IBM Cell chip to power medical computers

[Sprite]

"SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IBM has agreed to license the Cell processor -- set to drive Sony PlayStations and Toshiba TVs -- to medical and military equipment maker Mercury Computer Systems Inc., in the first deal for the chip beyond consumer electronics.

Mercury, said the company plans to use Cell as the core technology to power a range of "embedded" computers it designs for magnetic resonance image scanners in medicine to missile radar and sonar systems for military uses.

IBM and Chelmsford, Massachusetts-based Mercury said they had agreed to a multiyear deal in which contract engineering teams from IBM will design Cell chips for Mercury computers.

Terms were not disclosed.

International Business Machines Corp. of Armonk, New York is developing the much-anticipated cell chip with Japanese partners Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp.

Sony plans to power use Cell to power its PlayStation 3 video console starting a year from now. Toshiba has said it plans to embed Cell chips in a line of its televisions in 2006.

IBM sees Cell driving devices in a range of industries, including medical, aerospace and automotive technologies.

"We are beginning to expand the adoption of Cell into other industries," said Raj Desai, vice president of IBM engineering and technology services -- the custom chip design unit.

CELL DIVISION

PlayStation 3 is expected to be a huge hit for Sony -- selling 80 million to 100 million new consoles by 2010, according to industry analyst Richard Doherty of Envisioneering Group in Seaford, New York.

Cell is expected to offer breakthrough graphics processing improvements across the growing array of electronics that require heavy image processing, and while some analysts have questioned whether Cell will find much use beyond games, Doherty said IBM could be on to a huge winner.

"If IBM is successful sector-by-sector, Cell has a good chance that non-gaming uses will outstrip the massive volumes expected for Cell in Sony PlayStations," Doherty said.

"I think this is just the first of a half-dozen announcements IBM will make over the next year to push Cell into markets like medicine or automotive," he predicted.

Doherty said IBM's Cell chip might be used in an innovative automotive suspension system from high-end audio maker Bose, which could use Cell's heavy digital signal processing capacity to help smooth automobile rides.

The Bose system was set to be offered in 2007 model year cars by an automaker outside the United States, he said, declining to say which one.

Embedded computer chips used to control everything from air conditioners to washing machines to cars vastly outnumber the number of chips used in computers or video consoles, although they are typically sold at far lower cost.

Mercury is looking for Cell chips to accelerate the graphics-handling and image-rendering powers of its devices designed for use by doctors, pilots and others who require picture-perfect electronic displays to do their jobs.

"It's a choice of either using advanced technology like Cell or wait until the generally available technology catches up," Mercury Chief Technology Officer Craig Lund said.

Mercury, a $250 million-a-year maker of embedded computer systems, believes Cell will deliver three- to four-times faster performance than rival chips set to be on the market in the next few years, Lund said.

Mercury currently uses a range of chips from IBM, Intel Corp. and other embedded chips in its graphics-hungry embedded computer systems. The company was looking at Cell as the basis for many of its future products, Lund said.

It envisioned building magnetic scanners that give doctors access to instantaneous digital images of internal tissues during surgery. Current scanners take hours to detail such images."

Source :- reuters.com

lol so after playing 10 hours on PS3 you will be able to plug in your USB medical scanner and check if you have and RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury).

 

[Pebb]

Shows Microsoft what is at the heart of the PS3 and what it can do.

I bet Microsoft are crying about this now.

 

[EvilToast]

wow thats incredible.

 

[barryl85]

so the playstation 3 can save lives then!

 

[G.T]

It would be very cool to have a Cell chip in your car.

 

[Pebb]

so the playstation 3 can save lives then!

And don't forgett use your PS3 to hire the army lol .

 

[ExigeEvan]

Hopefully this will also help to lower the cost of the PS3.

 

[code_kev]

I bet Microsoft are crying about this now.

Does not compute.

It's IBM who are laughing, no one else.

And puulllease, it's not like they will be ripping PS3's apart and sticking them em, if they use cell chips, they will be made to carry out specifically for their task.

 

[emad]

You gotta love IBM for the position they're in. They make the PowerPC that powers the XB360, they make the PS3's Cell, and the Broadway chip that'll be powering the Nintendo Revolution. No matter which console dies, IBM is guaranteed to walk away richer 👍

 

[the_undrtaker89]

💡 hehe....that means gates loses....
HAHAHAHAHA die gates die.!! You can't win now we hav the finest doctors on our side hahahaha FOOL. Die (stomps away) diieeeeehehahaehahhaha.

Wait microsoft doesn't own ibm does it?

 

[Omnis]

yeah, they aren't using PS3's cell chip in the machines. They are using the Cell Architecture. A Cell chip isn't the equivilent of a Pentium or Athlon or any kind of specific name, Cell just denotes what kind of chip it is....in that it uses Cell Architecture.

