IBM, Toshiba Corp. and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
announced an alliance on Monday aimed at advancing computer chip technology
that will enable consumers to buy electronic devices that will be more
powerful than IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer within five years.
 
 The
companies said they will commit US$400 million to develop a
"supercomputer on a chip" -- processors that will operate at low
power and that will be able to access the Internet via broadband at ultra-high
speeds.
 
 "The processor platform that people have only been able to
imagine is now going to become a reality," said Ken Kutaragi, president
and chief executive officer of Sony CEI.
 
 Code-named 'Cell'
 
 Officials for
all three companies said at the announcement in Tokyo that the new microchips,
code-named "Cell," will use the world's most advanced research
technologies and chip-making techniques.
 
 As for what types of electronic
devices will use the chips and be available for widespread use by consumers,
plans are still uncertain, Sony's Chris Andrews told NewsFactor Network.
 
"It really remains to be seen exactly where [the chips will be used], but
it will be computing devices that consumers will use to connect to and
interact with the Internet," Andrews said.
 
 "They will essentially
be more powerful than some of the most advanced supercomputer chips,"
Andrews told NewsFactor, "but will find their way into more consumer
applications, in addition to servers and high-end applications."
 
 IBM
To License Technology
 
 The project will employ 300 chip designers and
computer architects at its peak, all working toward the goal of developing a
"teraflop-class" consumer processor. A teraflop is one trillion
floating point operations per second
 
 Under the agreement, IBM will license
to Sony its 0.10 micron processing technology, which reduces the size of
circuit features and enables smaller chips to run at faster speeds. The
fastest current microchips are produced at 0.11 microns or 0.13 microns.
Production on a commercial scale at a sub-0.10 micron level -- 10,000 times
thinner than a human hair -- has not yet been achieved.
 
 Officials for Sony,
the world's second-largest consumer electronics maker, said the technology
will allow the company to build more advanced production lines in Japan for
the microprocessors used in its line of PlayStation game consoles. Sony was
plagued last year with shortages of the new PlayStation2, particularly in the
U.S. where demand was great.
 
 New Wave of Devices
 
 The three high-tech
companies, which will share a development center to be housed within an IBM
facility in Austin, Texas, said the agreement calls for all three firms to
manufacture the product for "a new wave of devices."
 
 With
built-in broadband connectivity, ultra-high speed networks will be expanded
and become more closely linked, in effect forming one unified
"super-system," the companies claimed.
 
 "Just as biological
cells in the body unite to form complete physical systems, 'Cell-based'
electronic products of all types will form the building blocks of larger
systems," Kutaragi said.
 
 IBM also announced on Monday that it is
joining the efforts of a computer chip industry group studying ways of coming
up with smaller circuit patterns on semiconductors for the purpose of boosting
their speed.
 
 The consortium is experimenting with extreme ultra-violet
light as a means of printing the increasingly complex circuits on
next-generation processors.