That’s entertainment

IBM, Sony and Toshiba have finally released technical details of the architecture of their ‘Cell’ processor.

The ‘Cell’ project began with the formation of the STI (Sony Group, Toshiba and IBM) Cell Design Center in Austin, TX way back in March of 2001. The aim? To jointly develop a microprocessor for the Sony Playstation 3.

But it was only in February this year that certain high level technical specifications were released in much-anticipated papers delivered at San Francisco's International Solid State Circuit Conference (ISSCC).

Now, hoping to push their jointly developed microprocessor into markets other than gaming, the three companies have released documents describing three key elements of the Cell microprocessor.

For interested developers, details on The Cell Broadband Engine Architecture, The Synergistic Processor Unit Instruction Set Architecture and the Synergistic Processor Unit C/C++ Language Extensions, Application Binary Interface, and Assembly Language specifications are available at www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/cell