Developers seek outside help for PS3's Cell

news via gamepro

High Moon Studios is organizing a developer workshop and collaborating directly with IBM to resolve issues it has with Sony's Cell microprocessor technology.

While Sony may be offering its services regarding issues involving their Cell microprocessor, some developers would rather go elsewhere. According to a report from Next-Gen, High Moon Studios, the team behind the PS2 game Darkwatch, has begun collaborating with IBM engineers to unlock the secrets of the Cell, the tiny, but powerful chip that makes every PS3 run.

Although the Cell processor was a joint collaboration on the part of Sony, Toshiba, and IBM, Sony had very little to do with the creation of the chip, says High Moon Chief Technical Officer Clinton Keith.

"We've been talking to Sony for almost two years now, but they didn't create the Cell," Keith claims. "They created the architecture for the PS3 and they've created a lot of the developer libraries. We've had access to those [Sony] engineers... but they're not the hardware engineers. We want to hit [the Cell] on all fronts. We're talking to the guys [IBM] who designed this chip and have been working on it for five years now."

As a result, High Moon has invited IBM engineers and a handful of other Vivendi Games studios, such as Swordfish and Radical Entertainment, to a workshop that aims to teach developers how to effectively harness the power of the Cell. The workshop will take place this week at High Moon's offices in Carlsbad, California.

High Moon hopes to use the information gathered at the workshop towards creating an as-of-yet unannounced PS3 project. The development studio is also currently working on an unnanounced Xbox 360 game as well, according to Keith.

feedback via comment

This obviously isn't good news for the PS3 and it's Cell processor. While it may be slightly more powerful than the processor in the Xbox 360, the 360 (according to developers) is much more easy to program for.