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IBM's Cell Processor — Not Just for PS3 Anymore
TechFreep writes to tell us that IBM has released a new line of QS20 Blade Servers based on the processor they developed for the Playstation 3. From the article: "Today IBM announced a new line of high-powered QS20 Blade Servers intended for use in seismic research, encryption, digital image rendering and military surveillance applications. Each QS20 will include two nine-cored Cell Processors clocked at 3.2Ghz apiece, which were developed along with Sony and Toshiba for Sony's upcoming Playstation 3 console. As Playstation 3 isn't scheduled for release until November, the QS20 will mark the first application in which the highly-touted Cell will be available to consumers."
Aint that the truth. The damn things aren't even being built yet.
Beowulf cluster of these.
Oh, wait. I suppose this will be close enough.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Gee that should help availiblity.
Do you want your nuclear test performed with the same chip that's used to play Spiderman X? There are a lot of decisions with regards to redundancies, ECC, and so on that go into a design. If it was concieved as a chip for the playstation, you could end up with problems later.
But I do hope it works. This kind of thing would be great for neural implants on the way to the singularity.
Not necessarily about this announcement of course as most of us have seen it coming for some time. However, the concept of the core processor is quite strong and I think that it will play an important role in computing in the future.
h tml
A little tid bit about all that: http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell0_v2.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
It's not just that I hate this word, but what has it got to do with these blade servers? Are they edible?
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Just junk food for thought...
What exactly is a blade server? Is that what they were talking about on that dumbed-down uncreative commercial where the two guys are like "What's a blade server?" "This is." "This is a blade?" "Uh, yeah."
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Maybe take a peek at the Wiki entry about the cell processor for a good background of what it is capable of.
Neutiquam erro
I think that stating that the Cell was "developed for PS3" is misleading. The processor, while certainly earmarked for the PS3, was designed all along to go into a full range of computing devices, PS3 was just the most visible (and likely to ship the most units initially). Saying it the other way makes it sound like the chip was developed exclusively for the PS3 and IBM is "just finding uses for it", which is not the case.
...at least I understand it. Servers aren't consumer products so I don't see how this gets consumers any closer to a Cell or any sooner.
Embedded systems could really use a processor like this. Like my toaster.
Clearly this is bad news for Sony.
For some reason I haven't figured out yet.
IBM has oodles of fab capacity. Don't forget Apple has dropped off the queue.
Apple was one of IBM's smallest consumers of PowerPC chips, and always was. The embedded and entertainment market dominates their "queue", and is one of the main reasons the PowerPC series never pushed as hard clock-wise as Intel does; the embedded market sees higher clock speeds as greater power consumption/heat dissipation and more (electronic and thermal) design challenges. When Apple took a hike, IBM didn't shed any tears, and said as much.
I don't have any specific numbers, but I believe Apple's purchases were under 5% of total production. You may say "well, going with Intel was a REALLY stupid idea!" Wrong- before, Apple was "the little fish using embedded-market processors for consumer computers", and the goals didn't match. Now, they're using chips specifically targeted to the markets Apple wants to be in.
Please help metamoderate.
I think you were just being a dumbass, but in case you weren't... according to this article about the same announcement, IBM is recommending Fedora Core as the operating system to use. So yes, linux does run on it.
Regards,
Steve
IBM already has a CMP. Both AMD and Intel will soon have CMPs. Here, CMP does not mean duo-core; CMP means at least 4 cores.
The window of opportunity for Sun has now closed.
What is ingenious about IBM is the fact that IBM is essentially using the R&D in its consumer-electronics division (that builds processors for game consoles and other toys) to advance R&D in the business-oriented high-performance-processor/high-end-server division. Building electronics for toys has actually strengthened non-toy products.
When will Mattel and Hasbro start selling their own supercomputers?
Servers aren't consumer products so I don't see how this gets consumers any closer to a Cell or any sooner.
Depends on which definition of consumers you are using. Taken more literally, even large companies are "consumers". I think the intent of the submitters statement was simply that it would be the first shipping product that would house the cpu. After all, if you were willing to pay the cost, you _could_ purchase it. No different than say a Ferrari Enzo, it's a consumer product, but one in which obviously only a small percentage of consumers could actually afford.
This has always been the plan and was a guiding principal in the Cell's design. Amortize the cost of a very usefull (To federal customers) chip over the estimated 40-60M playstations that will use a very similar (But not identical) design. From the beginning the chip was dual-purpose designed with very high speed interconnects and protocols for massive parallel-ism.
$29/chip x 64k chips = more ops per buck than ever - thanks to the world's gamers...
The problem for both PS3 and the NSA, etc is IBM's 10-20% yields. PS3 for Christmas? They better get up the curve fast...
