Playing flute and developing a super chip just don’t go together. Peter Hofstee, a chief scientist at IBM and an amateur musician, found that out during an exhausting project that gave birth to the highly anticipated Cell processor, the $400-million baby of IBM, Sony, and Toshiba. Unveiled in February, the Cell boasts one core using IBM’s POWER architecture and eight other, synergistic cores on a piece of silicon. The Cell’s creators tout it as a powerful and versatile chip because it can perform multiple functions fast and simultaneously. The three companies have promised to use variations of the processor for everything from cell phones to supercomputers, including the PlayStation 3 scheduled for release in early 2006.

From the beginning, the triumvirate set out to create a chip that could wow consumers with its ability to deliver rich visual and audio experiences through broadband networks. About 400 engineers in five countries wrestled with the challenges of creating the Cell.      Mr. Hosftee is the chief architect for the eight cores that surround the POWER core. He also had a hand in sealing a deal between IBM and Mercury Computer Systems to use Cell in Mercury’s products, including radars, sonars, MRI, and digital X-ray machines.

Mr. Hofstee, 42, joined IBM in 1996 after teaching at California Institute of Technology for two years. He earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in computer science from the same institution in 1991 and 1994. He also received his doctorandus degree in theoretical physics from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in The Netherlands in 1988.

Red Herring recently caught up with the scientist to ask him about the creation of the super chip and the sacrifices he had to make.

Q: What’s cool about the Cell?

A: It has a unique architecture: it combines two kinds of cores on a chip. It hasn’t been done before. The Cell has a superior security architecture baked into the chip, and it provides good real-time responses to users.

Q: Can the Cell really power for everything from supercomputers to cell phones?

A: I think that caused a bit of confusion. Clearly you don’t want a 3.2-gigahertz chip in a cell phone, or you’d burn your ears off. Today, the implementation is optimized for certain systems. But the architecture we developed can eventually find use for that entire spectrum. You can have a chip with one POWER core and one synergistic core, and your chip would be much smaller in size. Going to the cell phone will take some time.

Q: Critics and competitors say the Cell has limited appeal because not much software is written to support its use.

A: I look at it and say the gap may not be as big as people think. You can already run all these applications on the POWER processor. The differentiation comes from the synergistic processors. There you can get off the ground fairly quickly specific applications. But if you say ‘I want my processors to be good in the thousands and thousands of programs out there,’ then that will take more time.

Q: Did you run into obstacles while designing the Cell?

A: One year into the project, we discovered there were a number of designs that we had to significantly re-architect.

Q: An example?

A: We changed the way synergistic processors fit into the POWER architecture of the chip. We reorganized the chip in such a way that it really [contains] nine-way symmetric multiprocessors.

Q: What did you have to give up while working on the project?

A: I play flute, it’s only been a couple of times a year in the last several years. My family has had to be very patient with me. The Japanese engineers who came to work with us were surprised that Americans can work that hard.

Q: Did you lose sleep?

A: Usually when I didn’t sleep, it was because I was too excited. To be able to contribute and create something this sophisticated is a dream come true. I have had to pinch myself many times.