Toshiba Demonstrates Cell Microprocessor

Cybro writes "Toshiba has demonstrated some cool applications for the Cell Microprocessor. They also revealed that they have written their own OS for the new processor. However the article on TechOn does not reveal the license of the OS."

Comments

Background For Those Unfamiliar With Cell

[tquinlan]

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/cell-1. ars
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/cell-2. ars
http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.htm l

ARTICLE TEXT:

[Anonymous Coward]

Toshiba Demonstrates Cell Microprocessor Simultaneously Decoding 48 MPEG-2 Streams
Apr 25, 2005 14:15

Toshiba demonstrated that its Cell microprocessor, jointly developed with the Sony Group and IBM Corp., can simultaneously decode 48 SDTV format MPEG-2 streams. At the COOL Chips VIII event held in Yokohama from April 20 to 22, 2005, the company showed a film demonstrating the decoding process.

In the film, 48 MPEG-2 streams stored on a HDD were read, decoded and projected onto a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution display divided into 8 x 6 cells, each of which showed a different video in each cell. The company expects the technology to be used to display thumbnails for a video list. Of the eight synergistic processor elements (SPE) used in the Cell, six are used for decoding 48 MPEG-2 streams and one is used for scaling the screen. The remaining SPE can be used for a completely different processing function.

In the demonstration, Toshiba used an operating system environment it had developed to increase the efficiency of Cell software development. One of the environment's key features is that application software developers can program software without considering which threads will be allotted to each of the different SPEs, because the environment allows the automatically scheduling software to SPEs.

WMP?

[oiarbovnb]

I swear the screenshot looks like it is WMP... I can't believe that windows is going to work on the CELL. Anybody have any info on what OS will be supported (other than the Toshiba OS?)

Re:WMP?

[Anonymous Coward]

It said "the company showed a film demonstrating the decoding process"

Re:WMP?

[Elenyon]

From TFA you see that is a video of the computer decoding video it is not a live presentaiton but it is WMP playing a video of the prior event.

Re:WMP?

[Jozer99]

Possilby, they did not allow cameras into the demo. They did provide a video, and the picture is simply an amerature screenshot of WMP playing said video.

Re:what does it do?

[A Dafa Disciple]

Video Games

perhaps more interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Ken Kutaragi Talks about Cell

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20050 407/103542/

RTFA please: (to those talking about Windows, WMP)

[llamalicious]

"... the company showed a film demonstrating the decoding process.

In the film, 48 MPEG-2 streams stored on a HDD were read, decoded and projected onto a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution display divided into 8 x 6 cells, each of which showed a different video in each cell. The company expects the technology ..."

If you bothered to read the article contents, you'll see that they simply showed a video of the process actually working.

This is a far cry from a live tech demo, but if they can really pull it off, definitely shows the power of a Cell.

OS for Cell and Cell Application

[vectorian798]

For all those talking about what kind of OS Cell will run:
ZDNet Article on Cell

The article is dated in some ways (like when it says 16 cores...I believe it is half that right?) but it does point out some interesting things, for example, like the fact that there will be a Cell SDK and a end-user OS aimed at embedded devices and the like.

If you google around for 'cell forums' you will come across interesting discussions where they point out that linux will be ported very quickly to cell and that IBM has hinted at possible uses for Cell as a workstation. Also, Cell is OS NEUTRAL meaning that it does not have any particular hardware functionality that makes one OS run any faster.

Overall, I would say that since market penetration is needed, you can't just say "Here is our OS and our SDK, use it from now on". The trick will be of course, to assuage the existing target audience who use today's OS's.

Also, note that the Cell is not a processor bred entirely for the PS3 or anything like that - it will be embedded in devices such as PVR's, TV's, music players, and in all likelyhood, it will even find its way to the desktop - with its potential it is likely to also find some niche in supercomputing since it will be cheap (if 4 whole cells can be thrown into a game console why not?)

Related links on the Cool Chips VIII

[News for nerds]

Cool Chips website with the program
http://www.coolchips.org/

Another report for the conference (in Japanese, with pics)
http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/articles/2005/04/28/coolc hips1/
http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/articles/2005/04/28/coolc hips1/001.html

Maybe

[News for nerds]

this image can explain a lot for you?
http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/photo/articles/2005/04/28 /coolchips1/images/016l.jpg

Re:Not much info

[benwaggoner]

Actually, the I-frame only is quite a bit easier to decode, since it doesn't require motion estimation, doesn't reference multiple frames, etcetera. It's almost identical to a series of JPEGs at 29.97 frames per second.

In normal IBBP MPEG-2, a given B-frame will reference frames either direction of it, requiring two frames be buffered in memory, and a lot of moving around of data from those two frames.

Re:The interesting thing to me here

[marcansoft]

That is *exactly* what they are there for. The real power of the Cell comes from the SPEs, not from the main PPC which is mainly there to control them and move data around. The SPEs do the number crunching.

This does prove though that each SPE can handle 8 MPEG-2 streams with no problem (equivalent; probably they are used in a pipeline fashion so really saying one "does" 8 streams isn't too real, but they can do 48 streams as a whole. The typical thing is one for each major step of decoding.)

PS3 SDK?

[dioscaido]

Has there been any info leaked about the PS3 SDK? Programming a game on a massively parallel platform like the CELL can't be easy, especially for a console industry used to a fairly traditional hardware environment.

In many respects, the Saturn failed because the SDK was just too hard to work with, as did the N64 (although that also had the cartridge limitation to further pull it down).

Given that it seems like the PS3 will surely trounce the Xbox360 in HW capabilities, I wonder whether ease of development will have the final say on who has the better gaming platform.

Re:The interesting thing to me here

[imsabbel]

Have you looked closer at cell?
those "auxillary processor units" make up 75% of the die and have 95% of the computing power of cell.

Re:This is WAY cool

[mikael]

Because either way, you are going to have to define new process structures to represent each auxiliary processor units as well as the PowerPC CPU and recompile the kernel. For such real-time processing you want to keep the data structures to the absolute minimum and not have any 'fluff' left over from previous CPU architectures. Writing a kernel from scratch is the best way to achieve this.

Much like theTAOS OS did.

Re:I am still

[_generica]

No,

Each SPE can only run one thread.

The POWER core _can_ run two threads, but it is recommended to only run one.