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The latest challenger to the Wintel duopoly of Microsoft and Intel was moved forward in San Francisco today.

The Cell processor has not actually gone into production yet. Only the technical specification has been released. IBM, Toshiba and Sony will manufacture the chips in Nagasaki and New York by Sony and New York respectively.

Techy details:- the size of the chip is 221 square milimetres. On to this fit 234m transistors. Eight "synergistic processors" or execution units also are on there. "Cell" actually refers to a piece of software roaming the local machine, LAN or WAN looking for execution resources.

Forecast clock speed of the new processor is 4.6Ghz and will be built on a 65nm process. Todays demonstration, though was at slower speeds and used a 90nm process.

Pointedly, IBM said that the processor is "OS neutral" and will be able to run concurrently with multiple operating systems.

On launch the chip will either come as an enterprise kit or in Sony's Playstation 3. However the three partners made it clear that this was a chip for the home as well as business.

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