AUSTIN, Tex. -- IBM Corp., Toshiba Corp., and Sony Corp.'s computer entertainment unit today (March 12) announced plans to collectively spend more than $400 million in the next five years to develop a "supercomputer-on-a-chip" architecture for extremely fast broadband network processors in consumer electronics applications.

The three companies said they will set up the new development center on IBM's campus in Austin to create ICs, based on copper metal interconnects, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) transistors, and low-k dielectric insulation. The highly integrated ICs--code-named "Cell"--will used 0.10-micron design rules, said the three companies in an announcement made in Tokyo early today.

The new Austin R&D center will employ nearly 300 computer architects, chip designers, and other technical specialists. The result of their work will be consumer-system ICs that are more powerful than IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer, according to the partners. The new architecture will be focused on low power consumption and "ultra high speed" broadband access on the Internet with the ability to deliver teraflops (trillion floating-point operations per second), according to the three companies.

"The processor platform that people have only been able to imagine is now going to become a reality," said Ken Kutaragi, president and chief executive officer of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. in Japan.

He said the new "Cell" architecture will break bottlenecks in today's network processors. "With built-in broadband connectivity, microprocessors that currently exist as individual islands will be more closely linked, making a network of systems act more as one, unified 'supersystem,'" said Kutargi. "Just as biological cells in the body unite to form complete physical systems, Cell-based electronic products of all types will form the building blocks of larger systems."

Under the partnership, each of the companies will manufacture products for a variety of consumer applications. Sony Computer Entertainment will contribute expertise for computer systems used in entertainment applications, such as its PlayStation product series. IBM said it will provide computer and semiconductor technologies while Toshiba will contribute large-scale integration technologies.

"We're defining the next era of computing, providing the technology that will bring computer intelligence and network access to a wide array of consumer electronics," declared John Kelly, senior vice president and group executive for the IBM Technology Group. He added that IBM expects to use its planned 300-mm wafer fab in Fishkill, N.Y., to produce products resulting from the joint-development project.

In relationship with the new R&D alliance, IBM has licensed its 0.10-micron SOI process technology, called CMOS 10S, for broadband processor production. Also today, Toshiba announced it was cooperating with Sony Computer Entertainment to apply 0.13-micron technology to embedded DRAM functions in logic processes. This process will be used to produce ICs for Sony's PlayStation products.