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| Will IBM's Cell Processor Launch An Innovation Boom? |
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posted by Editor
on Thursday February 16, @06:37PM
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This article in Forbes discusses how IBM's Cell Broadband Engine processor could reshape entertainment and launch an innovation boom across the industry when it ships in Sony's Playstation 3 later this year. Will Cell truly change the rules of the game for consumer computing? Maybe. IBM has certainly succeeded to do this before, most notably with the introduction of the PC in 1981. And the fact that Cell is difficult to program won't be much of an impediment for developers if the market is big enough (as proven by their willingness to put up with the infamous 640 KB barrier to access the huge base of MS-DOS users). But it's not clear that Cell's power consumption will be low enough for it to be used in mobile computing devices, which is where the greatest volumes will be. Also, Cell is not compatible with the POWER processor used by Microsoft's Xbox, even though both are based on the same architecture. This will inhibit the availability of applications that can run across both platforms. While such fragmentation may be just fine with game suppliers, who prefer to use a "divide-and-conquer" marketing approach in delivering their software, it could prevent a PC-like, industry-standard ecosystem from forming around Cell.
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