Will the "Cell" microprocessor spell doom for MS Windows?


IBM, Sony Computer Entertainment Incorporated and Toshiba in February unveiled their "long-awaited" Cell microprocessor, a multicore, multithreaded "gaming engine" described as "a supercomputer on a chip." Cell is capable of running at more than 4.5 GHz. According to one observer (Nicholas Blachford), "Cell will accelerate many commonly used applications by ludicrous proportions compared to PCs. Intel could put 10 cores on a chip and they'll match neither it's performance or price." The Cell processor "represents the largest threat the PC has ever faced," Blachford concludes. "Cell threatens the current Wintel dominance of the PC industry."

Paul Murphy, a 20 year IT veteran and author of The Unix Guide to Defenestration, has a similar take. He believes Cell will allow Linux to take over desktop computing. According to Murphy, "The triggering event that will push Linux over the tipping point and into desktop dominance is coming from way out in left field: IBM's work with Sony and Toshiba on a new CPU design known as the cell processor. By all reports, this new machine is an order of magnitude (10 times) faster for some key functions than the best Intel can offer. More to the point, the charter given IBM's newly formed PC design consortium for the Chinese and related markets --known as power.org -- strongly suggests that IBM has selected Linux over BSD as the operating system for this machine in both its desktop and server configurations."

Of course, all this is merely speculation. These chips haven't come out yet. They were originally designed to be used in the Sony playstation. IBM plans to use them in servers and eventually they will find their way into consumer desktops. The intriguing part about these processors, besides their blazing speed, is that they are part of the "power" family of processors; which is to say, you will never be able to run Windows applications natively on them. However, they are so fast, that you could run Windows and Windows applications through an emulation system such as Virtual PC and still provide better performance than one would get on an x86-based PC. Virtual PC already runs on power processors—specifically, the PPC processors used by Apple in the Mac. Since the cell processors has a PPC core, porting virtual PC (and Mac OS X as well) shouldn't be too terribly difficult.

The announcement of the cell processor solves a number of mysteries. For example, Microsoft's decision to switch to the PPC architecture in their new xBox. This not only allows them to keep up with Sony, it also provides a convenient excuse for updating their PPC version of Windows. While Windows PPC for the desktop will never happen, as a server, it might have legs. They may also hope that Windows PPC can be used as a host OS either under Linux or Mac OS X. Not what Microsoft wants, of course, but it's better than nothing. In either case, if all this speculation about the cell processor pans out, Microsoft's days as the dominant OS and Office Suite vendor are numbered. The future of personal computing may lie with Linux and Mac OS X.

Posted: Fri - March 11, 2005 at 11:31 PM          

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