Sunday, September 11, 2005
Five minutes with: Dan Greenberg on plans for Cell
New interview at IBM developerWorks:
dW: Does the Cell Broadband Processor Architecture differ from the existing Power Architecture technology?
DG: The central processor in the Cell Broadband Engine is 100% 64-bit "Power Architecture Classic" compatible. For example, that means you can take software that runs on a PowerPC® 970 and run it on the Power Architecture core of Cell Broadband Engine and vice versa -- assuming of course, that the code does not leverage Cell's Synergistic Processing Units. This cross-leverage will allow us to build an ecosystem for Cell much faster than we might otherwise and, we expect, will increase interest in the Power Architecture ecosystem due to the broad awareness of Cell.
dW: Does the Cell Broadband Processor Architecture differ from the existing Power Architecture technology?
DG: The central processor in the Cell Broadband Engine is 100% 64-bit "Power Architecture Classic" compatible. For example, that means you can take software that runs on a PowerPC® 970 and run it on the Power Architecture core of Cell Broadband Engine and vice versa -- assuming of course, that the code does not leverage Cell's Synergistic Processing Units. This cross-leverage will allow us to build an ecosystem for Cell much faster than we might otherwise and, we expect, will increase interest in the Power Architecture ecosystem due to the broad awareness of Cell.
