The question is how much?

Aug 25, 2005 17:11 GMT  ·  By

IBM, Sony, Sony Computer Entertainment and Toshiba have joined their forces to publish the specifications of The Cell, some of them known since February, and some from presentations held this month.

The Cell is famous because it will power the next Sony gaming console, Play Station 3, and because it seems that Apple has turned it down, Intel being more appealing to the Cupertino company.

The three companies said the reason why they've published the specs is to attempt to force the adoption of the new processor in electronic products and even in some devices for computers.

The details posted on the Internet offer an in-depth view on the processor's architecture, but also on the specifications for the application programming, Sony, Toshiba and IBM hoping to stimulate the creation of applications for this processor.

Aside from the Play Station 3, IBM has also an agreement with Mercury, a company which will include the processor in its products. With a 64 bit Power PC core and 8 additional cores specifically designed for processing the multimedia applications, The Cell is announced as a significant progress for entertainment and multimedia.

The Cell seems to be the ideal solution for the consumer market which regards the PC only as a source of entertainment and it's ready to adopt any cheaper equipment that improves the PC gaming experience.

Do you want to know how the replacement of the PC looks like? Then try to imagine a piece of equipment fitted with The Cell, a hard-disk with a capacity of 1 TB, a state of the art graphics solution from nVidia or ATI, everything topped with wireless connectivity, lots of RAM and the ability to run on HDTVs.

We are anxious to see how long it will take before AMD and Intel will be forced to give up on their rivalry and ally themselves against The Cell?