Cell is shorthand for Cell Broadband Engine Architecture commonly abbreviated as CBEA.
Cell microprocessor is a result of a US $400 million joint effort by STI, the name of the formal alliance formed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM, over a period of 4 years
Cell is a heterogeneous chip multiprocessor that consists of an IBM 64-bit Power Architecture core, augmented with eight specialized co-processors based on a novel single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) architecture called Synergistic Processor Unit (SPU), which is for data-intensive processing, like that found in cryptography, media and scientific applications. The system is integrated by a coherent on-chip bus.
The basic architecture of the Cell is described by IBM as a "system on a chip" (SoC)
One cell working alone has potential of reaching 256 GFLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second). (Home PC can reach 6 GFLOPS, if you use a good graphics card)
The potential processing power of cell blows away existing processors, even super computers
The Cell architecture is based on the new thinking that is emerging in the world of multiprocessing. The industry focus has shifted from maximizing performance to maximizing performance per watt. This is achieved by putting more than one processor on a single chip and running all of them well below their top speed. Because the transistors are switching less frequently the processors generate less heat and since there are atleast two hotspots on each cheap the heat is spread more evenly over it and thus is less damaging to the circuitry. The Cell architecture breaks ground in combining a light-weight general-purpose processor with multiple GPU-like coprocessors into a coordinated whole Software adoption remains a key issue in whether Cell ultimately delivers on its performance potential.
Some Cell statistics:
Observed clock speed: > 4 GHz
Peak performance (single precision): > 256 GFlops
Peak performance (double precision): >26 GFlops
Local storage size per SPU: 256KB
Area: 221 mm²
Technology: 90nm SOI
Total number of transistors: 234M
Cell is optimized for compute-intensive workloads and broadband rich media
Applications, including computer entertainment, movies and other forms of digital content
The first major commercial application of Cell was in Sony's PlayStation 3 game console
Toshiba has announced plans to incorporate Cell in high definition television sets.
IBM announced April 25, 2007 that it will begin integrating its Cell Broadband Engine Architecture microprocessors into the company's line of mainframes
In the fall of 2006 IBM released the QS20 blade server using double Cell BE processors for tremendous performance in certain applications, reaching a peak of 410 gigaflops per module
Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. has released blades, conventional rack servers and PCI Express accelerator boards with Cell processors
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_microprocessor
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200502/05-0208BE/index.html
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