Cell Inside, the Future of Processor Architecture

IBM recently announced that it would open the design specifications and software libraries for its Cell processor, which is still in development and will debut in the consumer market next year inside the Sony Playstation 3. Dev Hardware explains what is so significant about opening up the hardware, why the Cell processor represents such an incredible leap in computing technology, and how it differs from AMD’s and Intel’s x86 chips:

The simplified architecture of Cell allows the chip to be far cheaper to manufacture than ordinary processors despite all the extra processing units. It will still make the Playstation 3 awesome. If IBM and friends continue to make deals and saturate computers sector by sector, they may be starting a revolution in computer design. Eventually Cell could become viable for not just high-end media devices, but for servers and supercomputers. Hopefully it could even one day provide more rivalry for the PC than Apple has so far.

DevHardware