Sony Looks To Chip For Broadband Breakthrough
By Evan Blackwell
from the March 19, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
As a couple of giants unveil their plans to create a new, high-performance broadband processor, one of the smaller fry was proceeding with its own broadband chip launch.
IBM, Sony Computer Entertainment and Toshiba laid the groundwork for their plans to create a new high-performance broadband processor on March 12 by agreeing to terms for a five-year, $400 million partnership.
The companies will invest equally in the alliance, which aims to create a so-called "supercomputer on a chip" that will be able to handle massive amounts of data to and from multiple sources and process those data in real time.
According to IBM, the chips will be manufactured at a new fabrication plant the company is building in East Fishkill, N.Y. Construction on the plant should be finished by late 2002, with mass production starting sometime in 2003. In the meantime, the three partners will set up a joint development center at IBM's facility in Austin, Texas.
The new product will be code named "Cell," and will use research and chip-making techniques from all three companies. IBM said the units would be more powerful than the current Deep Blue supercomputer, operate at low power and access the broadband Internet at ultra high speeds-"teraflops," or about 2 trillion operations per second.
As the partnership was announced last week, many automatically speculated that the new processors would be at the core of the next-generation of Sony's consumer electronic entertainment system, the PlayStation3. The current product, PlayStation2, touched off an eruption of consumer demand when the game console was released late in 2000.
Toshiba and Sony previously worked together on the processor for PlayStation 2. For now, IBM played it close to the vest in guessing where the chips will be used.
"It's up to Sony to decide where the technology will specifically be used," says Chris Andrews, an IBM spokesman. "We expect there will be a diverse range of applications for the technology and that's what excites us about this partnership."
On a similar front last week, Ishoni Networks introduced its new DV2000 and D2000 family of "gateway-on-a-chip" Broadband Engines. The products will provide data networking, voice processing and security on a single chip, and were designed as a solution for voice-over-broadband applications.
Unlike the Sony-Toshiba-IBM broadband chip, which will use computing technology aimed at consumer devices, the Ishoni chip will target the SOHO market as a money-saving tool for broadband CPE vendors. Ishoni's FlexibleWAN Engine also will allow the chips to interface with DSL, cable and broadband wireless connections.
"We're in a similar, but different space from the Sony-IBM guys," says Greg Gum, vice president of business development at Ishoni. "But we're actually really pleased to see that announcement, and see this market space start to get some traction."
Ishoni earlier this month also closed $35 million in new financing from venture capitalists, strategic partners and other investors.
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