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.