I won’t pretend I understand hardware jargon. Actually, I do a little, but whenever you start using words like Gigaflops, pipelines or even RAM, my mind starts to mimic mush. Same goes for cars – I don’t really care about cylinders or stuff like that, as my queries stay around the areas of “How fast does it go?” and “Will it drives over stuff?”
Thus, if you want details, head here. But this is another new development from Sony’s CELL processor, a chip the company intended to expand beyond its initial application on the PlayStation 3. Did you think IBM co-developed a new CPU just for a games console? The point of CELL was to bring high-end computing power to a range of applications and platforms. This new card from Fixstars plans to deliver 180GFLOPS of power on the workstations housing it. The company feels that financial simulations, technology calculations and image processing for medical purposes will be the fields that benefit from the GigaAccel 180.
Last Updated: April 8, 2008
Lupus
April 8, 2008 at 17:34
Wait now I’m confused? Isn’t the cell great at in-line processing rather then parallel processing of a normal CPU, so will this then in theory be an extension to an existing rig to give it the extra boost it needs. I can see blade servers using this to great potential.
Hound
April 8, 2008 at 23:05
It almost used as a standalone graphic + math render pc in a pc
baba
April 9, 2008 at 07:58
Am I reading this right?
US$8,580
Compared to the PS3 the CPU runs at a lower speed (2.8GHz vs 3.2GHz), and has less memory. Maybe it is an advanced version of the cell, with branch prediction, more cache etc.? Still, 180GFlops is an impressive no. for a single processor.