parts of the microprocessor.
That group, the second-largest IBM contingent in the project, drew out essentials such the channels that pass information back and forth among nine processing "cores" on the chip, said Peter Hofstee, chief scientist for Cell said in an interview.
The design combines a main core, based on IBM's Power processor, with eight "synergistic" cores in a single processor, said Hofstee, who is the chief architect for the synergistic elements.
Mercury will use Cell's enormous computational ability to enhance digital images in electronics ranging from radar to X-rays. Cell can process more than 200 billion calculations per second. Mercury expects a 10-fold improvement in processing on its systems with Cell, an IBM spokeswoman said.
He said within the next few months, IBM also plans to publish the detailed design Cell to allow software companies to write programs for it.
Mercury specializes in embedded systems or those driving a single-use machine. In effect, the company will build products around the faster Cell chip, Hofstee said.
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Source: Post-Bulletin
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