A core is a processor.  Multiple cores placed on the same die are still multiple processors, regardless of the packaging.

This patent is all of:

A) Intentionally vague, attempting to cover a wide range of expected technology,
B) Not really applicable to the Cell, but
C) Close enough that it might just succeed in court.

EDIT: I've taken a closer look at the patent and all its diagrams at this link.  I've also programmed for the Cell.  There are similarities between this patent and the Cell microarchitecture, but there are also similarities between an x86 and a PowerPC.  I'm no lawyer, but as a student of microarchitecture design, these aren't the same thing.  The question is whether or not a judge who is not at all familiar with microarchitecture design would agree.

Gotta love the USA  

Excellent point, Entroper, as usual. And this is the point HappySquirrel was making. It doesn't matter how asinine a patent is, if the judge is a 72-year old good ol' days grandpa who hasn't a clue to what technology is, there might actually be a case. I definitely wouldn't want to see this taken to court. Get it thrown out or settle and move on.

Man the architecture the patent described is so high level. I am sure every processor violates "patents" on every other one. You might as well patent a multistage pipeline and multiple execution units and end all modern processors.

Synchronization is not new, parallel processing is not new. Patents are stupid when they apply to such base principles that it can stifle all innovation.

I hate my country more and more everyday. these get rich schemes are getting old.

To those people saying Sony should just buy the company... you do know that it's impossible to buy a company by brute force right? You can only buy a company if it's "up for sale" so to speak. You need to buy majority stock of the company, and a company this small probable doesn't even have stock. Even if it did, if 51% of the stockholders refused to sell, Sony can't do jack crap in terms of buying the company.

you have a point, but sony can pay them a billion buks and they'll offer it up :P

This case wont last in any way, the same thing happened with the church they just want as much money as they can get, you see all the money they made from the ps3 goes to the people that sued...

First of all, this patent is ridiculous.

1) There is extensive prior art relating to shared-memory parallel architectures. The Cray X-MP came out in 1982.

2) The Cell does not use a shared-memory architecture for the SPU's.

3) They're not just suing Sony. They're also suing IBM. That's a really stupid move.

Sony should be pretty used to getting sued by now. They'll fight it in court. Lose. Pay six times as much as they would have if they had just settled in the first place and life will go on as if nothing had ever happened.

Just like the lawsuit where the company claimed Dualshock infringed on patents. That case was no more valid than this one, but in the end Sony still lost and ended up paying close to 100 million dollars as oppossed to Microsoft who payed about 30 million to just settle their dispute with the company.