Sony, Toshiba and IBM prepare to reveal Cell details

The three partners involved in the development of the Cell processor, which will power the PlayStation 3 along with a number of other devices, have unveiled new details about the technology behind the chip.

IBM, Sony and Toshiba are collaborating on the creation of the CPU, which is designed to power next-generation media devices ranging from televisions and game consoles to high-end workstations for the digital content industries.

The three companies have today confirmed a number of key details about the architecture of Cell - most notably, that the chip comprises a 64-bit processor core from IBM's Power family, along with a number of processor cores which work in parallel to provide incredible floating point power.

The chip, which is designed to operate either stand-alone or as part of a larger parallel processing environment, also includes a number of other key features in its architecture, such as the ability to support multiple operating systems at once, a real-time resource management system, and on-chip security features for protecting intellectual property rights.

As well as Sony's PlayStation 3 console, IBM is planning to launch a Cell-based workstation offering 16 teraflops of processing power in the first half of 2005, while Sony is planning to launch home servers for broadband content and HDTV systems based on Cell in 2006, and Toshiba also hopes to launch a HDTV using the technology in 2006.

Full details of the technical aspects of the chip are expected to be announced at the International Solid State Circuits Conference, which will be held in San Francisco in early February 2005.