IBM indirectly doing MORE Cell talk ?

[Panajev2001a]

IBM does AS/400 for PlayStation
Angus Kidman
July 30, 2003

FORGET Linux running on the Xbox; how about AS/400 running on the PlayStation?

Despite sounding ridiculously improbable, IBM does in fact have a research team porting its enterprise operating system to Sony's market-leading games console.

"I'm still looking forward to seeing AS/400 running on a PlayStation," said Dr Frank Soltis, iSeries chief scientist for IBM. "I'm not sure there's a big market, but we're working on it."

Sadly for gaming fans with an enterprise bent, there's absolutely no chance that the product will escape from IBM's Rochester laboratory and into their consoles. The project is being undertaken as part of the research associated with IBM's joint development project with Toshiba and Sony to develop processors for entertainment and other applications.

Although game consumers have a rather different set of demands to enterprise managers, the processors developed under the deal will be based on IBM's POWER architecture, which is also used in the iSeries machines which run OS/400.

"There's a common architecture there, so it's not a particularly difficult process," Dr Soltis said.

Australian IT





--------------------

This a good confirmation for Cell, using PPC for its PU ( Processor Units, driving the APUs ) and the intention of IBM of porting its enterprise software to the processor.

 

[MfA]

Funny now that you mention it, Solstis seems to have been saying Cell will definitely be PowerPC based and used in the playstation for quite a while.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Great find, that quote clearly spells PlayStation 3 and Cell... the thing is that this article is a bit old ( compared to the Cell schedule )... they still mention 100 nm for Cell, while Sony's plant ( as well as IBM's own manufacturing lines for Cell ) is more advanced than that...

Sony's Nagasaki #2 and Sony-Toshiba Oita #2 both are going to manufacture Cell chips with 65 nm technology and 300 mm Wafers...

We also announced a significant strategic collaboration with
Sony and Toshiba in March 2001, to build a new highvolume,
low cost 64-bit, PowerPC architecture processor,
code-named Cell. Cell will be used in the Sony Playstation
3 and many other consumer and appliance markets, and
will thus be manufactured in very high volumes measured in
10s of millions over its life. It will be made at our new East
Fishkill, New York fabrication plant, where the POWER5 will
also be built. Cell will use the same advanced IBM
semiconductor technologies: copper interconnect, siliconon-
insulator, low “kâ€￾ dielectric, and strained-silicon in 0.10-
micron geometry, as the POWER5. This powerful, low-cost,
high-volume chip, with strong graphics, will obviously be a
force in consumer and appliance markets, but also has real
potential for use in our low-mid range iSeries and pSeries
servers a few years further out, with great economics if we
do this. So, overall, the next 2 years will see major
convergence of processors across iSeries and pSeries with
versions of POWER4; later, we would potentially have a
common consumer/appliance and low-end server
processor with Cell.â€￾

Also they mention it being low cost, maybe the Cell based chip IBM is going to produce will be cheaper to manufacture ( less PEs and less APUs )... the architecture was designed to scale after-all...

 

[PC-Engine]

Also they mention it being low cost, maybe the Cell based chip IBM is going to produce will be cheaper to manufacture ( less PEs and less APUs )... the architecture was designed to scale after-all...

...and will probably run at 1-2 GHz...

 

[Panajev2001a]

Or maybe more, beacause Sony's configuation might be even faster

 

[PC-Engine]

Or maybe more, beacause Sony's configuation might be even faster

CELL@4GHz (unlikely IMO) = 1 TFLOPS

CELL@2GHz (likely IMO) = 0.5 TFLOPS

CELL@2GHz + 2 times the number of APUs described in the patent (unlikely IMO - die space not infinite) = 1 TFLOPS

 

[Phil]

I remember some uncertainties regarding the core being a PowerPC based or MIPS, which led to some confusion while reading the ps3 patent.

Could it be that licenced MIPS was all along the one to be used for PSP while the PS3 is set to use a PowerPC?

 

[Vince]

quite a while

Factual irregularities:

 

[London Geezer]

ERRR... did anyone notice the "STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL" at the bottom of the presentation.... :?


not really confidential now is it...

 

[Panajev2001a]

quite a while

Factual irregularities:

Can you expand on these "factual irregularities" ?

( You have a PM, BTW )