Sony has been eager to tout the benefits its high-flying Cell processor outside of PlayStation 3 gaming, and to this end the company is planning to demonstrate a prototype "Cell Computing Board" at Siggraph in San Diego next week. The Cell Computing Board will naturally include the Cell processor, as well as the RSX GPU also seen in the PS3 console. Sony is hoping that developing such a computing platform will allow the Cell to see use in a greater variety of applications, including scientific.

The board is designed for computers that handle multimedia applications, such as graphics and video, and scientific computations that require processing of massive amounts of data, Sony said. IBM, Sony, and Toshiba, jointly developed the Cell processor.

By incorporating the RSX chip built by Sony and Nvidia, the new technology can reach computational speeds beyond the 230 gigaflops, or floating point operations per second, of the Cell processor alone, Sony said. The Cell Computing Board, which uses up to 400 watts of power, can be embedded in a 1U-size server and mounted on a 19-inch rack.