BTW - Anyone remember back to when the Soviets used to buy up Ataris and canabilize their chips for sonobouys?
"Knowing everything doesn't help..."
In defense of the original poster, he asked a perfectly valid question. Thanks for answering.
The description of the cell makes it as a super powerpc chip.
If I am getting my history correct, isn't this chip basically the evolution of the motorola 68000?
Weren't powerpc chips the follow on with more data/address registers etc?
Sorry if its a bit off topic, but if so then I gotta get me one of those.
I enjoyed programming in 68k assembler (so much nicer than the stinkhole of x86).
liqbase
Now we know why the PS3 Europe release is pushed out into next Spring. With reported 10% - 20% yields for the Cell, there just aren't that many of the buggers around yet.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"Anyone else expect to see a Mac OSX Xserve running these babies in 2008?"
nope.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
awesome, now i can play ps3 at work !!
"uh, yeh boss, im just testing the performance capabilities of the new blade enclosures"
The Blue lasers that were to go on the sharks have been delayed. So it will be the standard red lasers until further notice. PS IBM will not be using blue lasers on their blades. The blades have been sharpened with a red laser.
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
just wondering, it's not mentioned in the article. (that's a guess since in keeping with policy I didn't actually read it)
(Score:5, Informative) for a simple wikipedia posting is just bullshit people. We all know that if we don't know what something is, google is your friend. If I simple type in CELL, it's the fifth fucking thing listed. ARG!
I think they are similar, but not binary nor instruction set compatible, just "similar" as IBM, Motorola, and Apple colaborated on the design, but I agree that the Intel had a nasty design for assembler programmers. I also think Apple has missed a chance to shine in the server market by focusing exclusively on the lowest common denominator desktop systems (and treating servers as just rack-mounted variations on same).
There are a couple of companies building small and inexpensive desktop systems based on the older PowerPC chips (not these $18,000 babies) and now that Apple and Dell are about as differentiated as Chevy and Pontiac I'll seriously be considering one of these truly high-tech alternatives.
If you want to run a OS more Apple like and supported Apple-like, you can buy Terrasoft Yellow Dog Linux but they are a bit High Performance Computing (HPC) oriented.
I can nearly guarantee it will be offered as option on these products.
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/
They are in Power board now too.
After Apple claimed their new XServe Intel runs 5x faster than their G5 based Xserve, I would suggest not to select them as a serious server vendor.
As a Quad G5 owner I am actually afraid to install Yellow Dog Linux here while my machine is supported. What would happen if I see 2x faster running machine? Serious..
PowerPC was not really evolutionary from 68k. It was a pretty complete redesign, though the early chips had the capacity to run both instruction sets to help ease the transition. Once all the interesting software was converted to PowerPC, the backward compatibility with 68k was dropped.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
As Ex Amiga owner I can say 68k has nothing to do with Power architecture. One is CISC (68k) and other is RISC from beginning.
:)
Motorola joined IBM producing RISC CPU instead of upgrading their 68k line.
I can understand your confusion since Apple and Amiga (via extension board) moved to PPC 603 from Motorola 68k.
I am not a programmer but RISC chips are famous for their reduced registers and commands, to run instructions in less cycles.
Better give you pointer written by real programmers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68k -->68000 family
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerpc --> PowerPC
As ex Amiga person, reading the first line, "32bit from the start" on 68k still makes me mad to Wintel monopoly and Apple jumping... Anyway. What is done is done.
Thanks. That was a nice trip down memory lane.
liqbase
I'm confused. Does that make the damn thing 6.4GHz, 28.8GHz, or 57.6GHz?
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.
No. It can trace some lineage back to the m88k, though[1], which was an even cleaner design than the 68k. If pushed to pick my favourite CPU of all time, I'd probably have to go for the m88k. It was an absolute joy to work with.
[1] As well as to the IBM POWER chip, of course.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Servers aren't consumer products so I don't see how this gets consumers any closer to a Cell or any sooner.
The server that runs Fedora core 5 costs $18,000 or so. Like most people, I'm not going to buy a computer that costs so much but it does get me closer to a Cell processor.
Next to a part of a Los Alamos super computer, a $600 PS3 looks like a bargain. Hell, it looks like a bargain next to a "Ready for Vista Ultimate Sucker Edition" computer. I thought the PS3 was interesting as a gaming platform and nothing else. If Sony makes it so I can dual boot, so that I can run Fedora when I want to crunch numbers I'll put up with the non free nature of the Sony half that plays DVDs and games the same way other non free set top boxes do. The PS3 does not cost that much more than the average PC I build for myself but promisses much more power. I'm going to be watching PS3 very closely, it might be my next PC. If it really works like Sony wants it to, it will be a lot of people's next home computer and it will help make 2007 the year of Linux.
