Wednesday February 10, 2010 4:10 AM AEST

Atomic MPC > News > Build > CPUs, Motherboards & RAM > The Cell processor dies a painful death

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.

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10 Comments

Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.

seab4ss Nov 24, 2009 10:51 AM	I reckon they will keep shrinking and use it for mobiles computers/appliances etc. Isnt the chip that was in the sega megadrive now in things like hair dryers etc?
TheFrunj Nov 24, 2009 10:55 AM	How many appliances need this kind of processing grunt? The ARM A9 Cortex, Intel Atom or even NVIDIA's Tegra are all low-power chips, but they're more than capable of all processing tasks the average consumer product would need (search for them on the site, there should be info on most of those). -JR
thesorehead Nov 24, 2009 2:57 PM	lulz Hardly surprising though: looks like Sony's overhype surrounding the PS3 managed to leak onto its partners after all.
Rion Nov 24, 2009 3:26 PM	Surely there are still applications for the Cell in high end computing? Sure everyone is now about effeciency but there still has to be some use for completely obscene power. Especially from IBM which I find surprising on this reversal.
Mademan Nov 24, 2009 3:51 PM	Given that even quad-core processors have struggled to find relevancy, it's little wonder that an 8 core processor has stuggled to find a use.
SlickGrunt Nov 24, 2009 4:58 PM	From the fudzilla link "The Cell inspired both Intel and AMD to create the Larrabee and Fusion respectively. In other words, one or more general purpose cores fused with a number of stream processing units." I never would have thought that. perhaps that, itself, has some part to play? Next gen consoles and whatnot using AMD Fusion or Intel Larrabee or whatever they would name it.
Jeruselem Nov 25, 2009 10:37 AM	So what is the PS4 going to use?
Begbie Nov 26, 2009 10:57 AM	Wasn't there a similar sort of Hype around the PS2 when it was released? Nothing like sony to make a big claim and not back it up ;)
.:Cyb3rGlitch:. Nov 26, 2009 3:56 PM	Sony should have invested in a better GPU for the PS3 instead of the Cell processor. It's absolutely unnecessary.
12345 Nov 28, 2009 6:35 PM	sony needs more ram!

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Issue: 109 | February, 2010

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