The rumor sprang from an article on German website Heise Online, which posted a story about an interview with IBM's vice president of deep computing, David Turek, in which he indicated that the development of the next version of the Cell processor with dual PowerPC processors and 32 SPEs (Synergistic Processing Elements) had been halted. This led to many articles declaring the Cell processor dead.

Our immediate concern upon reading this, was the fate of the Sony PlayStation 3, so we dropped a line to IBM. Spokesperson Ron Favali returned our call and immediately assured us the PlayStation 3 was safe.

"As long as we have a contract with Sony we will continue to manufacture Cell processors for use in the Sony PlayStation."

Update: We also inquired at Sony, and received this response from Julia Han of SCEA corporate communications: "The IBM reports do not have anything to do with the cell chip used in the PS3. There will be no impact to the PS3 business."

So don't worry about Sony running out of chips anytime soon. IBM has them covered. As for the fate of the Cell processor technology? Well that will live on as well says Turek, as "the core technology of the Cell processor will continue to proliferate throughout the IBM product line."

Turek wouldn't comment on upcoming product announcements regarding the future of the Cell.

SC09: IBM lässt Cell-Prozessor auslaufen [Heise-Online via Fudzilla, Gizmodo]

Well, that's all well and good, but a different gaggle of experts (Juniper Research, this time) are casting worried glances at the non-iPhone end of the market. Apparently Java game development has "flatlined across North America and Western Europe," although the quoted jump from $5.4 billion in 2008 to more than $10 billion by 2013 doesn't sound that flatliney.

Ironically, it could be the iPhone's fault. "The revenue share offered by Apple to games publishers is incredibly attractive," said the report, "The danger is that if operators do not respond with a similar business model, publishers faced with low margins may simply exit Java completely"

Sales of mobile games have "flatlined" - report [GamesIndustry.biz]

The smaller processor uses around 40% less power than the current 65nm chip and generates proportionally less heat. It also costs substantially less to manufacture.

It would be lovely to think that Sony will pass these savings on to the consumer, but given the less than stellar sales of the PS3 we may just see a smaller, more slimline incarnation of the console at a similar price point.

Cell Processors to Go 45nm in '09; Smaller, Cheaper PS3s Likely to Follow [Gizmodo]

The Sony marketing coup disguised as purchasing request reads "The processors in the Sony PlayStation 3 are the only brand on the market that utilizes the specific cell processor characteristics needed for this program at an acceptable cost." We can only assume they're going to be running something fairly code intensive in a Linux install or that an announcement about the the War On Giant Enemy Crabs is imminent.

Presolicitation Notice: 70 — 40 GB Console Systems [FBO.gov via PS3mods]

IBM shrinks Cell to 45nm. Cheaper PS3s will follow [Ars Technica]

Wait, so we can't get a solid framerates in Madden but my PDF files are in danger of being exposed to thousands of leet haxorz from the evil menace Anonymous? Priorities are out of whack, people.

The PlayStation 3's relatively low price could mean password cracking and encryption busting could become much more commonplace, warns Breese. He issued a warning to software makers to increase their security efforts based on the findings.

PlayStation a hacker's dream [The Age via Game|Life]

He echoes Gabe Newell's assessment of the PlayStation 3 hardware at certain points, writing that "code needed to make the PS3 work is most likely only useful to you on the PS3" and that the reasons for dedicating the effort to optimizing the hardware are dwindling. He means the fact that PS3 sales are in the basement.

Booth later writes that "Sony let their hardware be designed by a comity [sic] of business interests", dooming it to third place in the current generation forever.

As merely a consumer, not a developer, it's certainly difficult to disagree that the current third-party offerings on the PlayStation 3 are disheartening. Games perform worse, they're often delayed and they are often devoid of features their predecessors or Xbox 360 counterparts ship with.

PS3 misconceptions and spin [Blog of Booth - thanks, Scott!]

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.

Balking? He must be referring to dropping sales of the PS3, which sold just 82,000 consoles in April according to NPD sales data released yesterday and the downward trend in weekly Japanese sales. The fix? Price drop! Pachter told GI "It's more likely than not that they will break with tradition and cut prices below manufacturing costs."

