The Cell has been under fire from a lot of developers for its, well you know the story. Gamasutra interviewed IBM's James A. Kahle, the chip's lead architect. Here's his take on the situation:

Anything besides a single-threaded processor is going to be more difficult...it's the structures that are requiring people to do a lot more up-front planning...Whereas before, I wouldn't say [developers] were lazy, they didn't need to worry about that kind of structures...so there's some adjustment to that, and tools needed, to make that more efficient.

Kahle also stresses that IBM has a very open development system to foster synergy, and that Sony is also doing some work on their own. And then inside his head he mentioned that he really hoped that people would ultimately love the Cell and that his name might go down in history (in the good way).

Q&A: IBM's Kahle Talks Cell, PlayStation 3 Dev Complexity [gamasutra]

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