IBM Debuts ‘Cell’ Chip

UPDATED: IBM and some of its partners introduced a new
semiconductor chip today that is expected to disrupt some traditional computing architectures.

In concert with design partners Toshiba, Sony Computer and its parent
company Sony , IBM detailed its jointly developed
microprocessor — code-named Cell — at the International Solid-State
Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco this week.

Touted as a “supercomputer on a chip,” the processor is about the
size of a pushpin (221 mm) but features floating point performance,
support for simultaneous multiple operating systems, and clock speeds
greater than 4 GHz.

“With Cell opening a doorway, a new chapter in computer science is
about to begin,” Ken Kutaragi, executive deputy president and COO at
Sony, said in a statement.

The companies, which have been working on the designs since 2001,
said the chip should be able to power the gamut of applications found in
small household
consumer electronics devices. IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba said they
would promote a very wide range of Cell-based products including home
entertainment systems and supercomputers.

“But Cell isn’t meant just for fun and games. It’s also intended for
professional graphics workstations and other computing devices, which
makes people wonder what kind of magic will be bottled in the chips,”
Tom Halfhill, a senior analyst with semiconductor research firm In-Stat
wrote in a newsletter issued last week.

IBM said the Cell chip is a multi-thread, multicore
architecture that will support multiple operating systems, including
Windows, Unix and Linux, as well as real-time consumer electronics and
game operating systems. The chipmakers said they are
also confident the chip can tackle multi-channel high-definition
broadcast programs, as well as mega pixel digital still and movie images
captured by high-resolution CCD/CMOS imagers.

Built using 90 nanometer silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, the
Cell chip will also have substantial bus bandwidth to and from the main
memory; a flexible on-chip I/O (input/output) interface; real-time
resource management system for real-time applications; on-chip hardware
in support of security system for intellectual property protection; and
energy saving technology.

Memory chipmaker Rambus said IBM and partners will
use its XDR memory and FlexIO processor bus interface hardware. The
company said the memory and processor bus interfaces designed by Rambus
account for 90 percent of the Cell processor signal pins, providing an
unprecedented aggregate processor I/O bandwidth of approximately 100
gigabytes-per-second.

Halfhill said consumer applications are just the tip of the
iceberg for the Cell uses. After a thorough analysis of the patents issued for the Cell
chip by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Halfhill said the
processor has the potential to be very disruptive.

“We believe the ‘new programming model’ is a way of binding program
code and data together in special bundles, perhaps as part of a new
instruction-set architecture (ISA),” Halfhill said. “The ‘734 patent
describes a much larger register file and other novel architectural
features not found in any PowerPC chips today. If Cell isn’t a wholly
new architecture, it may at least be a significant extension of PowerPC.

Halfhill said the name Cell derives from the architecture’s “software
cells,” which combine program code, data, global identification numbers,
and other metadata in formatted bundles.

“Software cells can freely migrate in search of execution
resources — whether those resources are in a single chip, spread across
multiple chips in a system, or distributed across multiple systems on a
local or global network,” Halfhill said. “With the Cell architecture,
clustering and grid computing are native concepts. It’s a new parallel
programming model for a fast-approaching age of universal
multiprocessing.”

IBM has said it plans on pilot production of Cell microprocessors at
its 300mm wafer fabrication facility in East Fishkill, N.Y. during the
first half of 2005. Big Blue said it has also tagged the processor for a
workstation it is developing with Sony Entertainment.

Sony said it plans on debuting the processor in home servers and
high-definition television (HDTV) systems in 2006. Toshiba said it
expects to launch its first Cell-based product, a high-definition
television (HDTV), around the same time frame.

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to our newsletter.

Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

News Around the Web