Originally published February 8 2006
PlayStation 3 to have games that look as realistic as film
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Some claim the PlayStation 3 will usher in the next microchip revolution. The system will use a microprocessor called Cell, which was developed at IBM along with Sony and Toshiba and runs at least ten times as fast as Intel's most powerful Pentium.
Later this year millions of homes will get a new supercomputer for the living room.
Sony's long-awaited PlayStation 3 game console, a slender yet muscular machine the size of a DVD player, performs a mind-boggling 2 trillion calculations per second.
This kind of power, once reserved for seismic exploration and nuclear-weapons design, will let programmers create videogames that look as realistic as film.
Some techies say PlayStation 3, which may debut by midyear and could end up in 100 million homes in five years, will usher in the next microchip revolution.
The Sony system owes its prowess to a microprocessor called Cell, which was cooked up by chip wizards at IBM (with help from Sony and Toshiba) at a cost of $400 million over five years.
The Cell chip, based on a design inspired by supercomputers, runs at least ten times as fast as Intel's most powerful Pentium.
Speed Thrills: Cell Zaps Rivals Cell IBM, SONY, TOSHIBA Transistors (mil) 234 Performance (gigaflops) 230 Xbox 360 processor IBM Transistors (mil) 165 Performance (gigaflops) 77 Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 840 Intel Transistors (mil) 250 Performance (gigaflops) 26 Sources: Microprocessor Report; IBM.
It's a peek into the future," says Craig Lund, chief technology officer at Mercury Computer Systems, which makes medical and military systems and is taking orders for Cell servers.
A quarter of a century ago Gene Amdahl, the famed architect of the IBM 360 computer family, had an ambitious scheme to pack supercomputer power onto a chip but was too far ahead of his time, and his Trilogy Ltd. went down in flames.
In the early 1980s the chip in the Amiga home computer far outraced those in the Intel line, but Intel conquered the market anyway.
All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. NaturalNews.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NaturalNews.com/terms.shtml