IBM "Cell" processor

[esmith]

Dave Leimbach wrote:
 > I think this "cell" technology is somewhat related to PCA project:
http://www.morphware.org.  Being able to dynamically reconfigure the "cpu"
for different applications.  I think this means you need to think of the 
processing unit in a new light and that cell is directly related to this.

Also the performance numbers you probably see from it are most likely
highly dependent on locality of reference which means "streaming" applications.
Is it true that this form of interprocessor communication is, in some 
ways, similar to Java's RMI? We will have a long time to read the 
morphware papers because according to the URL below, workstations are at 
least one year, maybe 18 months, away.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/29/ps3_to_ship_2006

This chip will be in the IBM Power Architecture family so, if someone 
were determined to get a head-start on porting DF to the Cell, they 
could probably make significant inroads by simply porting to a current 
64 bit PowerPC platform. There has been a lot of Intel-groaning on the 
commit list in the last few months.