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Toshiba Uses Cell Chip In Consumer Laptop

Posted by kdawson on from the thinking-outside-the-cell dept.

An anonymous reader sends us to CNET UK's Crave blog, where they report on a demo from CES. So far the only uses for Cell chips have been research stuff and the PS3. Now Toshiba has put a Cell chip into a consumer laptop; they are calling it the Spurs Engine. "The system was demonstrated in modified Qosmio G45 laptops, each of which uses a standard Intel Core 2 Duo CPU in addition to a Cell chip with four 1.5GHz synergistic processing elements (SPEs). Toshiba had four demos running... Demo 3... scans all your movie files, recognizes faces, and creates thumbnails of those faces. You can then click the thumbnails to watch scenes with those faces in, or compile them in a separate playlist."

38 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. How about a regular Cell based laptop? by Bert64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A good PPC laptop using a Cell as it's main processor would be good, not just a hybrid using one as a co-processor...

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    1. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by TeknoHog · · Score: 2, Informative

      IIRC, the Cell uses way too much power for sensible laptop use. I'm waiting for PWRficient instead -- 2 GHz PPC at max 7 W per core.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    2. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by foniksonik · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Maybe it's better suited to be a co-processor.... not all technology is meant to be the main component, sometimes it's better to let it specialize, as long as the bus between the CPU and the Co-PU is fast enough all is good. GPUs are this way and have been a great success.

      --
      A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
    3. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah, they were SO serious about NT on Alpha ;-)

      --
      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    4. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually for a long time Microsoft wrote NT on the MIPS and ported to Intel. They felt that if they didn't portability would suffer. Microsoft was actually pretty serious about NT on the Alpha, MIPS, and PPC for a long while. The problem was that nobody else was. Windows developers tended to write for Win95 because that was the big market and many users of the MIPS, Alpha, and PPC where sticking with Unix since they felt it was a better server.
      Microsoft finally just gave up since 99.9% of there users where on Intel.
      Since Intel and AMD have pretty much killed the Alpha and MIPS on servers it worked out well for them.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    5. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 2, Informative
      Yes it's unlikely from a commercial perspective while Windows, historically tied to x86(64), dominates.

      But... Linux works. Supposing they can get the power consumption to reasonable levels, it could theoretically be a candidate CPU for a future OLPC, which already runs Linux, especially given the fallout with Intel. Given Toshiba are using the Cell as a co-processor in addition to a regular CPU, I figure they must have revolutionary battery technology around the corner!

      Then there's Apple. With universal binaries, and technologies such as Rosetta, OS X is processor agnostic. If the figures from the article are to be believed, there's an outside chance. The potential performance gains may be compelling for Apple's key 'professional user' category, i.e. multimedia creation.

    6. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by CrazedWalrus · · Score: 2

      If these prove useful, maybe they can put the thing right on the die with the main CPU. Can't get much faster.

      I'm no hardware engineer, so I don't know the technical challenges involved. Otherwise, I guess they'd have to work out some licensing agreement so Intel/AMD can fab these. Doesn't seem impossible if there's a market for it.

    7. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by LWATCDR · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The 386 did have Unix even then. There where versions of Unix for the 286 for goodness sakes.
      But lets face it. Are you going to spend the money for a MIPS or Alpha to recompile and test a program that you may or may not sell?
      Are you going to buy an OS that doesn't have any software to speak of and my never?
      NT dies on those CPUs for the same reason that BeOS died on Intel.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    8. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by FunkyELF · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Do you have anything to back that up?
      The Cell in a PS3 a 3.2GHz PPC, enough to run an OS on without using the SPEs.
      Any use of SPEs by the OS would just make it faster.
      Not sure what use an OS would have for them though, they're really for the uerland multimedia apps or anything else using SIMD.

    9. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by chasd · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually for a long time Microsoft wrote NT on the MIPS and ported to Intel.

      The first time I saw Windows NT run it was on a MIPS computer.

      Microsoft was actually pretty serious about NT on the Alpha, MIPS, and PPC for a long while.

      The way I remember it, IBM was in charge of the PPC version, and they had a very difficult time getting it out the door. There were rumors that some at IBM wanted PPC OS/2 to ship before PPC Windows NT, and that was the stumbling block.

      Microsoft finally just gave up since 99.9% of there users where on Intel. Since Intel and AMD have pretty much killed the Alpha and MIPS on servers it worked out well for them.

      The way I remember it, DEC was doing all the development for Alpha Windows NT. When Compaq bought DEC, they said WTF and cut back on the resources for Alpha Windows NT. Then, Compaq found out that Microsoft was using the work done by DEC / Compaq to make an Itanium ( 64-bit ) port of WIndows NT, Compaq fired all of the enginners working on Alpha Windows NT and told Microsoft it was on it's own. Microsoft dropped Alpha support soon after.

      So Microsoft really only did x86 development, and twisted the arms of its "partners" to provide support for other processors.

      --
      :wq
    10. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by Bri3D · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's not a coprocessor. Old Alphas just needed a different BIOS with ARC support for compatibility. Later AlphaServers supported NT out-of-the-box with no labelled chip, custom BIOS, or differences at all from OpenVMS/OSF/1 or Linux support. I know this because I have an AlphaServer 4/266 running NT right now.

    11. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by Hamilton+Lovecraft · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The PPC core in the PS3 is pretty basic, executes only in-order, and can probably be outperformed by a Core 2 at 2.4GHz. You wouldn't gain anything by going PPC/Cell instead of Intel/Cell, and you'd lose Windows compatibility.

