so will everyone have to buy a new ps3 or can we ship it back to get an upgrade is my question

Holy shit!

That should actually be Sony, IBM, and Toshiba who developed the Cell Processor.

@hero76: Probably won't get mass produced until PS4, or it'll hit PCs first. They announced a prototype of it. They waved the Cell processor flag for sometime before PS3 even launched. This might be Sony going, "PS4 is coming in 2010 to 2012."

That sounds really awesome, but how much will it cost?...

Read: Not for games.

Bo0o0o0o this is what the damn PS3 needed... wow did they release this thing too late or is this a hardware revision due to heat? Who knows?

If not for game then what is it for? Boffins of course!

@Lyme: Like the PS3!?

LOLOLlolLOlolL1!!!

I kid of course. Can't wait to get me some Heavenly Sword.

Why merge it w/a graphics card that is quickly becoming outdated(as all graphics cards do). I wouldn't want a processor that locked me into a specific graphics card selection.

It does seem rather dumb to integrate it with the RSX, which has been completely outclassed by this year's pc graphics cards. Maybe it is intended for PC's that require scientific computing without fantastic graphics.

I have wondered for some time whether Sony or some 3rd party would make a computer based on the cell processor. But, if they did, it would be a very short period of time before someone figured out how to get PS3 images running off of its hard-drive, effectively killing the inherhent advantage of the PS3. Why buy a very limited (in terms of upgradability) game console when you could create a true PC that could run PS3 games?

I'm still waiting for my PS2 cruise missile guidance supercomputer.

@cactaur: The one that Sadam was going to build using illegally imported PS2s???

Linux based OS software such as ubuntu, red hat, yellow dog etc will tear up Ms if they are fully programmed for this so called pc. Cant wait to see it. Ubuntu+Beryl is da S$%t. Yellow dog on my PS3 is really cool.

Uhm... I just wanted to tell all of you that this is about a new board for rack mount servers... It has nothing to do with the PS3... it's a case of RTFA (Read The F*cking Article!)

@Consolcwby: Servers? You mean that... Cell controlled toasters are not around the corner?

The "Cell Computing Board"'s theoretical performance of 230Gflops looks pale in comparison to a single Geforce 8800GTX's 518.4 Gflops. Fusing the CPU with the GPU is something AMD and Intel are working on for entry level PCs in the next couple of years.

@Heyyou27: Isn't the cell a little more general purpose therefore a little more useful? Which leads to my question of how good it is at games?

Ok I'm getting confused here. The PS3 is a cell and RSX chip combo. It sounds as though this new chip is simply a...well....cell and RSX combo!?!

The difference er it's now on a single chip. I wonder if it comes with the PS3 operating system so that it can play PS3 games. Naw that would actually make the PS3 redundant wouldn't it.

@Heyyou27:

I checked and yep you are right. A single 8800 apparently outclasses the cell by a huge margin. I think that qualifies as an ouch moment for all of the Sony fanboys out there. Sorry guys you've been outclassed by a graphics card.

So when will we hear of a PC powered by a Cell processor? Or am I dreaming too much?

Seriously, call me back when the technology is available for PC enthusiasts to take advantage of as this is not going to help the consumer in the end at this rate.

Will the this new cell-combo include branch-predction? out-of-order execution? w/o out those it's just another heavily compromised cpu (just like the current cell iteration!) ... Intel will be all over the place with this ... heh!

If I read the article correctly, these still aren't "PC"s in the true sense of "Personal Computer," because they are meant for rackmount.

If this is the case, IBM has been selling Cell-based blade servers since September of last year.

@penhalion: "I checked and yep you are right. A single 8800 apparently outclasses the cell by a huge margin."

8800 is only optimised (sort of) for game graphics, not scientific computing. I guess folding@home shows that CELL is quite good at it. But, of course, it all comes down to software/drivers you use, and nvidia is still struggling to perfect the 8800 performance in games, so they can't be arsed to bother with other stuff. At least not until 9800 comes out this november.

What would the point of a budget, in-order CPU be in a PC? I wouldn't be much faster than a Pentium 1 in most tasks, except for Floating Point instructions...The Cell is inherently insuitable for a PC environment where it needs to do more than just fold proteins.

Max; if you check the Folding@home statistics you will see than the GPU client, designed to run on DX9 graphics cards is about on par with the PS3 client in terms of performance. The nVidia G80 GPU (8800 cards) is a heap faster in Floating Point than the currently compatible ATI gpu's, but unfortunately nVidia haven't provided a compatible driver yet to the Folding@home team.

