IBM has begun producing the new 65 nanometer (nm)
version of its
Cell Broadband Engine processor at its East
Fishkill microchip factory in New York.
The Cell chip, which was unveiled in a hail of publicity last
year, was jointly developed by IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba.
It is described as a “supercomputer-on-a-chip”, providing
breakthrough performance for consumer electronics, medical imaging,
design engineering and other graphics-intensive applications.
In addition to serving as the “digital heartbeat” of Sony’s
Playstation3, the chip appears in IBM’s BladeCenter servers.
A team of computer scientists from IBM, Sony and Toshiba had
been secretly collaborating on the development of the Cell
microprocessor at a joint design centre in Austin, Texas, since
March 2001.
The 65nm format of the chip allows Big Blue and its partners to
fit more transistors on it, boosting performance without leaking
power.
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