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PS3 CPU and GPU chips shift from play to work in new computer board
When Sony, Toshiba and IBM sunk billions of research and development dollars into designing the Cell Broadband Engine, surely the companies had other plans for the processor other than just to power a games machine.
Sony this week said that it will unveil a prototype of a new Cell Computing Board, which is composed of both Cell Broadband Engine and RSX GPU chips – components also found inside every PlayStation 3. Sony plans to show the Cell Computing Board at the SIGGRAPH show from August 7 to 9.
The Cell Broadband Engine chip alone is capable of outputting 230 GFLOPS, and Sony believes that the incorporation of RSX “realizes arithmetic operation speeds beyond” that speed.
The Cell Computing Board is designed to handle industrial applications. According to Sony is expected to demonstrate the technology’s use in real-time processing of 4K images, or extremely high-resolution pictures. The Cell Computing Board is also expected to be used for computer graphics rendering and various physics simulations that take advantage of “multi-thread processing ability” of the Cell/B.E.
The Board will be able to be embedded in a 1U (unit) sized server and mounted on a 19-inch rack, and will consume 400W or less, said Sony.
The Cell Broadband Engine has already been tested with non-gaming applications. Even on the PlayStation 3, the Cell is able to run protein-folding simulations for Folding@home. Other scientific-related applications include medical imaging at Mayo. The processor is also being used for the sake of national security in surveillance technology .
Before Sony may fully roll out its new computer boards, it may have to contend with a lawsuit stakes claim on the Cell’s architecture. Newport Beach, Calif.-based Parallel Processing Corporation is currently suing Sony for patent infringement over the Cell/B.E.
dailytech.com
