Sony to 'Cell' technology to Home Servers

Looks like Sonys investment in researching new chips for their Next Generation Console has started to pay off for the home theatre market

From http://theage.com.au/.

Sony, IBM, Toshiba plan new chip

Sony plans to begin selling home servers for broadband and high-definition TV systems powered by a revolutionary new computer chip in 2006, the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant says.
Sony also said a next-generation video-game console powered by the chip, known as Cell, was also in the works, although it didn't give a date for its release.
IBM, Sony and Toshiba Corp have been working together on Cell since 2001, but the partners have been reluctant to disclose details.
They said on Monday that Cell would allow computers and consumer electronics products to quickly process huge amounts of video and other digital content.
The processor will handle vastly more memory than today's consumer chips as well as enable hardware-based copyright protection and allow multiple operating systems to run at the same time. It also will feature multiple cores, or logic engines, on a single die.
The technical details of Cell will be disclosed in papers at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, which begins on February. 6 next year, the companies said in a statement.
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The companies said Cell is made up of a 64-bit power processor core as well as multiple processor cores that can handle broadband applications, including video games, movies and other digital content.
IBM plans to begin pilot production of Cell during the first half of next year, and the first application is a workstation it is developing with Sony. Toshiba expects to launch its first Cell-based product, a high-definition TV, in 2006, the statement said.
Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., Sony's video-game unit, said appliances of the future would link by broadband to process massive amounts of movie and digital images.
"Current PC architecture is nearing its limits," he said.
The design work for Cell had been taking place at a joint lab in Austin, Texas, the companies said.
AP