SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- A new micro-processing chip designed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba will revolutionize computing and communications, the Financial Times reported Monday.
Called "The Cell," the "supercomputer on a chip" has been under development by the three companies since 2001 in Austin, Texas, and was due to be unveiled at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco Monday.
The two leading chipmakers, Intel and AMD are just moving from 32-bit to 64-bit computing and to dual-core processors essentially two "brains" on a single chip. The Cell is understood to have at least four cores and to be significantly faster than Intel's and AMD's.
"This is probably going to be one of the biggest industry announcements in many years," said Richard Doherty, president of the Envisioneering research firm.
Products containing Cell, including Sony's PlayStation 3 games console, are expected as early as next year, the newspaper said.
