Will Microsoft trump CELL by using Proximity Communication in XB720 CPU?

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=40187

"Sun Microsystems developed Proximity Communication and has an effort
underway known as "Project Hero".


"Sun has 100 engineers working on "Project Hero", developing a flat
low-latency memory architecture, with mostly or fully asynchronous
processors, "Proximity Communication" for ultra-fast inter-chip
communication and an alternative to cache coherency. They don't
consider the core design to be that important, but it may be based on
Niagara's very simple 1 instruction per cycle core, which would be
much easier to implement in asynchronous logic. They are also working
on using interval arithmetic to give more meaningful results, and a
programming model where the system does all the (low-level)
optimisation."

http://www.aceshardware.com/read_news.jsp?id=75000448



"Microsoft has a lot of ex-Sun engineers and it is speculating
Microsoft is taking on a much more hands-on approach with their next
CPU."








"For more than two decades, Microsoft's software and Intel's
processors were so wedded that the pairing came to be known as Wintel.
But as that computing era wanes, Microsoft is turning to a new source
of chip design: its own labs.

The design effort will initially be split between research labs at the
company's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., and its Silicon Valley
campus here. Tentatively named the Computer Architecture Group, the
project underscores sweeping changes in the industry."

http://tinyurl.com/2ky96u