Lordy. All this talk of gloom, doom and price drops. Can Sony get enough of the games shown at this week's Gamers Day and find room financially for a price drop before the console reaper takes it to videogame heaven? Wait a second, Pachter, weren't you just pegging the PS3 to be the "dominant console" based on the inclusion of a Blu-ray drive? My head is spinning! Michael McWhertor

Sony may have been "overly ambitious", warns Pachter [GamesIndustry.biz]

"As online environments increasingly incorporate aspects of virtual reality — including 3D graphics and lifelike, real-time interaction among many simultaneous users — companies of all types will need a computing platform that can handle a broad spectrum of demanding performance and security requirements," said Jim Stallings, general manager, IBM System z. "To serve this market, the Cell/B.E. processor is the perfect complement to the mainframe, the only server designed to handle millions of simultaneous users."

Pass the word down to your descendants, and make sure that they remember my warning as their protective dome is shattered by cruel, metal hands. I'd suggest a statue be erected in my honor, but the robots would just destroy it anyway. Michael Fahey

Cell Broadband Engine Project Aims to Supercharge IBM Mainframe for Virtual Worlds

IBM Collaboration With Brazilian Game Developer, Hoplon Infotainment, Looks to Hybrid Platform for Advanced 3D Simulations; Unique Mainframe Architecture Speeds Integration With Cell/B.E.

ARMONK, NY & FLORIANOPOLIS, BRAZIL - 26 Apr 2007: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today disclosed a cross-company project to integrate the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) with the IBM mainframe for the purpose of creating a hybrid that is blazingly fast and powerful, with security features designed to handle a new generation of "virtual world" applications, such as the 3D Internet.

The project capitalizes on the mainframe's ability to accelerate work via "specialty processors," as well as its unique networking architecture, which enables the kind of ultra-fast communication needed to create virtual worlds with large numbers of simultaneous users sharing a single environment.

Drawing on IBM's research, software and hardware expertise, the project is being undertaken in cooperation with with Hoplon Infotainment, a Brazilian online game company whose software is a key component of testing the capabilities of the new environment.

"As online environments increasingly incorporate aspects of virtual reality — including 3D graphics and lifelike, real-time interaction among many simultaneous users — companies of all types will need a computing platform that can handle a broad spectrum of demanding performance and security requirements," said Jim Stallings, general manager, IBM System z. "To serve this market, the Cell/B.E. processor is the perfect complement to the mainframe, the only server designed to handle millions of simultaneous users."

At its heart, the project intends to create an environment that can seamlessly run demanding simulations — such as massive online virtual reality environments; 3D applications for mapping, enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management; 3D virtual stores and meeting rooms; collaboration environments; and new types of data repositories. It plans to achieve this goal by parceling the workload between the mainframe and the Cell/B.E.

Cell/B.E. and Mainframe: A Beautiful Partnership

In the relationship between the mainframe and Cell/B.E. capabilities, Cell/B.E. will handle the complex simulation associated with operating in virtual worlds — for example, a ball thrown in a virtual reality world must obey the laws of gravity.

To that end, IBM and Hoplon are porting Hoplon software to the Cell/B.E. to handle message passing and physics simulation. The companies have already created a programming model and messaging architecture that separates the application running on the system.

For its part, the mainframe will run Hoplon's industry-specific middleware for virtual worlds, called bitVerse, currently under development using WebSphere XD as the underlying runtime environment, along with DB2.

In addition, the mainframe will run the administrative tasks for middleware and applications. It will also handle logistics (billing, etc.), and connectivity to third parties as well as to multiple clients, which might include PCs, game systems, mobile phones, music players, TVs, and other devices.

The Mainframe: It Contains Multitudes

Unique among servers, the mainframe was designed from the beginning to incorporate processors that handle a variety of specialized tasks. For example, so-called "specialty processors" are designed for processing eligible Linux, Java and data workloads as well as encrypting and decrypting certain data. In addition, the mainframe can include up to 336 RISC processors to assist I/O. It is anticipated that this powerful design point will help the system to integrate seamlessly with the Cell/B.E.

Just as important, the mainframe's Hipersockets technology provides fast communication between all the virtual servers contained in a single machine. As a result, it is believed the mainframe may be the ideal platform for large virtual worlds, which often require a technology platform that can handle many simultaneous transactions spread out among several hundred servers. The mainframe's Hipersockets enable users residing on different virtual servers to interact with each other with minimal lag time. By contrast, in a distributed environment, where many physical servers are connected by networking cables, lag time may be greater.

Other mainframe attributes — its leadership in security capabilities, for example — also lend themselves to virtual reality applications. In the security certification known as the Common Criteria's Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL), the IBM mainframe achieved one of the highest levels of certification — Level 5 — for logical partitioning, IBM's premier virtualization technology.

