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.
[...]
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.
[...]
The Cell chip will be able to communicate with other chips at a speed of 6.4 gigabits per second.
[...]
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.
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.
I thought I'd heard something about this from sometime early last year... I'd been told by my FATHER, of all people, that he'd heard reports of IBM developing some superchip that would blow away the competition, and it was his opinion that IBM was forced to suspend launching because they had an unfair advantage. Turns out, it was probably because of a lack of a market to support 64-bit hardware and software. But, that is no longer the case.
Since we were reaching the end of the line for current chip architecture, it only makes sense to milk the current structure as much as possible before opening up the floodgates of a 64-bit world to the public. At the same time, I'm both excited and frightened by the possibilities...
The IBM Cell Processor may not be available for desktop computing.
Intel India Development Center (IIDC)
has recently announced development
of single chip TeraFlops processor which
processes trillions of instructions per
second. The Indian team contributed
about 50% of logic circuit development
and phisical design.
Many of the science fiction computer
tasks shown in movies like Star Trek
will become everyday realities in the
near future.
12-02-2004 08:23 PM
