| IBM discloses details of chip
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When IBM gave a sneak peek at its new Cell microprocessor this week, it was short on specifics about what it calls a supercomputer on a chip. But details are leaking out thanks to a recent patent awarded to IBM and Big Blue's own disclosures for an upcoming conference.
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In a disclosure to the International Solid State Circuits Conference, IBM said it has made Cell chips that run at 4.6 gigahertz and operate at 1.3 volts.
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The Cell chip will be able to communicate with other chips at a speed of 6.4 gigabits per second.
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The Cell chips consist of many low-power PowerPC processors on a single chip, with the number depending on the chip's particular application. For instance, a server might have four groups of cells, while a handheld computer might have one. Each cell has its own connection to memory, a control processor and eight attached secondary processors.
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6.4 gigabits per second is a magic number. It means a 64 bit bus at 100Mhz. It also means that 12 to 30Gb/sec would be possible with simple bus speed multipliers. 64 bit technology promises to bring a whole new wave of computation useful in areas like 3D gaming and rendering for motion pictures, virtual reality, etc.
Here's the related SONY patent # 6,809,734 . | |