And it is able to handle massive workloads. For example, the mainframe recently achieved the world's largest core banking benchmark result delivering a record 9,445 business transactions per second (tps) in real-time based on more than 380 million accounts with three billion transaction histories.(1)

The revolutionary Cell/B.E. — jointly developed by IBM, Sony Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) and Toshiba — is a breakthrough design featuring a central processing core based on IBM's industry-leading Power Architecture technology and eight synergistic processing elements (SPE). Cell/B.E. "supercharges" compute-intensive applications, offering fast performance for computer entertainment and handhelds, virtual reality, wireless downloads, real-time video chat, interactive TV shows and other "image-hungry" computing environments. The groundbreaking Cell/B.E. processor appears in products such as SCE's PLAYSTATION 3 and Toshiba's Cell/B.E. Reference Set, a development tool for Cell/B.E. applications, as well as the IBM BladeCenter QS20. It is also embedded in custom Cell/B.E. based offerings from IBM Global Engineering Solutions.

Founded in 2000, Hoplon Infotainment is dedicated to multiplayer online games and complex simulations, as well as related online entertainment and business training ventures based on advanced information systems. Hoplon is located in Florianopolis, Brazil, and on the Web at http://www.hoplon.com.

Photo by Steve Richmond

The first-ever class on the Playstation 3's Cell Broaband Engine has just wrapped up over at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During the four-week course students learned about the new microprocessor and designed and implemented projects on Playstation 3s. The student with the best project, a 3D version of Pong, presented their work at this year's Game Developers Conference.

The course, which focused mainly on parallel programming, was taught by Saman Amarasinghe, a professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Dr. Rodric Rabbah of IBM.

"The fact that students - with no background in parallel programming or the Cell/B.E.- were able to get their projects done from scratch in just about one month largely goes to show the capability and determination of our students, coupled with the availability of a robust toolchain for Cell/B.E. development," said Saman Amarasinghe, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT.

"Cell/B.E. is going to be an underlying architecture that has the potential to be included in a wide range of industry applications and solutions in the future," said Dr. Rodric Rabbah, IBM Research. "This course was able to break down the details of a highly complex microprocessor and challenge students to see where the performance, power and versatility could be applied outside of gaming. Based on the feedback we received from the students, it was a tremendous success."

I've heard rumblings that some U.S. Defense project companies are playing around with Cell technology too. Brian Crecente

6.189 Multicore Programming Primer [MIT]

An anonymous comment has surfaced over at Guardian's Gamesblog. While it doesn't exactly bring promising PSP, it does illustrate how British third party devs feel about the Wii. So. Onto the quote!

At a GDC conference in Brighton last year, everyone walked away from the PSP. Developers had to budget for PS2 content on a handheld with a tiny userbase. Its not cost effective, (especially when the alternative DS has a massive userbase and is cheap to develop for). At the same time, Nintendo had sent Wiimotes that plug into Gamecube devkits to all registered developers. Instead of forking out thousands of quid to Sony for devkits that they still weren't releasing, studios were coming up with innovative Wii ideas. Instead of training coders to program the world's most complicated Cell processor, the Gamecube team just switched to the Wii.

None of this has been confirmed firsthand, so do please take it with the proverbial grain of salt. Brian Ashcraft

Comment On PSP's UK Development Future [Gamesblog]

Sony and Bandai Namco have announced a joint venture to develop new content for the Cell chip including games for the PS3 and content for mobile phones and personal computers, Bloomberg reports.

The two companies are investing about $821,000 to form Cellius, a company that will be headed up by Ken Kutaragi, the father of the Playstation. The company will be formed on March 6 and will 51 percent owned by Bandi Namco and 49 percent by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Bandai Namco's president and another exec, as well as a second senior Sony exec will also on the newly formed company's board.

The news comes months after Kutaragi was promoted out of daily operations of Playstation 3 decisions. It will be interesting to see what sort of insight Kutaragi brings to the game development side of things.

Hit the jump for the full Bloomberg story. Brian Crecente

Sony Corp., the world's largest maker of game consoles, said its PlayStation unit will develop games with Namco Bandai Holdings Inc. to help take share from Microsoft Corp. and Nintendo Co.

Namco Bandai will own 51 percent of the venture, named Cellius Inc., with Sony holding the rest, Sony said in a faxed release today. The venture will begin operations on March 6.