No, I've never said "next year will be the year of Linux" before this year. Vista's impending flop and truly new hardware from IBM is making good on IBM's promiss that the future is free. 2007 has a very good chance of seeing free software market share reach 20% of the home market, aka "mainstream".
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
False. Early PowerPC chips had POWER compatibility (some support was dropped in later models, but it's still mostly there). The Macintosh's 68k emulation was provided in software.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The Potential of Science With the Cell Processor
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/
It reference a second article:
Researchers Analyze HPC Potential of Cell Processor
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/671376.html/
This discusses research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on using the STI Cell processor for scientific computing. From the article quoting the LBL paper:
"Overall results demonstrate the tremendous potential of the Cell architecture for scientific computations in terms of both raw performance and power efficiency,"
and
"We also conclude that Cell's heterogeneous multi-core implementation is inherently better suited to the HPC environment than homogeneous commodity multi-core processors."
The paper went on to say that while the Cell processor was designed for single-precision 32-bit floating performance but with some simple changes to the design it could be optimized for double precision 64-bit floating performance.
This makes a lot of sense if this is the same Cell processor that IBM is using in their blade servers.
Really cheap, really fast 9 core processors!
An interesting read.
RLH
Benchmark Doom on it!!!
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
MacOS wouldn't have any problem running on the PPU portion of the Cell. It will take alot of effort to get the OS to effectively utilize the SPU's though. The PPU is awfully slow and has very poor memory access rates. So yes MacOS could run on it, but you wouldn't want it to. Since the PPU is powerPC it wasn't a huge effort to get Linux running on the Cell. The added work was to expose the SPUs through the SPU file system. To the kernel the SPUs just looks like a block device.
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
I think the real message here is, if you don't buy the PS3, the terrorists win.
For sale: Parachute. Used once. Never opened. Small stain.
It was not the top5% IBM has moved away from the 970 core which basically was a reduced Power4 core years ago, their current top of the line and has been for more than two years is the Power5 line (which is not the sames as the G5, it is what could have become the G6) Apple did have no choice than moving away, but it is true, that Neither IBM nor Freescale shed a tear of losing Apple. Their core market is a different one nowadays and will be for the upcoming years. I think Intel has a bigger problem, their core market is PC only and really PC only now they have given up their ARM line (which was their own fault, they had a good headstart but then let it sleep). The PC itself is basically as concept in the last third of its lifetime with a good 10 years ahead but then it will be over. Intel has to make the transition from the PC into other markets, but has failed again again and again to do that. If and it will happen, the PC market goes down, or shifts to something else Intel really has a problem on its hands.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
The IBM didn't have a Defender flashback and put in a smart-bomb button on these puppies.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
QS20 will mark the first application in which the highly-touted Cell will be available to consumers
Consumers?! Do you know how much a QS20 will cost you? These are business systems. You'd have to buy both a blade center and a blade.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
On the processor? AFAIK yes, the few existing Cell Workstations run Linux. And there are no reports of that linux version being bastardized.
On the PS3? I believe that when it is reported by independent reviewers. Because it would be a radical break from the current business model for console:
1) The console is sold at a loss
2) The console maker recoups the losses from licens fees the game makers have to pay
3) The console is heavily protected against the starting of unlicensed software.
Having an unrestricted Linux on the PS3 would eliminate 3) and thus make it very difficult to enforce 2). So unless the expected price of $600 per PS3 actually pays for the hardware, Sony cannot afford to allow unrestricted Linux on the PS3.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Let's not forget the Transputer! it was there 20 years before the Cell CPU, and there was parallel programming languages like Occam or Concurrent C.
More info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer
Boot Linux. Insert Linux based game DVD from company X which is not so concerned about cheats, especially in single player mode (players can only ruin the game for themselves). Company X does not pay any license fees to Sony, and I doubt there is a law Sony could use to force them.
Result: Less income for Sony.
And that is what all console manufacturers have tried to avoid so far. Now it is possible that Sony has a different business model this time, or that they are simply not getting it and will have a rude awakening. But I'm still sceptical about that Linux on PS3 thing.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Hell, I'd love those little number crunchers for digitizing my old analog VHS tapes. A two-pass encoding of somewhat over an hour of analog video takes approx. 6 hours here...
PS3 will have a modifyed Linux distro(RedHat or Fedora, can't remember) as it's OS, so yes it will run Linux.
All Risc CPUs I can think of (sparc, power-pc, mips) have more registers than any cisc CPUs I can think of (68k and x86)
When comparing motorola 68k assembly to power pc assembly you'd actually think that the power-pc is more cisc than the 68k. And it is. However the 68k has a variable length instruction encoding while power-pc instructions are fixed length.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification