IBM has showcased the performance capabilities of the Cell processor, compared with Apple's PowerMac G5 microprocessor, at the ongoing "Grid World 2006" event in Japan. The Cell microprocessor has been jointly developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba.

Including floating point calculation, IBM Japan demonstrated the Cell's 3D video rendering speed in comparison with the G5 and showed the Cell's processing is about 35 times faster than the 2 GHz dual-core G5. The company also displayed a sample of its blade server to be released in the third quarter of 2006, featuring the Cell BE on its blade.

The Cell uses a technology similar to grid computing in the way of a CPU core allotting computing to the eight SPEs (signal processing elements) and makes them perform processing in parallel.

Sony's PlayStation 3 is expected to be the first Cell-based product on the market. The chip will contain one 64-bit Power PC core and eight additional multimedia processing cores. The cores can all support multiple operating systems and programming models through the use of virtualization technologies. The Cell chip will use XDR (extreme data rate) memory interface technology running at 3.2GHz, and will be able to handle ten instruction threads at a given time.

For more information on the Grid World 2006 technology event visit http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp.