IBM, Sony, and Toshiba have released a software developer kit (SDK) for the Cell chip. The Cell chip will be the heart of Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 3 (PS3) gaming console.

The kit, which contains more than 1,000 pages of documentation, includes extensions for optimizing the chip for Linux applications and other features.
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Still, despite some of the touted advantages of Cell, the triad will likely have to perform quite a bit of grunt work, including putting out things like the developer kit, to push the chip toward market acceptance. Skeptics note that cell phone makers and others can already chose from a wide variety of high-performance microprocessors that are far more familiar than Cell.

News.com – Software developer kit for Cell chip