 

[Sprite]

They make the PowerPC that powers the XB360

yep indeed

just a little info and the Xenon processor thats inside the 360

CPU
The Xenon CPU is a custom processor based on PowerPC technology. The CPU includes three independent processors (cores) on a single die. Each core runs at 3.5+ GHz. The Xenon CPU can issue two instructions per clock cycle per core. At peak performance, Xenon can issue 21 billion instructions per second.
The Xenon CPU was designed by IBM in close consultation with the Xbox team, leading to a number of revolutionary additions, including a dot product instruction for extremely fast vector math and custom security features built directly into the silicon to prevent piracy and hacking.
Each core has two symmetric hardware threads (SMT), for a total of six hardware threads available to games. Not only does the Xenon CPU include the standard set of PowerPC integer and floating-point registers (one set per hardware thread), the Xenon CPU also includes 128 vector (VMX) registers per hardware thread. This astounding number of registers can drastically improve the speed of common mathematical operations.
Each of the three cores includes a 32-KB L1 instruction cache and a 32-KB L1 data cache. The three cores share a 1-MB L2 cache. The L2 cache can be locked down in segments to improve performance. The L2 cache also has the very unusual feature of being directly readable from the GPU, which allows the GPU to consume geometry and texture data from L2 and main memory simultaneously.
Xenon CPU instructions are exposed to games through compiler intrinsics, allowing developers to access the power of the chip using C language notation.

source :- xbox-scene.com

Also ive read that the 360 will support the Nintendo DS ans PSP so that you can play x-box games on your handheld, this is still just a roumer but it comes from a reputable source.

 

[barryl85]

Does not compute.

It's IBM who are laughing, no one else.

And puulllease, it's not like they will be ripping PS3's apart and sticking them em, if they use cell chips, they will be made to carry out specifically for their task.

we aint daft man

 

[hartmaenle]

It would be very cool to have a Cell chip in your car.

may be you have a peace of them right now. most cars works with PPC601 or PPC601 chips.... Cell is a multiprocessor unit in one chip, ppc5 chips at one die, its like intels hyphertreading, but in hardware. Up to 8 CPU's at one chip linked with a special bus .
http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/products/Cell

 

[Evolution.]

So...

I can watch missles hit Afghanistan,watch submarines sail through the Pacific,save someone,listen to music,watch DVDs and play games on my PS3?

Wow.And people though it was just a gaming console...

Also ive read that the 360 will support the Nintendo DS ans PSP so that you can play x-box games on your handheld, this is still just a roumer but it comes from a reputable source.

So you think that Microsoft is going to make life easier for Sony and Nintendo by making the 360 somehow compatible with them?

And besides,putting a 360 game on a PSP or a DS would be like putting 24" wheels on a Mazda Protege'.

 

[Sprite]

well if you want to take bets on what it will work with then here is a small pic.

and a little text to go along with it.

J. Allard touched on the issue last night on synchronization with the iPod and the PSP that the Xbox 360 is going to have, but he didn’t really explain much about what form that would take.

Let’s say… music, MP3s… if you have any music in AAC format there’s not much anyone can do with it because Apple doesn’t want anybody to do anything with protected AAC, so you take anything that’s not in protected AAC format. We want you to be able to get that music over to the Xbox and enjoy it while you’re gaming. So we’re doing the work—whether it’s with iPod or some of the other handheld devices—to move appropriate content back and forth. It’s a nice thing. I think it shows our openness. It’s good value for the consumer. I don’t think it’s big time rocket science.

- Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft :- source Engadget.com

my play x-box games on the psp quote is a little wrong, from what i have read to date it will be possible for developers to make a game for all platforms like the 360 and PS3, then say you own a x-box and a psp then if the game supports a link between both then it will accept a conection to the PSP from the 360. also as said above it will probably have some support for music and movie transfer.

if you whis to read the full article then here you go. LINK

 

[Flame-returns]

Is it just me or is the mp3 player in that diagram an iRiver H120...

Maybe I'll get the 360 after all, aswell as a ps3 of course...

 

[smellysocks12]

Now the surgeons will be doing their work holding a DS2 controller.

 

[standard235]

Better be no noobs in there! HAcking asurgical machine!

 

[McLaren'sAngel]

Hiya! Meow! (='.'=)

That is very interesting how the Cell chip will be doing things like this. I wonder how it would do if you put them in a robot. Like that robot made from Japan! I forgot the name of the robot!

 

[EvilToast]

Asimo?

 

[barryl85]

Asimo?

Honda Makes Asimo right? its smart as hell

 

[EvilToast]

Honda Makes Asimo right? its smart as hell

yeah i want asimo to clean my house.

 

[LaBounti]

asimo? I heard than name on ATOS and thought they were talking about awsome-O from South Park I didnt know it was real, that makes the awsome-O on South Park a spoof i didnt realize .

 

[Omnis]

QRIO pwns Asimo. and it's made by sony, too. maybe we'll have our QRIO oompa loompa robots come with our ps3's, and they can do tai chi to calm us down when games frustrate us. they can do like everything....even get up from a fall.

 

[McLaren'sAngel]

Hiya! Meow! (='.'=)

This Cell chip is starting to get really scarry now. If Asimo and QRIO can really get that intelligent, can they really interact with the world? I can already imagine a Cell chip getting closer to the complexity of the human brain in like, a long time! But when it does have the capability of our brains, I wonder if QRIO and Asimo would turn on us and create this "Terminator" thing on us gummy humans!!!

 

[standard235]

Good god you're hot.

Anyways, yes.. that would be quite the scare.

 

[EvilToast]

yeah she is, but i doubt it wont happen since our technology is not that terminatorishly*copyrighted* advanced.

 

[Solid Lifters]

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/a4OCGCAtcmvXky/Cell-Not-Just-for-Playstation-3-Says-IBM.xhtml

The Cell will cost $30!

 

[Sprite]

Good article Solid L. just goes to prove that the PS3 is one hell of a monster, and if the industry cant find aplications to stretch the Cell, then think about games companies, looks like if all the roumers and talk are true this will surly be a big leap in the gaming history, trust Sony to do it again. Also this must make Microsoft a little miffed at what Sony, IBM and Toshiba have been able to create, not only is this going to be the better console, but also if they develope Linux to run on cell then this could prove to be a proverbial thorn in Microsofts OS side.