IBM has Cell Blade
IBM will be selling a Cell powered blade server for non-general purpose uses.
At a demonstration Wednesday in New York, IBM showed off Cell’s processing power with a geology application that would have been right at home in a video game. A computer rendering of Mount Rainier, created using satellite photos and geological maps, allowed an operator to make a simulated flight over and next to the mountain.
IBM hopes this summer’s release of the Cell-based servers kick-starts work by third-party programmers. Eventually IBM is likely to deploy Cell in other kinds of hardware, from supercomputers to data storage systems.
In turn, that could inspire other customers to follow Mercury’s lead and try to tweak Cell for their own specialized purposes.
For example, defense contractor Raytheon Co. is exploring whether it can use Cell to dramatically improve the performance of sensor networks. Raytheon’s chief technology officer, Peter Pao, called Cell “a very exciting technology” with “a lot of promise,” but said Raytheon is still evaluating how to rewrite software and redesign systems to work with Cell.
The Cell seems to be tailored for video game type applications. It’s no wonder that this will not be for general purpose use.
Disclaimer: I now work for IBM.
(after 3 weeks... but for 23.5€ I cannot remotely complain!)
February 10th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Wasn’t something like this suppose to happen w/ the Emotion Engine in the PS2? This is just more marketing fluff from Sony ‘cuz something like this will have no benefit to those living in game land. Man, the Sony hype machine must not be firing all 16 cylinders.
BTW, What in tarnation is a Emotion Engine? Was it suppose to make the player cry or something?
February 10th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
This is not marketing fluff from Sony.
This is an IBM product. It’s a blade server. And it’s not the only blade server to use the Cell.
February 10th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
iKnow its a real unit I’ve known of it since last mid last year when it was initially announced. Its using multiple Cells and running Linux. Word has it that Apple was approaced with this concept but they were not interested citing that the complications of the Cell was not practical for their market.
iWas simply commenting that this has no implications for gaming. iKnow someone somewhere will assume the performance of the blade will b an indication of the PS3 performance.
February 10th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
No implications for gaming? Who cares? It uses the same processor as the PS3, which makes it of interest to me. Therefore I write a post about it.
February 10th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Who cares? Obviously u care if u wrote a post about it.
February 10th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Please re-read my post.
February 10th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
iWas just making a comment iThough was relevant; although it was not necessarily a direct response.