The four companies developing the Cell consumer
electronics microprocessor have released first generation versions
of a device not built on technology already in widespread use
today.
Sony, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEI), IBM and Toshiba have
been developing the chip since 2001 and are positioning it as the
engine that will drive future multimedia and home entertainment
products.
The chip is best known for the place it will take in SCEI's
successor to its PlayStation 2 games console, but the companies are
planning to use the chip in products such as high-definition
televisions and home servers.
Samples of the Cell chip will begin rolling off production lines
in the first half of 2005, appearing in Sony and Toshiba products
in 2006. SCEI confirmed the chip's place in its new games console
but gave no production schedule.
Early versions of the chip will be built using a 90-nanometer
production process, similar to that used by Sony for the processors
inside the PlayStation 2 and by other companies such as Intel for
some of its fastest microprocessors.
The 90nm measurement refers to the size of the smallest feature
on a chip's surface. The smaller features mean semiconductors can
be made physically smaller because everything can be made to take
up less space, or more powerful because more can be crammed into a
given space.
For the past few years the four companies have been investing
heavily in developing 65nm production technology. Sony and SCEI
have invested $1.9bn (£1bn) in a three-year joint project to lead
the development.
While plans remain firm for test production of the 65nm
technology in the first half of next year, it will not be mature
enough to match the plans for product commercialisation.
"We have always been trying to find out the best scenario, the
best process technology to be implemented at the time [of
commercialisation], and it has been decided that the 90-nanometer
process will be most suitable for the first generation [chips],"
said Yoshiko Furusawa, a spokeswoman for SCEI in Tokyo.
The four companies have been fairly guarded about the progress
of the chip's development but said that they plan to disclose
details of the Cell in four papers that will be presented at the
International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San
Francisco in February.
The chip will be a multicore 64-bit Power processor with
multithreading and the ability to support multiple operating
systems simultaneously, according to provisional details released.
It will offer a "substantial" bandwidth on the bus between the chip
and main memory and other chips, a flexible I/O system, real-time
resource management and on-chip hardware support for protecting
intellectual property.
Martyn Williams writes for IDG News Service