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Four years ago, IBM joined Sony and Toshiba to mesh IBM's computer knowledge with the needs of advanced technology manufacturers. Some years ago, the orginal designs put forth in that consortium were found by both Sony and Toshiba to be unacceptable. So IBM, instead of using existing technologies, started from scratch with Sony and Toshiba to define a new architecture. It was announced last Monday.

I am not sure what this new computer does inside. It appears to be many processors that have wide freedoms to access memory. Memory is structured in terms of objects. Beneath the whole system is a massive DMA transfer system. Been watching this project for some month now and still cannot determine what it does.

So where will this processor first appear? Advanced workstations? Supercomputers? Scientific simulators? No. Playstation III.

Who gets the best computers (other than supercomputers)? The kids need better graphics.

Misguided? Well Unix (now better known as Linux) was created so that he could progam a chess game.

I think this is always the case with new technology - the most profit rich segment will always fund the emergence of new technologies. The rest of the world willl reap the benefits when the leading segments pay for the research and deployment, and the cost comes down to make it feasible to use in other segments.

What drove the early days of internet commerce? you know, SSL encryption, online credit card payments, faster servers, bigger pipelines? It was the only segment of the eboom to actually make a profit - internet pornography.

There is always a leading segment that can and will pay for new technologies before they become affordable for the rest of the world.

-sm

Hey smooth! Good to hear from you. Have you been on tour or something?

How about a link or something?

It's called Cell, google is your friend. As far as Sony is concerned it's *the* future for chips, PS3 to supercomputer. There's alot of hype and while there will be soon, nothing to see as of yet, I'll withhold judgement till we can see it in action. It does appear to be some kind of scaleable architecture with massive paralell capabilities in mind but beyond that nothing is known. There are similar systems under R&D @ Intel and AMD. Oh and I think tobisha is coming out with a TV with one of these next year, before the PS3.

This kind of news isn't all that surprising, considering how the market for games and the gaming industry's push for bigger, better, prettier games have almost singlehandedly fueled the improvement of monitors, graphics and sound cards and has certainly helped the push for better internet access (highspeed vs dialup). Supercomputers aren't where the heavy demand is right now as far as computing is concerned; it's still in the gaming market and companies gravitate to where the demand is.

You're kidding right? The applications for serious processing power have never been more broad or more in demand, from data mining to particle simulations to biomed research. Cell is, for the record, designed to scale to supercomputer size clusters. I've attached a sanatised screenshot of something from sony that fell into my lap a long time ago, not sure if it's public or not so I thought I'd play it safe.

I mean by numbers. There aren't quite as many people who need/want/are about to buy a supercomputer as there are people who need/want/are about to buy a gaming computer/console. Sure, there may be a few thousand entities preparing to buy a supercomputer but then there's probably a few hundred thousand, if not a million+, who are preparing to buy a gaming-focused computer or console or the games for said machines.

But the relative profit margin...Pratically all consoles are sold at a loss..
At a PC level gaming does to a fair degree, push things forward but when you're looking at a tech this diverse you have to look bigger than that. The question now is whether they truly have developed a technology that can scale that far effectively.

Consoles are sold at a loss because the people who actually make the hardware components get paid, with profit. It is the console company that takes the loss.

Semantics, sorry if I didn't make it clear. Consoles are a loss-leader, it's a byproduct of the competition and the use of relative price points in the marketing war. Of course they make it up on games. The other factor is that at least Sony and MSFT are as interested in positioning themselves to take advantage of the 'home server' market that will emerge over the next decade and be paramount to controlling a vast plethora of profit-generating servies as it is about game consoles. Somewhere deep inside Redmond and <Sony HQ> are spreadsheets with acceptable loss margins to gain/hold position, estimated average return from games per console and thus allowable loss per console unit sold.