IBM, Sony, Toshiba ’super chip’
p2pnet.net News:- Any doubts that the new IBM, Sony, Toshiba axis formed around the Cell ’supercomputer on a chip’ was a wholehearted attempt to steal away the entire PC and server chip market, was eliminated as they revealed more and more of the architecture.
So wrote Faultline’s Peter White last November, also pointing out that on-chip hardware could support security systems for IP protection, in turn meaning, “simple digital rights management software could rely on a concrete identification of each Cell processor and content usage authentication can be based on that. This would be a step beyond the current PC architecture, which has only toyed with a similar idea, and will mean a rush for the big content companies to support Cell based devices.”
He said IBM, Sony and Toshiba had promised a detailed view at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) this coming February in San Francisco.
And he was right.
“At a technical conference here, the three electronics giants say they plan to disclose the inner workings of the chip, which is designed to run portable electronics, home entertainment devices and powerful computers,” says Reuters, going on:
“Aimed squarely at the ‘digital home’ market highly sought-after by Intel Corp., the Cell initiative, which has been in development for more than three years, is viewed by some as a formidable, if fledgling, competitor to the world’s largest chip maker.”
The Sony Playstation 3 will be the first to use Cell sometime next year with Sony and Toshiba releasing HDTVs based on the Cell.
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See:-
steal away - Cell: a whole new industry, p2pnet, November 29, 2004
inner workings – Sony’s “supercomputer on a chip” to make debut, Reuters, February 7, 2004
February 7th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
“The Cell is designed to make sure media, or third party programs, stay exactly where the owner of the media or program thinks they should stay.” “software processes will scavenge the resources of the local Cell instantiation first, but if they find more execution resources over a local area network, or even on the other side of the world, they’ll go and find them, and execute there.”(so someone can use Your processor over the web now?)
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/15734