Slashdot Mirror
Sony's 'Cell'-based TV Ready By 2006
News for nerds writes "Sony Corp plans to offer a broadband television by 2006 that would incorporate the powerful new 'Cell' processor it is developing with IBM Corp. and Toshiba Corp. The Cell processor is expected to power the upcoming PS3 console, a workstation, server, and other home appliances to form Cell-based P2P network. The sample production of the processor has already started. In PlayStation 3, TV props you!"
Yeah... But will it run Longhorn?
Worst... "In Soviet Russia" joke... ever.
Like anything Sony has ever come out on time!
This sig has been removed pending an investigation.
The western world shudders every time Sony rumbles with the threat of another microprocessor. The Sony Processor is some magical beast that will topple Intel. Vague references to Detroit in 1974 abound, or, the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, for the more obtuse.
But yet I wonder if Intel will really be toppled? Will there be a magic Sony box to shake Wintel's growing foothold into Sony's traditional spaces? I don't think so.
This is my sig.
You must be new here.
The proper cliche is:
1: Cell processors.
2: ???
3: Profit!
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
Gohan can handle Cell again. I'm not worried about this at all.
The cell system seems interesting - it's one step closer to the eventual integration of every system component as one entity. Perhaps in the future, it'll just be a Station as opposed to a PlayStation.
I want to like Sony, I really do. But, they consistently fuck up the things they say they are going to do. Here's my armchair analysis:
Sony could be a dominant technology and media company. They own record labels, movie studios, and make what could otherwise be decent computers and electronics equipment. They could tie all this stuff together in an incredibly elegant package. I'm thinking something along the lines of Apple times 10. But, they insist on using proprietary hardware and software.
Note to Sony bigwigs: First off, ditch the memory stick. Give me SD slots on all your devices. They are smaller (physically) and cheaper (monetarily). Second, quit insisting on using your shitty ATRAC3 audio format. Or, alternatively, you can use it but make your hardware support MP3 as well. AAC would be nice, but I'm not asking a lot. I have a ton of MP3 files and I will not reencode to ATRAC3. So, that means I will not buy your damn music devices. Time and time again your formats fail. Betamax, Memory Stick, MiniDisc, SACD, ATRAC3, and on and on and on. Give it up. I want to buy your devices but you insist on making non standard stuff.
Now, the Cell processor is interesting. I sense Sony wants to change, but they refuse to go all out. Open up this Cell processor so a bunch of home devices use it and let the network effect rake in the money. The Playstation division of Sony has a really good vision if only they could make the rest of the company follow. Cell I'm willing to accept, because it sounds interesting. Jury is still out. UMD also seems like a decent mobile solution for games/audio/video. I'm disapointed that it uses Memory Stick, however. As an mobile media player, the thing will have a chastity belt tighter than the pope's daughter, which pisses me off because I don't want to go through that much trouble to USE THE FUCKING MEDIA I OWN.
The above was pretty incoherant I'm sure. I just see so much potential locked up in Sony that never gets realized and it really irks me.
That is all.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
What personal computer functions, other than gaming, and perhaps IM, would function well in a living room environment? Remember when Gateway tried to pull something like this way back, with the 32" computer monitor with TV tuner for the living room? Remember WebTV?
Computers and TVs serve different functions, and I fail to see what possible advantages throwing a "high powered" processor in the TV could provide, unless it's essentially going to be a built-in PS3 with PVR capabilities. Classic computing functions like web surfing and word processing are ill-suited for the big screen.
"Next generation game console"/"network TV"/"home file server"/"other home electronics"/another thing I'm going to spend a ton of money on that I just want for games
I feel as though the more you put onto one machine the more problems/frustrations people will have...keep the PS3 as a game console (maybe with a better multi-player network) and let us choose if we want to buy everything else this wonder cell has to offer
W,A,S,D Spells "Life"
Soon
Only
Not
Yet
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
Wasn't the PS2's Emotion Engine chip supposed to totally rock our world? I seem to remember the PS2 having awsome graphics only to have its ass handed to it shortly afterwards by ATI and nVidia.
As an earlier poster said, Sony sucks at designing things with developer considerations. Apparently the PS2 is a nightmare to code for.
What guarentee is there that this chip will really be revolutionary? And what has been done to ensure that it can be utilized?
http://brandonbloom.name
Yeah...but will it accept Memory Stick??!!
All your appliance are belong to us!
2006! Why so long?
I want one of those Cell workstations, now.
