The Cell processor dies a painful death

The ill-fated Cell chip is put away for good.

The Cell processor, used effectively exclusively in Sony's PS3, was touted by the designers of the chip as being the next wave of computing - touted, of course, because both IBM and Toshiba had a large stake in its success.

With an announcement from IBM's Vice President of Deep Computing comes news that the Cell processor isn't going to be used for any large-scale computing applications at IBM, seemingly reversing the company's stance on the wonderchip.

Even Toshiba had initial plans to include the Cell processor in a cut-down dual core version as a coprocessor in their premium laptops, supposedly enabling on-the-fly decoding and encoding of HD video content - but a retail product is yet to be seen in any real volume, and probably never will be.

The Cell chip and its eight processing cores will remain the chip of choice for the PS3 for the forseeable life of the console, but all the signs are suggesting that this is where the legacy of Cell will end.

Head to Fudzilla for a little more behind the chip's demise.