Harnessing the power of the Cell processor, developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba, is no easy task - IBM has therefore decided to get together with Vivendi and offer hands on programming sessions on the processor to game developers.

"The Cell Broadband Engine is complex high-performance architecture that processes millions of pieces of information per second to deliver highly detailed graphics," said Hal Lasky, vice president of consumer, media and entertainment for IBM Global Engineering Solutions in a statement. "Our focus is also on enabling the broader eco-system of game developers to fully utilize the power of the Cell Broadband Engine. We hope this takes us to a plateau that has never been approached before."

Clinton Keith, chief technology officer for High Moon, admitted it "would have been great to get it before launch," but the information wasn't available at the time, so they are seeking it out now.

The performance of the Cell is such that IBM has discussed using it in supercomputers and has already released one blade server based on the Cell, the QS20, which provided 205 GFLOPS of floating point performance. With a rackmount chassis, performance could reach 2.8TFLOPs, which would easily put such a system in the Top 500 supercomputer list.