When IBM launched the Cell processor the superlatives were many and this CPU would revolutionize the market with its unique architecture. In retrospect the processor was made famous by PlayStation 3, but that’s pretty much it. IBM has now decided to make PowerXCell-8i the last of its kind, there will be no successor.
In an interview with German Heise Online IBM’s VP of Deep computing, David Turek, revealed that rumored successor to PowerXCell-8i will not happen. The reason is that the processor hasn’t been as well received as IBM had hoped. The talks of competing with x86 has gone quiet and at the same time there have been complaints that the CPU is hard to code for, which has affected the public view of PlayStation 3.
You should not underestimate the meaning of Cell though, it has had a major impact on the industry but it has not been the success IBM had hoped for. IBM announced that the technology it developed for Cell will come to use in other projects. We can clearly see how the development is moving towards CPUs working together with GPUs as Intel (Larrabee), NVIDIA and AMD are moving toward GPGPU applications.
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