It seems that Sony was not completely wrong when it claimed that a Cell-based product will be available by spring time. IBM has just announced the first product to officially utilise the power of the Cell processor and it's not a video game machine.
IBM has moved the game-chip to corporate data centers and has introduced its new blade computing systems that enable data to travel up to 10 times faster than previously possible across corporate networks. The company claims that thanks to the Cell processor it has managed to increase the internal capability of the new system by delivering more than 40 Gigabits (Gb) of I/O bandwidth to every blade server.
The flagship blade server (BladeCenter H) includes a nine-core IBM Cell and is the first Cell-based product from IBM. Designed for businesses that need the breakthrough capabilities of the IBM Cell BE processor, BladeCenter H will tackle tasks involving compute-intensive workloads and broadband media applications.
The fact that a Cell based product has now been announced and will be available in March suggests that Sony may be still trying to stick to its spring launch, even though the latest industry rumors suggest a fall U.S. release for PS3.
