[monkey_man2]

In reply to:

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Semiconductor designers from International Business Machines, Sony and Toshiba will reveal on Monday the inner workings of a supercomputer on a chip they claim could revolutionise communications, multimedia and consumer electronics.
The Cell microprocessor has been under development by the three companies since 2001 in a laboratory in Austin, Texas.
Its unveiling at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco has been eagerly awaited and products containing Cell including Sony's PlayStation 3 games console are expected as early as next year.
Advance reports suggest the chip is significantly more powerful and versatile than the next generation of micro-processors announced by the consortium's competitors, Intel and AMD."

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Here's the link to the rest of the article.

[Praxis]

I've posted about this before. Here's a more comprehensive article:
http://www.blachford...ells/Cell0.html
LOTS of info.
If it is as powerful as hyped (not a guarantee), this could theoretically CRUSH the x86 market.

[macnuke]

In reply to:

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LOTS of info.

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no lie there.
but good reading..
thanks for the link.. i missed it your first go round.

m

[monkey_man2]

I wonder if Apple is waiting for this chip for the PowerBook line. Maybe we'll see sort of a leap frog from a G4 to this new processor. If they can make a version that consumes less power but still very powerful, that may go in the power book instead of G5.
But all that is speculation right now...

[Praxis]

Technically, it IS a G5.
It's a G5 processor with multiple cell APU's attached. I can't see it going into a PowerBook, since it'd be bigger than a G5 and just as hot if not more.
The G5 chip in the middle can run at up to 4 GHz, so it should run 2x times faster than a 2 GHz G5 in stuff like emulation. In anything else (Photoshop, video editting, GAMES especially, 3d rendering) the APU's take over, and it should run REALLY STINKING FAST /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif At least 10x faster than a normal G5, if this stuff is to be believed. Likely more.
Don't forget, it's highly scalable. You could put a G5 with 2 APU's in a Mac Mini and one with 8 in a PowerMac. So this will be quite cool.
Apple would probably still call this a G5 though. The G6 will be based on POWER5, I'd guess.

[fontician]

I thought one of the advantages to splitting up all that processing was the reduction in heat. Shouldn't it allow for much faster chips in more compact form factors like Minis and Powerbooks?
But what is POWERS?

[Praxis]

POWER4 is a big honking server processor architecture IBM makes and sells in their high-end Linux servers.
The PowerPC 970 chip (also known as the G5) is a stripped-down POWER4 processor.
IBM is working on the POWER5- if they make a PowerPC 980 chip based off the POWER5, it would likely become the G6.
It turns out I was wrong, though. The PowerPC core in the Cell is NOT a G5. It is actually a new PowerPC processor, and will likely be based off the POWER5, meaning the Cell may actually be the G6.

[dke]

I wrote a deep analysis of the Cell Processor (PDF), and what it could mean to the Mac Market or the PC Market at large. If you think your readers would have interest, here's the links (I have it mirrored).
http://www.igeek.com/CellProcessor.pdf
http://homepage.mac.....pdf-binhex.hqx
http://www.mymac.com...llProcessor.pdf