The cell is going to make waves - in more areas than most people are willing to admit/understand. Sony now has such a large portion of media control they are now able to bring them all together for a single combined solution - and that means at the hardware level. If you have ever written hardware level software you will be jumping for joy. Imagine it, a nice singular interface (hardware) for ALL electronic consumer devices.. who cares about the high level software that will come.. its the low level software that will benefit inifitely.. These are the sorts of innovations that allow hardware to actually move into a new style of connectivity. And I admire Sony for:
A - Having the balls to go into so much debt for the R&D on this - it could cost them their company.
B - Looking past then next 2 years of development, and really looking 10+ years from now.
C - Not following the pack, with the x86 mentality that has railroaded cpu creation into a jumbled bloody mess.
D - Concentrating of consumer devices that not only function well, but look good. I doubt anyone here can defy Sony's good quality of products - I doubt you will find an American manufacturer who can compete there.
I give these guys the thumbs up, for thinking different (just read the patent on the cell and you'll know what I mean) and for not boxing themselves into a copy cat company..
Future prediction - Cell will very likely become a standard baseline for electronics manufacturing for the next 20 years.
Come on, SecureDigital is just the followup to SmartMedia; CompactFlash is the only real option. Even Sony makes cameras with CompactFlash slots (as well as MemoryStick), because they know that when you're serious, CF is the only option.
THE NERD IS THE COMPUTER.
That said, if it says Sony on the front you can be sure it's an overpriced pos. I don't game and can't comment on the virtues of the playstation, but I do know every Sony appliance I ever bought died an early death. My $179 6 head Sharp VCR lasted years and kicked ass. It was such a great machine I actually lamented its death. Meanwhile, my $229 Sony four head had a terrible fucking picture with anything other than absolutely perfect tapes - which it regularly ate from the time it was a mere three months old.
Every Sony I ever bought fell apart quicker than either the device it replaced or the device that replaced it and their longevity only goes to prove the old adage about suckers being in infinite supply.
CompactFlash is alright, but it is too large to be used in a variety of devices. Mobile phones and PDAs being two that are obvious. I want one flash format that all my devices use so I can swap in and out my investment in memory. SD is the best choice in my opinion.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
I have had both a cellular phone AND a mobile device that had CompactFlash slots. Neither was bulky or unusable. In fact, the beauty of the CF slot in my old Toshiba was that it served double duty with my ethernet card and a barcode scanner. You can't stick an ethernet port out one side of a securedigital card.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Betacam SP is another story entirely.
:)
It's the television video editing standard. Everyone uses it. Why? It's quality shit. ESPN, the six o'clock news, Jeapordy... all of gets transferred on Betacam SP tapes.
Good stuff.
Sony OCCASIONALLY gets it right.
How about a beowulf cluster... oh wait.
I know you are but what am I?
...a beowolf cluster of these...
Try this one:
1) Sony sells Cells.
2) Sony builds the biggest distributed computing network ever.
3) Sony gives you free access to their gaming network if you make unused cycle available for their use.
4) Profit! Sony profits selling untold computing power to the highest bidder whilst making millions of gamers happy that they have no subscription fees to pay.
6) (optional) Masses flee xBox Live (which I'll admit, is pretty cool).
Tv is dead . Less people are watching it. Convergence of LARGE high res monitors,computers and consoles and high speed net. Now if Kerry gets elected watch for the 100 megabit cable to your home.
Great now I can download bittorent episodes on my computer AND my TV.... I wonder what resolution it will support.
I don't know how long it is, all I know is I'm getting banned all the time lately. Most of the moderations to my posts are modded up, but there is almost always one asshole that mods each of my posts down. Apparently the positive moderations don't cancel out the negative moderations. I don't understand why so much stuff gets modded down that doesn't deserve it these days. I see it constantly. Sorry for the offtopic rant, but I'm definately seeing a lot of moderation abuse lately.
PEOPLE, PLEASE METAMODERATE AND BE ESPECIALLY SUSPICIOUS OF ANY NEGATIVE MODERATIONS. Don't just metamod them as "fair" without first making sure the moderator had a clue as to what the subject was about.
Why should I care about Sony's cell processor technology? I'm not asking to troll. I really want to know what all the hullabaloo is about. What capabilities will it bring to us consumers that we could not possibly get elsewhere?
the cosmos in 20 words or less: thumbuki.com
Oh great, I can't wait until the RIAA tries to supoena my refrigerator for illegal sharing of files...
and now everyone can use the technology, though not the name.
