Cell to be open, according co-developers

There's reports on the net today that the co-develpers of the Cell processor, the power behind the recently unvieled Playstation 3, have announced that the specification of the uber chip will be open for the world to use - sans licensing fees - and that Sony and IBM will provide the neccessary libraries to developers. Nice. But what isn't clear is wether those libraries will be gratis as well, or they'll have to be purchased. The following article from the Register also links the announcement with previous news of Apple's courting of Intel, and points out that the Cell would be a better bet:

The news comes three days after the Wall Street Journal published a story that Apple was seriously looking at Intel chips for future systems. IBM is Apple's primary source of CPUs. The Cell, unlike IBM's G5, will be suitable for low power operation in notebooks, if not handhelds quite yet. Open specifications will permit Apple to develop for the Cell without a potentially costly licensing agreement. It's tempting to see these facts as related, but of course it may all be a fortuitous coincidence for Apple.

More from The Register here, and you can discuss this news and the possibility (slim I'm sure, but we can hope) of a Cell powered powerbook in the aptly named News Discussion Forum.