Most computer processing chips are built on the foundations of the chips that are already in use. Designing a new chip from the ground up is a costly and time-intensive process. So in 2001 Sony partnered with Toshiba and IBM to create the so-called Cell processor -- a chip so powerful that it would redefine PC-scale power.

David Shippy, as it happens, was in charge of designing the brains of the Cell, the processing core. In "The Race for a New Game Machine," he and his co-worker Mickie Phipps tell the story of the whole effort to build the Cell.