Cell has taken the stage

The STI-group (Sony, Toshiba, IBM) has been very good with keeping secrets especially regarding their renowned Cell-processor. However now it is in the middle of releasing information on their new “superchip” during ISSCC (International Solid State Circuits Conference) in San Francisco.

The information given earlier on frequencies and other seems to be fairly accurate since STI claims that Cell will be working at 4GHz at least.

During the last couple of days they’ve announced the arcitecture for the Cell-processor’s SPE-cores (Synergistic Processing Elements, the Cell-processor uses 8 SPE-cores) and among others we found out that the processor will be made with 90nm SOI (silicon-on-insulator) and low-k technology.
Cell-processor uses 234 miljon transistors on a core surface of 221mm². You can compare this with e.g. AMD’s Athlon 64 FX-55 processor that is built up by 105.9 miljon transistors on an area of 193mm².

More detailed inforamtion on the Cell-system will be released shortly since STI will continue their presentation of Cell which we of course really look forward to.

Source: TechWeb, Toms Hardware