The powerful "Cell" microprocessor, jointly developed by IBM, Sony Corporation and Toshiba Corporation, that fuels Sony's PlayStation 3 video game console will be available in IBM mainframe computers, meaning those high-performance machines will be able to run complex online games and virtual worlds. Mainframes are big computers which, due to IBM's push in sales, have allowed customers to perform a wider variety of computing functions on them, since mainframes can run multiple processors and operating systems at once. Cell is touted as a "supercomputer on a chip" because of its design, which includes one central processing unit helped by eight additional processors working on specific tasks. Because of that unusual architecture, Cell's use outside of PlayStations has been limited to specialized hardware for graphics-intensive functions such as military or medical applications.
News source: MSNBC
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