ATLANTA, GA – The College of Computing at Georgia Tech has been designated the first Sony-Toshiba-IBM (STI) Center of Competence focused on the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture (Cell BE) microprocessor. STI selected Georgia Tech’s College of Computing as a partner in order to build a community of programmers and broaden industry support for the Cell BE processor.

The Cell BE is a design jointly developed by STI, which invested almost $400 million into the architectural design and initial implementation, according to IBM. Cell BE combines a general-purpose power architecture core with streamlined coprocessing elements designed to greatly accelerate multimedia applications, as well as many other forms of computation.

“The College of Computing at Georgia Tech firmly believes that the Sony-Toshiba-IBM Cell BE processor represents the future of computing using heterogeneous multi-core processors, and we are pleased to work with three leading technology companies in a broad collaboration that will demonstrate the extreme performance of Cell,” said David A. Bader, associate professor and executive director of High-Performance Computing in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech.

According to the latest research, Cell BE is capable of performing precision scientific calculations 3 to 12 times faster than any desktop processor at a similar clock speed. It offers fast performance for computer entertainment and handhelds, virtual-reality, wireless downloads, real-time video chat, and more.

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