Back Cell (mikroprocesor) BS Cell Catalan Cell (Prozessor) German Cell Esperanto Cell (microprocesador) Spanish Cell (mikroprotsessor) Estonian سل (ریزپردازنده) Persian Cell (suoritin) Finnish Cell (processeur) French Cell (mikroprocesszor) Hungarian

Cell (processor)

CELL BE
DesignerSTI (Sony, Toshiba and IBM)
Bits64-bit
IntroducedNovember 2006 (2006-11)PlayStation 3
VersionPowerPC 2.02[1]
DesignRISC
TypeLoad–store
EncodingFixed/Variable (Book E)
BranchingCondition code
EndiannessBig/Bi
POWER, PowerPC, and Power ISA architectures
NXP (formerly Freescale and Motorola)
IBM
IBM/Nintendo
Other
Related links
Cancelled in gray, historic in italic

Cell is a 64-bit multi-core microprocessor microarchitecture that combines a general-purpose PowerPC core of modest performance with streamlined coprocessing elements[2] which greatly accelerate multimedia and vector processing applications, as well as many other forms of dedicated computation.[2]

It was developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM, an alliance known as "STI". The architectural design and first implementation were carried out at the STI Design Center in Austin, Texas over a four-year period beginning March 2001 on a budget reported by Sony as approaching US$400 million.[3] Cell is shorthand for Cell Broadband Engine Architecture, commonly abbreviated CBEA in full or Cell BE in part.

The first major commercial application of Cell was in Sony's PlayStation 3 game console, released in 2006. In May 2008, the Cell-based IBM Roadrunner supercomputer became the first TOP500 LINPACK sustained 1.0 petaflops system.[4][5] Mercury Computer Systems also developed designs based on the Cell.

The Cell architecture includes a memory coherence architecture that emphasizes power efficiency, prioritizes bandwidth over low latency, and favors peak computational throughput over the simplicity of program code. For these reasons, Cell is widely regarded as a challenging environment for software development.[6] IBM provides a Linux-based development platform to help developers program for Cell chips.[7]

  1. ^ "PowerPC Architecture Book, Version 2.02". IBM. November 16, 2005. Archived from the original on November 29, 2020.
  2. ^ a b Gschwind, Michael; Hofstee, H. Peter; Flachs, Brian; Hopkins, Martin; Watanabe, Yukio; Yamazaki, Takeshi (March–April 2006). "Synergistic Processing in Cell's Multicore Architecture" (PDF). IEEE Micro. 26 (2). IEEE: 10–24. doi:10.1109/MM.2006.41. S2CID 17834015.
  3. ^ "Cell Designer talks about PS3 and IBM Cell Processors". Archived from the original on August 21, 2006. Retrieved March 22, 2007.
  4. ^ Gaudin, Sharon (June 9, 2008). "IBM's Roadrunner smashes 4-minute mile of supercomputing". Computerworld. Archived from the original on December 24, 2008. Retrieved June 10, 2008.
  5. ^ Fildes, Jonathan (June 9, 2008). "Supercomputer sets petaflop pace". BBC News. Retrieved June 9, 2008.
  6. ^ Shankland, Stephen (February 22, 2006). "Octopiler seeks to arm Cell programmers". CNET. Retrieved March 22, 2007.
  7. ^ "Cell Broadband Engine Software Development Kit Version 1.0". LWN. November 10, 2005. Retrieved March 22, 2007.

Developed by StudentB