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

Not much info

[Ironsides]

It doesn't say anywhere what the bitrates of the originating SD streams were. That is a biggie in terms of processing power. MPEG2 can run from 1.5Mbps (crap) to 50 Mbps (I Frame only, dam good) and higher. Give me more info and I might be impressed.

Huh?

[garcia]

Well, in this picture I see a movie file being played (on what seems to be WMP) showing the cells on the screen.

Now, I wasn't there, nor was the article really in depth by any means, but it would seem to me that this was nothing more than a movie demonstration and nothing live.

I'm not quite so impressed. Maybe we should start linking to real content from the front page (i.e. in-depth accounts and not some blogger's one page summary with a blurry photo of a movie file being played on a projection screen).

Re:WMP?

[vectorian798]

You are right that it looks EXACTLY like WMP in full-screen mode. However, it seems unlikely that they ported it over to the weird OS they have going. Most likely they decode the streams and send raw data streams over a fast gigabit ethernet over to a comp with a media player that just chugs it through onto the screen. Or something like that anyways.

Business Idea

[3770]

Here is a business idea for some small to mid size hardware company.

The CELL processor is cool and the geeks love it and it is based on the POWER architecture. Surely, it'll run Linux.

Build a machine with the CELL. Don't follow any standards (well, use PCI and PCI express Serial ATA and USB 2.0 and stuff like that). But just make sure that you are first out the door with a box.

And make it cheap. It must be possible to make it cheap since it will be sold in the PS3.

I bet that there'll be a lot of enthusiasts that will buy it and be early adopters which will help you work out the bugs.

And then, a year after your first release you'll have a computer that is very fast for its price and a system which is source code compatible with the largest source code library in the world.

Well, I know I'd consider buying one.

Re:Business Idea

[LWATCDR]

"and make it cheap. It must be possible to make it cheap since it will be sold in the PS3."

Nope you will have to develop a chipset for it and that is not cheap. It is unlikely that Sony will hand over the supporting chipset for the PS3 to anyone. Cheap comes from big numbers and there is no such thing as a lot of enthusiast. At least when we are talking about the number it would take to make this cheap.
The only two I can see doing this are IBM and Apple.
A Cell based Mac mini as the ultimate gaming platform would be interesting. I could see this as part of IBMs plan of world domination. They dump the Intel line on china and then push for the Power/CELL to replace it. A Cell based workstation running Linux or even Windows talking to a Cell/Power based server. All with IBMs blessing. IBM goes back to being the master of it's own destiny with no real need to make nice with Microsoft or Intel.

Threads and units

[Spy der Mann]

From TA:

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.

Now *THIS* is the interesting part on their OS. Because the SPEs have different kinds. When I looked at the cell architecture, I thought: "Programming for this thing is going to be a MAJOR MESS!"

Thumbs up for Toshiba on figuring this out AND doing something about it.