Architosh Staff ([email protected])

25 Feb 2005

 

Opinion: IBM's upcoming Cell-based workstation is just the beginning of an entirely new era of leadership in the computer industry

The proverbial 'apple cart' is really going to turn over this time -- and possible stay turned over for quite some time.

It is patently too easy to dismiss the threat the new STI consortium's Cell chip poses to Intel and Microsoft's platform dynasty. Afterall, the Wintel PC has successfully fought off numerous superior contenders to its throne several times before, notably with Apple, Amiga, NeXT and even the AIM Alliance. However, unlike those past threats, and the AIM Alliance in particular, the STI (Sony, Toshiba and IBM) consortium's strategic plans are far more secretive -- suggesting that the advantages are both real and great, but will likely taper over time. Thus, unlike IBM's last big siege on the Intel juggernault -- using an alliance with Apple and Motorola -- this time the company has kept not only its technology close to its chest, but its precise plans with the technology even closer.

Some Peoples' Dream

It would be a massive understatement to say that some peoples' dream of the future of computing entails not having the aging, tired and over-manipulated Intel x86 microchip architecture at the center of it. Even Intel itself had this vision of the future. Those fanboys of RISC architectures clearly have this dream, yet these days often without their RISC child at the foot of the throne.

In short, IBM's Power Architecture -- which includes the Cell -- represents a new Camelot for the computing world. Based on RISC -- which by the way did truly win out in terms of where chip design eventually converged -- the Cell processor represents to some the industry's brightest new contender to leadership in processor design. In IBM's particular vision the Cell chip would be at the heart of re-aligned industry centered on the open-source Linux operating system. For Apple fanboys the Cell chip would be maximized by the Cupertino geniuses and allow the company to regain market share.

For Sony the Cell chip is the key to its continued success over Microsoft in the game console wars -- a war, by the way, which Gates & Co. have no method to leverage its Windows monopoly. And for Toshiba the Cell chip presents new opportunities in the living room and a chance to be a major stakeholder in something that might be really big.

Those are the dreams....

Here's the reality.

Reality One: The STI consortium Cell chip is both very real, very versatile, extremely powerful and coming sooner than folks realize.

Reality Two: IBM has announced that the first product with a Cell chip inside will be a new IBM workstation, co-designed with Sony. This machine is supposedly going to be used by game developers for the Sony Playstation 3 and others who have "demanding graphics tasks". There is already an intense amount of interest in this new workstation by folks who don't program for the PlayStation. Such folks may do scientific visualization, studio-level computer graphics (CG) and special effects, or engineering CAD.

Reality Three: The Cell chip is a vector processing monster and IBM's Linux work has been optimized for vector processing support. Architosh was the first site on the Net to break the story on IBM's AltiVec work on the Linux core back in 2002. IBM has a long and successful history of supporting SIMD (single instruction multiple data) via its VMX units in its Power and PowerPC chips. The current IBM PowerPC 970 (G5) is a superb floating point and vector number cruncher enabling many Apple customers to rise to the top of the Supercomputer 500 List in short order and for millions less then rivals using different chips.

Reality Four: Linux is the future of IBM. No other company has the vast resources and expertise to make Linux on Power a new industry standard, but IBM is clearly ready to do that alone and with the help of its partners and alliances. Key in that group is Sony, which continues to embrace Linux itself. In a Linux centric world IBM is a major force because of its unique ability to integrate both up and across the technology stack.

Reality Five: Enabling for the Cell. More and more key technologies are getting Cell enabled. Just yesterday there was a story on IBM's opening up of its hypervisor technology known as rHype. Hypervisor technology -- of which IBM is a leader -- enables processors to run multiple operating systems symmultaneously. IBM has announced that they have enabled Cell support of rHype, in addition to its Power chips. If the world is going to shift from platform to platform than the ability to run multiple OSs at the same time is a key enabler technology.

Potential Wildcards

If Apple is going to adopt the Cell as many seem to think then such technology as hypervisor technology is a really good thing. It would enable folks to buy Apple computers and work with both Linux, AIX and OS X all at the same time. IBM is already a proponent of running Linux on Power Macs and there are detailed instructions and support on IBM's own site.

With IBM selling its personal computer division it frees up the company to actually promote the selling of Cell and PowerPC based personal computers made by others. In other words, IBM can begin to act a lot like Intel with the exception that it would eat its own dog food in the server market with some limited development of workstations co-designed with others who are doing specialized things with Cell for more consumer oriented markets. In this role there would be no conflict of business interest for IBM.

Another interesting wildcard is that Sony would begin to develop personal computers running Linux on Cell for a wide variety of markets. At first such machines might be centered on the convergence of media in the living room. Eventually though, Sony may make Cell-based computers for other markets -- especially those who's applications are primarily web based.

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