What's the point of cell?

[greenmedic88]

I'd say it was IBM agreeing to use the CBE in the PS3 that was pulling the Trojan Horse strategy.

For Sony, it was putting a Blu-Ray drive in the homes of gamers/AV enthusiasts.

Think of it from IBM's POV: what better way to introduce a new type of processor to the public than to have it be one of the core technologies of a next gen gaming console; a highly visible piece of consumer electronics, complete with its own consumer level marketing?

You have automatic third party development for the CPU platform taking place because of this, and eventually examples of commercial software available to showcase the abilities of the processor.

I don't think IBM would be able to sell (and continue R&D) the architecture effectively if it were only being used for commercial and industrial uses (medical imagery equipment, computing clusters/supercomputers, etc.).

You wouldn't be able to sell it to computer manufacturers because it would not be optimal as an alternative to the AMD/Intel hardware platforms, so a enclosed architecture like a game console makes perfect sense.

It does however show promise as a Linux box, if only a box with more memory than the PS3 were to be made available.

And I'm sure Sony was only all too happy to use the CBE in their "next gen" machine from both a marketing standpoint as well as for its potential for next gen applications.