Cell Growth

It happened sooner than I thought: We're already seeing the first implementation of the IBM Cell microprocessor in a server environment. That even beats the Cell's higher-profile rollout as the guts of Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3 gaming console, which is how most of the world will experience this chip. Realistically, though, the Cell was headed for some form of server use sooner than later, and Mercury Computer Systems's move to place it into a blade server aimed at high-computation markets is almost a pure gimme. The Cell -- really eight chips on a processor form -- has been touted for its threading ability in graphics and high-performance computing situations, and that's too good to resist for servers. This will hardly be the last we hear of Cell-based servers.