Someday we'll all be negroes
Sony owned many of the patents on the compact disc. They had a major hand in it. In fact, some of Sony's patents are also carried over into DVD. None of Philips patents are carried over into DVD.
Perhaps you've heard of SPDIF, the Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format?
As to the James Russell thing, he invented a digital optical disc. It isn't clear that he invented the compact disc (digital audio disc). For example, I don't see any info that says he created the particular system of pits that allows the same laser to both read the data and determine how to move itself to stay servo tracked on the pits.
SmertMedia is just a special pinout for a normal flash chip. It is the worst format because it provides no insulation in the interface to ensure current devices can use future media. And SmartMedia has had tons of problems with this.
SD is nearly identical to MemoryStick Pro (although in size it's more similar to MS Pro Duo). Both use parallel 4-bit data transfers. Both seem to use packetized command structures.
So, don't go associating SD with SM. They aren't at all the same.
Remember the Inmos transputer? The architecture sounds very familiar
I disagree that TV is dead. How many homes have TVs in them? How many homes have internet access in them? I think you'll find that there are more homes with tvs then there are homes with the internet. However I do think one day tv (as we know it) will die. But I think that is a fairly long way off for now.
for ALL electronic consumer devices
Not bloody likely. More like every Sony (and only Sony) device that plugs into the wall and isn't a PC, and requires massive processor power- that is to say you won't find video cameras and DVD players "Powered by CELL™" (unless it integrates a PS3).
it could cost them their company.
Ummm...no it won't, Sony is freakin huge (they have departments that sue their other departments) and a single failed chip will not sink the company.
looking past then next 2 years of development, and really looking 10+ years from now.
The Cell comes out in 2006. 2006-2004=2
Not following the pack, with the x86 mentality
Sony sells millions of x86 processors every year. As long as there's no SonyOS or MS Windows for CELL™ don't expect that to change.
I doubt you will find an American manufacturer who can compete there.
Apple [apple.com]. (see G5 [apple.com] and iPod [apple.com])
What-EVER.
Goddamn I'm sick of this Cell hype. Especially the "using your toaster to help render Tekken 17 slightly faster" crap.
The thing holding back distributed computing is NOT the freaken' CPU. Its the software. Its not that current CPU's _can't_ do distributed computing. Its NOT that no one thought to add a "DODISTRIB" instruction to current chipsets.
Sure, Cell may do it a bit faster, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem, which is:
Distributed SOFTWARE is FREAKEN HARD.
If any app could be instantly made significantly faster just by adding an extra cpu on a network, then they would *ALL* be doing it now. Whats stopping your office network into becoming a big distributed pool for all your apps? It certainly isn't the hardware.
If Sony had come up with a software model, or a toolkit, to turn any arbitary app into a optimised distributed computation THEN I would be impressed.
"My cat's breath smells like cat food." - The Tao of Ralph Wiggum.
Come on guys: do you really have to call every single concept in the system a "cell"? I know you're excited about the concept, but come on. It's just plain confusing.
It could be really neat, but I suspect that (a) it won't work as well as it sounds (b) it'll be a nightmare to program for, so will be poorly used, and (c) no one will use it but Sony.
The Sony Ericsson P900 like other costly Sony Ericsson phones doesn't support the Memory Stick but a variant called the Memory Stick Duo. So much for convenience and every single Sony device supporting the Memory Stick
can you post the tab to that song too?
The difference is, that to interface with a Trinitron TV you don't need special hardware, Trinitron is an enhancement for the TV that complies to the TV standards. You could hook up a Sony Trinitron TV to a Pillips VCR or a Toshiba DVD Player (I have no idea whether these companies actually make that stuff, insert other brand names if required). However, you can't make a Sony Memory Stick (or a device using it exclusively) interface with a Phillips Camcorder or throw a UMD into your DVD player. I bet Trinitron would have been a lot less successful if it required special Trinitron broadcasts and antennae.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
5) Sony renames the Cell to SkyNet and activates it?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
"Idei also said a potential acquisition of movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc would be aimed at effectively incorporating MGM's software library into Sony's film division." Could founders of Great MGM studios think of more humiliating end then being sold for couple of .so and .lib files.
839*929
If Sony does come up with all this wonderful technology, it won't be 'powered by' a cell chip, it will be powered by electricity, probably from a wall socket.
Someone needs to buy their marketing department a dictionary.
