Cell (processor)

Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.)
Designer	STI (Sony, Toshiba and IBM)
Bits	64-bit
Introduced	November 2006
Version	PowerPC 2.02
Design	RISC
Type	Load–store
Encoding	Fixed/Variable (Book E)
Branching	Condition code
Endianness	Big/Bi

The Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) is a 64-bit multi-core processor and microarchitecture developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM—an alliance known as "STI". It combines a general-purpose PowerPC core, called the Power Processing Element (PPE), with multiple specialized coprocessors, known as Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs), which accelerate tasks such as multimedia and vector processing.^[2]

The architecture was developed over a four-year period beginning in March 2001, with Sony reporting a development budget of approximately US$400 million.^[3] Its first major commercial application was in Sony's PlayStation 3 home video game console, released in 2006. In 2008, a modified version of the Cell processor powered IBM's Roadrunner, the first supercomputer to sustain one petaFLOPS. Other applications include high-performance computing systems from Mercury Computer Systems and specialized arcade system boards.

Cell emphasizes memory coherence, power efficiency, and peak computational throughput, but its design presented significant challenges for software development.^[4] IBM offered a Linux-based software development kit to facilitate programming on the platform.^[5]

^ "PowerPC Architecture Book, Version 2.02". IBM. November 16, 2005. Archived from the original on November 29, 2020.
^ Gschwind, Michael; Hofstee, H. Peter; Flachs, Brian; Hopkins, Martin; Watanabe, Yukio; Yamazaki, Takeshi (March–April 2006). "Synergistic Processing in Cell's Multicore Architecture" (PDF). IEEE Micro. 26 (2). IEEE: 10–24. doi:10.1109/MM.2006.41. S2CID 17834015.
^ "Cell Designer talks about PS3 and IBM Cell Processors". Archived from the original on August 21, 2006. Retrieved March 22, 2007.
^ Shankland, Stephen (February 22, 2006). "Octopiler seeks to arm Cell programmers". CNET. Retrieved March 22, 2007.
^ "Cell Broadband Engine Software Development Kit Version 1.0". LWN. November 10, 2005. Retrieved March 22, 2007.

[powerpc_archguide-1] "PowerPC Architecture Book, Version 2.02". IBM. November 16, 2005. Archived from the original on November 29, 2020.

[ibmrpaper-2] Gschwind, Michael; Hofstee, H. Peter; Flachs, Brian; Hopkins, Martin; Watanabe, Yukio; Yamazaki, Takeshi (March–April 2006). "Synergistic Processing in Cell's Multicore Architecture" (PDF). IEEE Micro. 26 (2). IEEE: 10–24. doi:10.1109/MM.2006.41. S2CID 17834015.

[3] "Cell Designer talks about PS3 and IBM Cell Processors". Archived from the original on August 21, 2006. Retrieved March 22, 2007.

[4] Shankland, Stephen (February 22, 2006). "Octopiler seeks to arm Cell programmers". CNET. Retrieved March 22, 2007.

[5] "Cell Broadband Engine Software Development Kit Version 1.0". LWN. November 10, 2005. Retrieved March 22, 2007.

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