The Cell processor is already being phased out. Sony sold their cell manufacturing facilities a while back and IBM already ended development of it. The only company that actively makes it is Toshiba, and they are slowly ending their 4 SPE SpursEngine in favor of stream processors.

The cell processor was an impressive processor. Was. It's not anymore. Even the most powerful Cell processor out there, the PowerXCell 8i that is being used in the second most powerful supercomputer is 5X slower than a modern GPU. The type of calculations that Cell is good at are also the type of calculations that stream processors are amazing at. They both suck at general purpose calculations though.

A 500 Gigaflop Cell or a 6 Teraflop (6,000 Gigaflop) GPU with 3,200 Stream processors... The choice is clear. Cell has no place in the future, its technology is already old. The only part of the cell which IBM is using is its dispatch engine. It is being combined with stream processors.

Edit: Also, Sony making PCs based on Cell would be a big mistake for Sony. Making a PC based on an outdated and outperformed architecture? IBM has been selling Cell workstations for years and the adoptance rate isabysmal. The future looks bright for AMD and Nvidia. 

I think he meant that it would hurt Microsoft indirectly. Sony selling PCs with Cell/Linux = less PCs with x86/Windows being sold. Of course, that's wrong since those are two very different markers and Microsoft doesn't have a very large stronghold in the high performance scientific market. Wouldn't harm Microsoft at all, especially since the Cell workstations would most likely be discontinued in months.

I still want to know why would Sony would want to hurt Microsoft. Not how 

This thread is unbelievably stupid. NOBODY uses PowerPC architecture to make PCs anymore. Even Apple now uses x86.

^ Obviously they wouldn't which is why noone is answering you directly.

You would have to either make your own OS for it or modify the CELL to be software friendly

As others have said... this is a JOKE. There would be no market as it could not natively run any software. Linux would be the only practical OS, and it would only run software ported to that architecture.

Cell is old news, a 5870 blows the pins off of a lowly little Cell processor as will the GT300. This isn't 2006 anymore. I do think that the PS4 should use the cell - for BC and developer good will, but only a fool would try to pair a cell against an HD5800 series powered X720. There will be a separate GPU.

And for those people blinded by fanboyism that thing that this would pose any threat to Microsoft (you are soooooo clever using the dollar sign, I wi$h I had thought of that), your logic is so faulty that I don't know where to begin. In fact, I bet that M$ hopes that $ony DOES try this crazy scheme so that $ony gets stomped and lose money. M$ would be laughing all the way to the bank on that one.

One thing I have to add to this. If you are going to use M$ then you have to do it correctly with Sony as well which is -$ony

yes it is a shame, even if an os was made for the cell, and they improved it up and beyond current standards, probably no one would buy the new os anyways as microsoft has hold of the os market.

the cell may now be outdated, but just think what would happen if they kept on improving it?? that's what i was trying to get at, it has untapped potential is what i meant