Actually, come to think of it, everyone needs to buy their marketing department a dictionary.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Broadband TV? Thats so ... 2003. We have had it in Hong Kong for over 10 months now. Connects into the DSL modem and provides on demand cable channels.
http://www.nowbroadbandtv.com/
(My apologies... the site is in flash)
"I have worked as a software engineer for six years"
Six year! Six WHOLE years!
WOW.
Six years of experience? DO you mean that in a "I've only got six year of experience" kind of way? Or do you mean that in the "I've got lots of experience, six years to be exact" kind of way?
Read it again, he means Sony could be dominant if SONY didn't use proprietary software.
Your knee was jerking pretty hard to defend Apple. Kinda funny, really.
That implements distributed compiling which works fine. But many companies do not have it, because that would cost money. Maybe they think programmers' time is cheap.
Well- they claim the 300mm sample dies are from their Nagaski plant. Anyone know if they glow in the dark. I wonder if they even need a supply?
I also found that they do conform to the USB Mass Storage standard, so when the other manufacturers start making their models (not a big fan of Sony hardware QC) I might just get me one of these. It makes me unreasonably happy when I find out that someone out there wasn't as stupid and myopic as they could have been.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
I've had a 'Cell' on my TV since December 2000.
Oh, you didn't mean that...
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
The problem with sony at the moment is that it is at war with itself:
r .h tml)
:
3 92 4_0_8_0_C
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/sony_p
The hardware that it is putting on the market at the moment is severely affected by this war
http://www.ipodlounge.com/articles_more.php?id=
In theory sony should be doing very well but in practice its not because it is pissing of its customers with annoying anti features that they don't want and even non technical people are waking up to this fact.
Sony is doing well with its console business at the moment and due to its sheer size it should continue to do well but I honestly don't think its going to go any where with its multimedia strategy the way it is now. Sonys only consolation is that Microsoft's multimedia + console offerings will probably be just as restrictive and just as bad as its own. This is what will stop consoles becoming multimedia hubs where people buy everything from sony/microsoft. In my opinion either very few people will use sony/microsofts services or third party developers will make software which will allow users to rip/play cds in non encumbered formats.
Given Sony's history of writing bad API's for its procs (ps2, ps1) I would not be surprised if history repeats itself and cell is yet another pain in the hole to develop for. Bottom line: I think sonys internal conflicts of interest will screw up cell's potential outside of the console market. Good technology is not the only thing a company needs to succeed in business and ultimately it is games/cool features that cell consoles not their technical specifications.
_________________________________________________
Memory sticks, ATRAC mini disk, SACD - they're all FORMAT SOLUTIONS LOOKING FOR A PROBLEM. proprietary ones at that - we DON'T NEED THEM.
The 'cell' is not an individual chip, but a technology to create specialized chips quickly and cheaply using off the shelf designs. Essentially its a form of grid computing where different components are placed on the same chip die. In this case, they will put a chip in the TV that has sub-cores specialized in signal handling and possibly decryption on a chip that has a general purpose core that will act as a traffic-cop routing data to the correct subcommponents. In the PS3, the cell chips will have sub-cores dealing with vector calculations and graphics programming. The the signals traveling between these different sub-cores is similar to network traffic between chips, network communication was included in the design so that multiple cell chips can work together easilly. Although Sony has hyped this as potentially being avaliable in the PS3, it is doubtfull that it will be used to borrow cycles from your TV and microwave when you are the middle of a boss fight. The network latency would be too slow, however, it would be incredably usefull in a cell based supercomputer where there is a much higher density of components.
Now we have Sony, a company (in)famous for proprietary interfaces and formats, putting a processor INSIDE the TV? Who's to say Sony won't make it so the TV with Cell processors won't display DVDs that are NOT encoded with CSS (their though process will go like this: if CSS has been removed it's obviously a pirated copy).
How about onboard TiVo functionality? =)
It's true I like Sony, the reason? The PS2. I generaly find other Sony consumer hardware to be over-priced and mearly "competive" as opposed to killer. (I'd buy a Fuji digital camera any day, and an LG/Zenith TV before I shelled out 50% more for the Sony equivilent) BUT I bought a PS2 and I'll buy a PS3. It's not just the games, though the success of the PS1 did pave the way for developers to support the PS2 no mater how DIFFICULT it was to program for. The PS2 is NOT personal computer by design, what it is is a small step in the hardware design revolution. Look at how little power a PS2 consumes compaired to a PC with similar computational abilities. Look at how little space the PS2 hardware occupies, and then look at the data bus and architecture used in the PS2. The PS2 with the Linux kit is a perfectly usable, albeit memory limited computer, capable of handling most WEB content with ease, and running the applications that consummers use most often (EG: Word processors, E-mail, Internet, and accounting software).