Cellius will use Sony's Cell chip, which powers PlayStation 3, to create games for the console and content for mobile phones and personal computers, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. spokesman Satoshi Fukuoka said today. He would not give earnings forecasts or other details.

The alliance may help Sony recoup the 200 billion yen ($1.65 billion) it spent developing the Cell with International Business Machines Corp. and Toshiba Corp. Sony is expecting the chip, which makes the PS3 about 35 times faster than the PS2, to attract gamers with sharper graphics and more complex play.

The Cell chip is also part of Sony's strategy to beat Microsoft and Apple Computer Inc. in controlling the digital home, a future network linking televisions, music players, game consoles and other appliances to the Internet.

Sony, Namco Bandai Ally to Jointly Make Games for PlayStation 3 [Bloomberg]

Bloomberg is reporting that the Sharp Corporation is set to invest BILLIONS in the manufacturing of blue laser diodes, the very same ones found in the PlayStation 3. And every Blu-ray player and recorder. And HD-DVD players. Sharp will start pumping out 150,000 diodes per month, ramping up to 500,000 by September 2007.

So does this mean that the blue laser diode production is now a non-issue? Will every man woman and child have easy access to life-giving blue lasers? Will the PlayStation 3 flow like wine to the thirsty masses? Should Europe breathe a sigh of relief now that the March launch is secure?

Not really.

Sharp is planning to manufacture their own Blu-ray recorders, with "most" of the diodes going into the Sharp electronics. Although I'm sure Sharp would be willing to part with a diode or two for the right price, I'm guessing that PS3s will continue to trickle in to stores as slow as they have been... for the time being. Michael McWhertor

Sharp to Make Laser Diodes for Blu-Ray, HD Recorders [Bloomberg]

He says that while in-house developed games like Gran Turismo 2 and God of War II max out the PSone and PS2 respectively, no one will ever be able to tap 100% of the power of the Cell-powered PS3. In fact, Phil says Sony software is currently using "less than half" of the machine's capabilities. Does that mean Genji 3 has the possibility of being twice as good as the second? Amazing!

And what does Phil see as the gaming industry's "biggest challenge"?

I fervently believe that the biggest challenge we face is that our industry is referred to as 'video games,' and games are supposed to be fun. Games should deal with fear, should deal with comedy and with death. They should deal with peril, with drug offenses.

Okay, I'll admit that genre-busting, boundary-breaking software is something I'd like to see, but that's our biggest challenge? I wonder if Phil's teams are up to it. Michael McWhertor

PlayStation Exec Talks Shaky '06, Reveals Plans For New Gaming Feature [MTV News]

I've yet to play a mobile game that is even a shadow of it's console self. So I don't have high hopes for NBA Live 07, or at least the mobile version of the game.

It's going to feature Marv Albert doing play-by-play, a season mode, hundreds of animations and no chance of interesting me.

Sadist mobile gamers should hit the jump. Brian Crecente

BUS, TRAIN OR PLANE, SPORTS FANS ARE ALWAYS
COURTSIDE WITH EA'S NBA LIVE 07 FOR MOBILE PHONES

LOS ANGELES, Calif., - November 15, 2006 - Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced the availability of NBA LIVE 07 for mobile, allowing basketball fans to shoot and score on the go. In its 13th year, EA's NBA LIVE franchise has been a slam dunk with fans and is one of the top selling basketball franchises. NBA LIVE 07 for mobile will feature all 30 NBA teams, over 400 real NBA players, five on five action and textured courts and logos. NBA LIVE 07 is available now on major wireless carriers throughout North America.

"EA Mobile is thrilled to work with the NBA to bring NBA LIVE 07 to the mobile handsets of basketball fans across the country," said Travis Boatman, vice president of worldwide mobile studios for EA Mobile. "With hallmark sports franchises like NBA LIVE, EA Mobile ensures no sports fanatic is ever far from the action."

Legendary sportscaster Marv Albert offers courtside calls in layered audio, providing expert insight and play-by-play commentary. Basketball fans can tip off against rival teams in season mode where hundreds of animations bring to life every court movement, and deliver realistic player movements for shooting, rebounding, and spectacular dunks. Innovative features, designed specifically for mobile gameplay, allow gamers to zoom in on the action, slowing down the action to enable precision passing on the mobile screen. Advanced graphics, sound effects and device vibrations add to the game's realism.

For detailed information on NBA LIVE 07 availability, visit www.eamobile.com.