Definition

Cell processor (CELL)

Part of the Microprocessors glossary:

The Cell processor (also called CELL) is a microprocessor chip with a multi-core , parallel processing architecture and floating-point design. The chip, the prototype for which was introduced early in 2005, is the product of a team of engineers from IBM, Sony Group, and Toshiba Corporation.

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The Cell processor has 234 million transistor s, measures 235 square millimeters (mm2) in size, can run at speeds of more than 4 gigahertz ( GHz ), has a memory bandwidth of 25.6 gigabyte s per second (GBps), and has an input/output (I/O) bandwidth of 76.8 GBps . There are nine core s, one of which is the equivalent of a PowerPC chip and acts as the controller. The other eight cores are vector processor s, each of which is capable of 32 billion (thousand-million) floating point operations per second ( GFLOPS ). The Cell processor has a multi-channel memory subsystem along with several high-speed interconnects for I/O devices or other Cell processors.

The Cell processor can support multiple operating system s running simultaneously. It is expected to find applications in multimedia, gaming, smart home s, and desktop supercomputing.

This was last updated in March 2011
Posted by: Margaret Rouse

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