More and more people are already buying consoles to play games rather than shelling out for a high-end gaming PC. If the CELL architecture can provide not only a killer gaming system, but flexible basic personal computer functionality, then low-end PC's had better watch out! Lets face it, a $400 PC may be more flexible than a PS2, but it's not a WHOLE lot more powerful, and it defiantely isn't a better gameing machine. If Sony-Toshiba-IBM (STI) can shuck the WindowsOS and provide a truly convergent appliance that sells at comodity prices, then Intel/M$ realy should be worried.
I don't think M$ built the XBox JUST to grab a chunck of the not-terribly-lucrative console market, M$ wants to protect itself from the likes of the PS2/PS3 by having a presence in the convergence market before it even hits. I think the one major mistake M$ made was closing the XBox to non-game software. It's hardware is so close to PC-norm that develpment of productivity software to run on the XBox could be as simple as a re-compile.
Sony understands the potential for these 2nd and 3rd generation consoles to perform all the functions of a basic PC and the fact that they are planing on building a CELL-based workstation indicates that the hardware may easily support a "real" end-user OS, now the only question... Linux, AIX, or something else entirely?
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
"The Cell processor is expected to power the upcoming PS3 console, a workstation, server, and other home appliances to form Cell-based P2P network.
Other appliances on a network? Does this mean I can finally network my coffee maker & toaster, and run cron jobs on both to get hot, fresh breakfast at 6 AM? SWEET!
It ain't really so hard. It is just that on the PC the fast majority of PC's are single CPU so no-one really bothers. I recently was asked to look at upgrading an office of about 50 pc's from P3's to up. They were running windows XP pro (boss is a MS junkie of the worst kind but he also pays well). I open one of the boxes and find it is really a dual but with only 1 cpu. Turned out that almost all their machines were like that. All Dells btw. With the P3 it was really simple but it just never caught on despite the fact that a dual P3 is faster then a single P4, gives better response times (less of the hang time when windows does something complex like reading a directory) and LESS PRONE TO LOCKUPS (when a process uses 100% of the cpu a single machine becomes impossible to control, on a dual it just uses the other cpu).
I managed to find some old P3's and together with some of their scapped machines upgraded 2/3s of the office to duals and the rest to P4's
The duals are the hottest machines and liked the best. No lockups, fast response. The machines are well liked and it cost a tiny fraction of the upgrade to a P4.
Sadly this is the exception. The fast majority just buy an insanely fast single CPU never realising that the biggest bottleneck is not the CPU horse power but the cpu waiting for other stuff.
How does this all relate to cell?
Well if cell comes out then all of a sudden this whole multiple processor and perhaps distrubuted stuff will have a huge installed base.
The problem is not that doing it is hard. The problem is that before there was no installed base to make use of it.
You want to now how easy distributed computing is? Read up on mosix.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
A ford is powered by a V8 wich is fueled with petrol.
My Linux desktop is powered by a dual P3 wich is (and here is where the trouble starts) powered by electricity.
"powered" can mean both stages. So yes everyone does need a dictionary but some of us also need to learn common sense. That unfortuanly is not available in a book. I do got a clue-bat right here maybe that will help?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm sure you know a PCMCIA card sticks out of the side of the unit; so you're stuck taking it out and putting it back in all the time or you end up breaking them. If you use it anywhere near as much as I do--taking it everywhere I go as well as carrying it all over the house--you know how important an internal wifi card is.
A tank? Calling the Dell P4 laptops tanks I could understand, but a laptop just over an inch tall is hardly a "tank". Also consider that the 14" ibook is about twice the volume of the Compaq, so it is less dense than the Compaq and "feels lighter" on your lap.
The iBook is much nicer in appearance, runs OS X, has a much longer battery life, twice the memory and four times the hard drive space of most M300's, and has a built-in CDRW/DVD (have fun taking the Compaq's docking station on a trip with you to watch DVDs, or running home when you need to use your CD-RW).
So to answer your final question: Because for many people, the iBook is a better laptop.
However, if you're one of the many who don't need a CDRW/DVD in the computer, don't move around enough to be bothered by the annoyance of a PCMCIA wifi card, don't want a larger screen, don't need much ram or hard drive space, and don't care about battery life--then, sure, the Compaq is a much better choice and the extra $250 would be wasted on an iBook.