Check out what I found....Maybe it's general chat, but I think it's good herei n Tech Talk

The chip has been many years in development
The Cell processor, which will drive Sony's PlayStation 3, will run 10-times faster than current PC chips, its designers have said.
Sony, IBM and Toshiba, who have been working on the Cell processor for three years, unveiled the chip on Monday.

It is being designed for use in graphics workstations, the new PlayStation console, and has been described as a supercomputer on a chip.

The chip will run at speeds of greater than 4 GHz, the firms said.

By comparison, rival chip maker Intel's fastest processor runs at 3.8 GHz.

Details of the chip were released at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.

The new processor is set to ignite a fresh battle between Intel and the Cell consortium over which processor sits at the centre of digital products.

The PlayStation 3 is expected in 2006, while Toshiba plans to incorporate it into high-end televisions next year.

IBM has said it will sell a workstation with the chip starting later this year.

'Multicore' chips

Cell is comprised of several computing engines, or cores.

A core based on IBM's Power architecture controls eight "synergistic" processing centres.

In all, they can simultaneously carry out 10 instruction sequences, compared with two for current Intel chips.

CELL SPECS

Faster than 4 GHz
256 billion calculations per second
2.5MB of on-chip memory
Able to shuttle data to and from off-chip memory at speeds up to 100 gigabytes per second,
234 million transistors


Why the Cell will get the hard sell 
Later this year, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices plan to release their own "multicore" chips, which also increase the number of instructions that can be executed at once.

The Cell's specifications suggest the PlayStation 3 will offer a significant boost in graphics capabilities but analysts cautioned that not all the features in a product announcement will find their way into systems.

"Any new technology like this has two components," said Steve Kleynhans, an analyst with Meta Group.

He said: "It has the vision of what it could be because you need the big vision to sell it.

"Then there's the reality of how it's really going to be used, which generally is several levels down the chain from there."

Mass market

While the PlayStation 3 is likely to be the first mass-market product to use Cell, the chip's designers have said the flexible architecture means that it would be useful for a wide range of applications, from servers to mobile phones.

Initial devices are unlikely to be any smaller than a games console, however, because the first version of the Cell will run hot enough to need a cooling fan.

And while marketing speak describes the chip as a "supercomputer" - it remains significantly slower than the slowest computer on the list of the world's top 500 supercomputers.

IBM said Cell was "OS neutral" and would support multiple operating systems simultaneously but designers would not confirm if Microsoft's Windows was among those tested with the chip.

If Cell is to challenge Intel's range of chips in the marketplace, it will need to find itself inside PCs, which predominantly run using Windows.


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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4242447.stm

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OMG LOOK AT THE SIZE!!!

This is good for PS fan boys (me). Why do I have to wait till 2006 to get one.

wow, that's a fast chip

That looks pretty cool to me, I just can't wait until Microsoft Reveal the specs for the Xenon, its gona be spectacular, the graphics for both of the consoles will be immense seriously...

That fricken tiny

lets hope he dont lose that

wow umm a little to small i think

yer, i mean... y couldnt they hav made it a bit bigger but even more powerful?

* haydos laughs like a looney cuz he always needs more power........................... muahahahahahhaha

guessing thats gonna get really hot, really quickly. which means noisy fans

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Originally posted by toddy
guessing thats gonna get really hot, really quickly. which means noisy fans

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I heard about this several days ago. Sure that chip is fast, but it heats up a 2x to 3x the rate of any current processor (even overclocked Athlon 64's dont get as hot). I think that they should advance development of the chip before including it in such a major release.

maybe its not so good after all...theres a couple catches

Let's just say that as long as I can have a Halo frag fiesta and listen to music on the same trip, I'm a happy man.

Who cares about the Ghz?

* user2319 goes read tech sites about the new chip...

If I'm not mistaken - it's 32-bits.

* .blade// wonders why Sony is putting last gen technology in the PS3

I would imagine because nobody develops a chip as damn good as that (or as it seems) for just a games console.

We'll probably see it being transferred to PC use soon after its release.  The PC market is far from ready to embrace 64-bit processors fully.

That thing is tinny, its like a "Cheese It", or a chip.  You could smuggle those things so easily...

But the thing is, the consoles will last between 4 and 7 years before the next ones come out - why wouldn't they use a 64-bit chip?

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Originally posted by blade
But the thing is, the consoles will last between 4 and 7 years before the next ones come out - why wouldn't they use a 64-bit chip?

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Originally posted by Jeronimo

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Originally posted by blade
But the thing is, the consoles will last between 4 and 7 years before the next ones come out - why wouldn't they use a 64-bit chip?

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What advantage does 64-bit provide to a game console? We're not going to see the PS3 with 16Gb of RAM are we?

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Originally posted by blade

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Originally posted by Jeronimo

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Originally posted by blade
But the thing is, the consoles will last between 4 and 7 years before the next ones come out - why wouldn't they use a 64-bit chip?

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What advantage does 64-bit provide to a game console? We're not going to see the PS3 with 16Gb of RAM are we?

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A console doesn't need as much RAM as a PC does, but the processor would shorten load times to around 5 sec., and make game play VERY smooth. I'd pay the extra $ for it.

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Originally posted by Jeronimo

Why would it do this? 64-bit processors address more memory per clock cycle, but I wouldn't say this has such an enormous benefit for games at the current time. The gameplay would be plenty smooth as it is. The future implications for 64-bit don't really matter, because after all, once the console is released, its not upgradable.

64-bit is nice, but its not essentially to make a lightning fast console

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Originally posted by blade
It loads MASSIVE games like Half-Life 2 and Far Cry in under 10 sec.

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Originally posted by blade

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Originally posted by Jeronimo

Why would it do this? 64-bit processors address more memory per clock cycle, but I wouldn't say this has such an enormous benefit for games at the current time. The gameplay would be plenty smooth as it is. The future implications for 64-bit don't really matter, because after all, once the console is released, its not upgradable.

64-bit is nice, but its not essentially to make a lightning fast console

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My Athlon 64 3500+ out performs a P4 at 3.8 Ghz. It loads MASSIVE games like Half-Life 2 and Far Cry in under 10 sec.

Could you imagine that in a console?

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Far Cry is a 64-bit game.


And No, my 64-bit out-performs my friend's P4 3.8 Ghz.

For 64-bit to truly take off, you'll need a 64-bit OS, and 64-bit drivers, both of which are currently in beta.

AMD and Intel have different architectures, both of which perform better in different areas. People who perform a lot of media creation would argue that your AMD is not the fastest

This PS3 chip will probably be quite fast of course, but Intel and AMD probably aren't that worried. They both have multi-core chips on the way as well that will be super quick. Of course when you think about the processors in the current PS2, which runs at about 300MHz and still produces some great games, its scary to think of what the next gen consoles will be capable of

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Originally posted by Jeronimo
For 64-bit to truly take off, you'll need a 64-bit OS, and 64-bit drivers, both of which are currently in beta.

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I'm pretty sure that the computer science of 32-bit/64-bit processing applies to all processors

I'm guessing that this new chip (if it really is as good as it looks) will be transferred to PC application after the PS3... at the moment the market for 64-bit processors just isn't big enough for it to become the new market dominator

imagine that... in a corprate enviroment, with thousands of servers connected together, that would be a fast proccessor! and dont even go in to overclocking...

but how would the proccessors be able to transfer data to another proccessor? Would it not be faster to wait to process the data on itself instead, concidering the speed of networked devices/workstations...