IBM’s Next Cell Processor is Dead in the Water

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 8:00 am

Talk of the technology behind the PlayStation 3 console always turns to the Cell processor, an innovative chip architecture which, in the PS3, contains essentially 9 processors on single chip (one PowerPC chip and eight Synergistic Processing Elements, or SPEs). And up until now, there was no reason to believe Sony wouldn't once again go with a Cell processor in its PlayStation 4 console, but there now lingers some doubt if the chip truly is "dead in the water, as David Turek, IBM's VP of Deep Computing, supposedly said.

The quote comes from German webiste Heise Online, which goes on to claim that the planned successor to the current chip, which is slated to have two PowerPC processors and 32 SPEs, is no longer going to be released.

What exactly that means isn't entirely clear at the moment. So far, there's no evidence that IBM is halting development on Cell processors, only that the specifically planned successor has been canned. If we're to take a glass half-full approach, that could mean the PS4 will utilize an even more power Cell processor, though it's far to early to tell.