I wonder how true this rumor is, but I remember reading that around the time the F35's computer system was designed, Lockheed Martin shopped around for CPUs from different vendors. PowerPC was a very popular architecture used in military hardware, so LM contracted IBM to design a CPU for them.
In Aerospace applications, it's very popular to have triple-redundant system, that's why IBM designed an unusual 3-core PowerPC CPU. Later, when Microsoft came into the picture, they used the design, with essentially minimal modifications.
I haven't followed the F-35s development that closely, so I have no idea what they ended up using, but it's an interesting rumor nontheless.
FWIW, the Xbox 360 chip was based on the processor developed for the PS3. No mention of F-35 here. “These cores are slightly modified versions of the PPE in the Cell processor used on the PlayStation 3” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_(processor)
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I wonder how true this rumor is, but I remember reading that around the time the F35's computer system was designed, Lockheed Martin shopped around for CPUs from different vendors. PowerPC was a very popular architecture used in military hardware, so LM contracted IBM to design a CPU for them.
In Aerospace applications, it's very popular to have triple-redundant system, that's why IBM designed an unusual 3-core PowerPC CPU. Later, when Microsoft came into the picture, they used the design, with essentially minimal modifications.
I haven't followed the F-35s development that closely, so I have no idea what they ended up using, but it's an interesting rumor nontheless.
FWIW, the Xbox 360 chip was based on the processor developed for the PS3. No mention of F-35 here. “These cores are slightly modified versions of the PPE in the Cell processor used on the PlayStation 3” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_(processor)
Still, nothing would've prevented IBM from using the Cell PPE as the basis for a PowerPC chip for the military, so that doesn't disprove the theory.
I know that the Xenon was being simultaneously taped out with the Cell PPE, so it doesn't derive from another cell derived core.
The book "The Race for a New Game Machine" goes over the timing pretty well.