Sony's next-generation video-game console, due in just two years, will feature a revolutionary architecture that will allow it to pack the processing power of a hundred of today's personal computers on a single chip and tap the resources of additional computers using high-speed network connections.

Besides the PlayStation 3 game console, Sony and its partners, IBM and Toshiba, hope to use the same basic chip design -- which organizes small groups of microprocessors to work together like bees in a hive -- for a range of computing devices, from tiny handheld personal digital assistants to the largest corporate servers.