IBM disclose today details of a project to put a supercomputer on a chip.
Code-named the ``Cell'' chip, it has been in development by IBM, Sony and Toshiba since 2001 for Sony's next-generation video gaming console. But the chip also has been designed with a grander purpose -- to become a core chip for devices ranging from supercomputers to network servers.
``We have a supercomputer on a chip,'' said Jim Kahle, an IBM Fellow who heads up the design team of 400 engineers at IBM's facilities in Austin. ``This will be significantly faster than previous types of game systems and should provide new effects.''
A gaming console with that kind of supercomputing power will give video games a true cinematic feel, especially when played on a high definition television screen, said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research in Tiburon.
``If the story and the action is good enough, you will forget you are playing a game, you will be part of a movie,'' Peddie said.
Kahle said IBM will not divulge any information about the chip's performance. But he did tout the speed of a prototype workstation, which is designed around the Cell chip. IBM said a Cell-based workstation will reach a supercomputer-like performance of 16 teraflops, or trillions of floating point calculations per second. By contrast, one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, the NEC Earth Simulator, hit a peak speed of 36 teraflops this year.Wowzers!
``We are talking about some very intense compute systems that will be on par with some of the fastest in the world when we start rolling these out,'' Kahle said.
From my corner of the universe, game console evolution has been kind of overrated; hype and not much else. Incremental steps forward, not really justifying the prices.
But this! If it lives up to 10% of the expectations in this story alone, it will revolutionize home gaming. The fluidity and detail of a DVD, with increased capabilities for characters and plots!
I think I know what's for Christmas 2006.
No comments:
Post a Comment