IBM has confirmed the end of the road for its Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) processor, the hybrid multicore processor used in Sony’s PlayStation 3 console — and little else. David Turek, IBM’s vice president of deep computing, said in an interview with the German site Heise Online that the current PowerXCell-8i processor will be the last of the line.
Originally, IBM planned for a dual PowerPC processor core with 32 Synergistic Processing Element (SPE). The current design has one PowerPC core and eight SPEs. Turek also told Heise “the future is hybrid,” alluding to IBM possibly using some of the Cell SPE technology in the Power 7 processor IBM is developing.
In a statement e-mailed to InternetNews.com, an IBM spokesperson noted the Cell’s success in the Roadrunner supercomputer, which is a hybrid of AMD Opteron and Cell processors and was for a time the fastest supercomputer in the world. The PlayStation 3, the primary recipient of the Cell B/E processor, has struggled on the market, but its woes have rarely been blamed on the processor.
