IBM will today announce that it has signed a deal that will see its Cell processor built into products outside of the gaming segment, a first for the MPU.
 
The technology - with clock speeds in excess of 4GHz - was introduced by IBM, Sony and Toshiba in February in the gaming market where high-speed is a must. Now, less than five months later, IBM's engineering and technology services group is partnering with Mercury Computer Systems through a multi-year alliance to integrate Cell into demanding applications such as radar, sonar, MRI, digital X-ray and others markets.
 
Peter Hofstee, IBM chief scientist for Cell, believes that this shift from a gaming technology to more serious applications is one we will continue to see as the industry progresses. Advances in realistic games, he explained, bring us closer to more natural human interaction and will help us reach further advancements.
 
"Game systems are in some ways introducing us to a different way to interact with computers that are really more natural for people," he said. "The better we get at natural interaction with computers - computers that observe you, ones that react to gestures and speech and sound and provide images back to you that are more like what you see in the real world - [the more we] may be heralding in a more fundamental transition in computing."
 

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