The Cell's only impressive feature is its Theoratical Floating Point Performance, and even that has been beaten by PC GPU's about a year ago. Sony is very clever in only picking FPU intensive tasks to show off the power of Cell, but for a PC you will needs more than that; you will need out-of-order, complex CPU designs (preferably with multiple identical cores, and large amounts of cache memory)...Something CELL cannot provide...

4D? I sense more re-makes on that for a quick buck on graphics. Anyways, good news!

Weird.. Sony and Toshiba collaborate on this chip but can't come to an agreement for HD discs? Lame.

@tinnitus: Seeing as the site specifically makes reference to graphics based applications, the Geforce 8800GTX would easily walk all over it. The 8800GTX also supports a C-language based development tool so it could in theory used for more than just graphics.

@Jarol: The Cell isn't even x86 based so you wouldn't be able to use it for anything but certain Linux distributions. The chip doesn't support out of order execution or branch prediction, so it wouldn't do much good in the PC world.

WOW man you guys just found out the GPU crush the cell? I said that like ages ago when folding@home was being thrown up in every ones face...LOL Oh well... SUCKAZ!!!!

Really all that more powerful stuff sucked you guys right in there. Hey you still gets some cool games and epic trying to fix there engine because of a half way realized idea for a chip. Put simply SONY could not afford to make the real cell CPU. Only IBM and Intel have that type of money and if you think IBM is stupid enough to give them real power 5 or 6 tech with out major cash then you are crazy. The cell was IBM way of playing with GPU tech to increase FP performance once GPU started to get dropped into multi CPU cores. Like I said before GPUs are the real cell tech... it is already scalable ranging from 320 - 70 cores if you want to count them.

Like I told you before had SONY did a nintendo* and waited...LOL they would still be number one! Hell they could have just stuck two PS2s together and been done with it as it is still selling better than the PS3...LOL

*(By nintendo simply upgrade there tech while keeping the ps2 base and expanding it)

Some times I feel like SONY did not make the PS3 to win this round. Thats why they keep talking about the 10 year thing. By that time blue ray will be a standard and that will be a huge win for them. They have like 2 to 3 more years with the PS2 before it dies... yet really they may have longer than that. The SONY fans will be there no prob they are not going any where. Some companies love SONY and are still scared of the money printing nintendo cats...LOL

Seriously GPU tech and CPU tech will be ridiculous come the next gen. So much will be affordable then. Talk about a level playing field...

Oh yeah this chip is going to court.... Weird huh?

[www.next-gen.biz]

@RUNNA:

I think you are on to something about the PS3's longterm goal. As unorganized as they were at E3 05, 06 it seems they scurried to get a console together fearing the competition moving in on market share. The PS2's life is as strong as ever, and Sony knew this. I wouldn't doubt that Sony would have never released the PS3 yet had MS and Nintendo had no plans for consoles to be released when they were. They could have held on to the PS2. It sickens me the plan of them including the BluRay player tho, because its totally obvious their intentions there are just to win over their first movie format. But, I know saying that is flamebait so I won't eleborate.

Please don't flame people.. its just a harmless theory that probably isn't true, but does make sense. Keep it friendly :)

@Cellien: No one will flame you and besides who said you have to even read the flames they are always the same any way.

Blue ray winning the format war will more than get SONy more money it is needed in the next gen. Lots of money will get thrown at the next gen the way things are going. R&D will cost way more as all the big boys will move to real multi core systems. Then you have the added cost of artist making all of those nice normal polygon counts. Another thing sony is doing is increasing their first party development presents... you may not really see it in the next coming years but I'd say in the last days of the PS3 you will. I think the big players realize why nintendo has always out sold them software wise.

So basically SONY can loose this round and be sitting pretty nice. You get some cool games and you also get to help out sony's next r&d bill. Really if you are a SONy fan this is needed. The direct x 10 stuff is what the futures is. Maybe some thing will come along and use the brute force way less but it will still have shaders, it's sorta like having a 2d drawing app and no layers ya know.

SONY will be fine, most hardware buffs know about the issues and really the people screaming they need blue ray are the people that SONY needs to cater to. They better get some compression going so you can have a movie and a video game on the same disk. That right there is the key to making people upgrade.