Apple News
The Mystery
There's been a lot a buzz and confusion over the last few years surrounding the mysterious CELL processor from IBM, Sony and Toshiba. Yet I find that most of the confusion has stemmed directly from the babbling confusion created by the media themselves. They appear to be both hesitant and perplexed in trying to pigeon-hole this revolutionary processor. They've referred to it as both a CPU and GPU. And we've all heard about the magic bullet theory that generalizes this processor as being able to scale from the upcoming Playstation 3 through to Supercomputers. How am I to relate to that? So thanks for nothing.
At the very least I thought someone by now would have published something original pertaining to the actual patent overview, being that it's been around since 2002. Sure I've seen the odd schematic attached with some rehashed verbiage, but nothing of any value in advancing the discussion. I've seen very little coverage of this processor by Mac news sites save for a few excited kids talking up a storm about the Playstation 3. So two and a half years after the patent release and we're still in the dark!
Well, the good news is that we'll be getting another glimpse of this new processor when news breaks from this year's International Solid-State Circuits Conference beginning on Sunday February sixth. I'm sure we'll be given some exciting new angle or twist we could all feast on for awhile, especially if the planned CELL enhanced workstation surfaces. Could there be a surprise for the Mac Community in the wings? They could of course simply use a generic box for the conference's testing along with the announcement of a Q2 release keeping the vendors name a total secret until such time. However, that brought this question to mind: If the inventor's of the CELL processor really wanted to make a serious marketing impact next week, then wouldn't they want to unveil it under the hood of a shiny new Power Mac?
Could you imagine the Buzz that would create in the PC world? And with Apple's latest quarterly financials being their most profitable in history due to iPod mania, wouldn't it only make sense to ride this marketing wave now rather than later? Well, let's take a closer look at why it's even a remote possibility, and while we're at it, look at some other aspects of how CELL could play into Apple's hand going forward.
