IBM kills off second-gen Cell blade server

IBM has killed off its QS21 two-socket Cell blade server, the second generation of Cell blades sold by IBM, which were announced in August 2007. The move comes several weeks after IBM murdered a future Cell-based blade server, the QSZ2, that would have given Nvidia's Tesla and Fermi as well as Advanced Micro Devices' FireStream …

[Daniel B.]

Damn!

Does this mean that one of the few processors that actually does something interesting (the Cell) is going poof? Come on! IBM should be pushing these processors everywhere, not axing them!

[sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD]

My only question is

What is Sony going to have to use in a PS4...

[Lance 3]

The Cell

Just because IBM is bailing on it, doesn't mean that The Cell is done. The Cell has IBM, Sony and Toshiba behind it. Even if one bails, that doesn't mean the end of the road.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony has already said they will use a Power chip in PS4

Cheers

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation required

No they haven't.

[Matt Bryant]

Erm.... sales figures?

Despite the flowery send off from TPM, the reason IBM are canning the product is becasue they haven't sold enough to make it economically attractive enough to carry on production. Instead, they'll simply use generic cores on multi-core Power chips on standard J-series blades to do the job, though how well is debateable given that those Power cores are not going to be specialised in any way like those in a Cell arrangement. What should worry IBMers more is a little birdie tells me the driver is partly the not-so-brilliant sales figures for the Power-based J-series blades.

[Kebabbert]

Maybe Cell didnt sell

because it sucked at some work loads? As I have shown, a Niagara 1.4GHz is 13 times faster than a 3.2GHz Cell on String Pattern matching.