Cell means 'Goodbye Mr. chip'
Yomiuri Shimbun
Toshiba Corp., Sony Corp. and IBM Corp. expect to revolutionize the home electronics business as early as the end of next year through a project to jointly mass-produce a cutting-edge semiconductor that will be widely used in such devices as next-generation digital appliances and home-use game consoles, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Wednesday.
The advanced microprocessing unit (MPU), referred to as a "Cell," is expected to be put on the market as the next generation of integrated semiconductor. The circuit width will be half that of currently mass-produced advanced chip models.
The circuits of advanced chips currently used for such devices as personal computers and mobile phones measure 130 nanometers in width. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.
The three firms developed a technology enabling the mass production of circuits as small as 65 nanometers wide, providing a leap forward from the current so-called next-generation semiconductors that feature 90-nanometer-wide circuits. Such next-generation chips only went into mass production last year.
Early this fiscal year, Toshiba began building a semiconductor production line at its plant in Oita, the firm's base for large-scale integrated chip production, spending about 200 billion yen. The new, more advanced semiconductor Cells are expected to be mass-produced at the plant.
A senior Sony official said the company is considering an investment in the Oita plant and talks are reportedly under way between the two firms with Sony to bear the cost of manufacturing Cells at the plant for its own use.
The functional capacity of the Cell will be up to 10 times larger than conventional MPUs. The Cell is expected to be used in all kinds of digital and network peripherals, ranging from DVD recorders and digital televisions to computerized air conditioners and refrigerators.
Sony is said to be planning to install the Cell in successive models of the popular Playstation 2 game console produced by its affiliate, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Thanks to the Cell's high data-processing capability, users will be able to instantly load large volumes of moving image data through broadband transmission or recreate computer graphic images as smoothly as live-action images.
The volumes of information exchanged between devices will also increase by a large margin. The Cell is expected to drastically enhance the distribution of films, television programs, games and other data via the Internet.
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