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07-Aug-02, 03:11pm
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Playstation 3 chip nears completion
14:07 Tuesday 6th August 2002
John G. Spooner, CNET News.com
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.
Playstation 3 chip nears completion
14:07 Tuesday 6th August 2002
John G. Spooner, CNET News.com
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.