      --
      step 3: god dammit, it doesn't work
    12. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by Wdomburg · · Score: 2, Informative

      So far the only way to get a Cell processor is PS3.

      Not true

    13. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by default+luser · · Score: 3, Insightful
      IIRC, the Cell uses way too much power for sensible laptop use.

      Apparently, you do not know how CMOS devices work. The power consumption of the chip is directly proportional to the capacitive load and the frequency, and is proportional to the square of the voltage.

      Concering only the SPE power consumption, which is the majority of power used by a Cell chip:

      If x represents the power consumption of a 7-SPE chip running at 3.2 GHz...

      If you cut the number of SPEs from 7 to 4, your capacitive load is cut to %57 of the original, or 0.57 * x.

      If you again cut the frequency from 3.2 GHz to 1.5 GHz, you get a power consumption reduction of 1.5 / 3.2. Your total power consumption after capacitive load and frequency changes is 0.26 * x.

      The PPE portion of the chi[p will see power consumption reduced by half because of frequency.

      FINALLY: a reduced operating frequency means you can reduce the voltage, and this is where you can see some impressive gains. Just to get an idea of the differences in voltages, here is a link to a voltage vs speed graph for each SPE, from Sony engineers. You could potentially operate the Cell at 1.5 GHz at a very low threshold voltage, giving you a %20-30 reduced power consumption.

      So, after all that, you have a chip that runs on less than %20 of the power of its big brother (estimated 60-80w), so this chip is around 10-15w, which is quite practical for four 128-bit vector processors plus a PPE.

      Not that there's anything the Cell could really do effectively for a PC. For parallel processing, we already have dual 128-bit SSE units on the Core2 Duo processors, which comes within fighting range of four SPEs clocked at a paltry 1.5 GHz. And of course, most of there pipe-dream uses will get held-back by slow I/O on a home computer or laptop (like ALL the examples uses for this chip listed in the article), so there's really no need for all that processing power.

      --

      Man is the animal that laughs.
      And occasionally whores for Karma.

    14. Re:How about a regular Cell based laptop? by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't know where you're getting that. The PS3 I have 10 feet away from me certainly does run Linux. I have Ubuntu installed on it for almost a year, as do many others, and other distros, too (including the YDL that is Sony's official recommendation).

      FWIW, the PS2 also installed Linux for general purpose computing on any PS2, too, not just a closed Sony dev environment. I was a member of that community, too, but waited until no additional HW (ie. nonstandard hard drive and ethernet) were required. The PS3 meets those requirements, and delivers.

      The PS3's 3.2GHz PPE contains a 64-bit PPC and an AltiVec accelerator. That chip outperforms many Intel chips, especially at the same price. Meanwhile, there is already substantial SPE development, including HD movie playback and X drivers already in use.

      So really it looks like you don't know what you're talking about at all.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

  2. Really kinda cool by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seem like it would be really handy to put something like this on a video card. You could use it for physics modeling, effects, anything else the SPEs are good at.
    Since this is a lot slower than the PS3 I have to wonder when the first hand recognition based games and controls will be available on the PS3. The EyeToy should work just fine for those.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  3. Dreaming by explosivejared · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As with all things cool, Spurs is not yet available to consumers, and may never actually come to market. But it's fun to dream.

    It's also fun to dream that vaporware may one day not be the staple feature of Slashdot. I would love to see the day where I don't have to be so cynical about new products I see on Slashdot because I trust in its availability. Like the man said... it's fun to dream.

    --
    I got a catholic block.
  4. You sonuvabitch! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I bet you're the jackass editor who keeps putting clips of close ups of just faces in my porn. You better hope I, and a soon to be gigantic and bloodthirsty mob, don't find where you live! I knew you'd slip up one day, you bastard.

  5. NSA will find this usefull. by AltGrendel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Toshiba had four demos running... Demo 3... scans all your movie files, recognizes faces, and creates thumbnails of those faces. You can then click the thumbnails to watch scenes with those faces in, or compile them in a separate playlist.

    Just change those movies to security camera feeds and there you go!

    Possibly quite literally!

    --
    The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination

    - Douglas Adams

  6. Demo 3... by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 5, Funny

    "... scans all your movie files, recognizes faces, and creates thumbnails of those faces. You can then click the thumbnails to watch scenes with those faces in, or compile them in a separate playlist." So Sony have created a chip and software combo which rips all the spooge scenes out of your pr0n? Classy.

    --
    Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
    1. Re:Demo 3... by SirLoadALot · · Score: 2, Funny

      The summary only mentions Demo 3. Here are the others:

      Demo 1 is the lonely Demo of all.

      Demo 2 is a brute force MD5 cracker, so Toshiba can screw up SquirrelMail for reals next time.

      Demo 4 works the same as Demo 3, but replace "face" with "nipple".

      Demo 5 scans your music collection for Paris Hilton and, if found, e-mails your entire address book to let them know how bad you suck.

      We don't talk about Demo 6.

      Demo 7 burns with the rage of a thousand suns.

      Demo 8 performs MPEG2 compression in both little and big endian -- just 'cause.

      Demo 9 remixes all your audio files with samples from the Captain Picard song.

      Demo 10 indexes your porn by hair colour.

  7. Great Demo... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...too bad it only recognizes faces. Would be great for my pr0n collection.

  8. Re:Does it run Windows by Ron_Fitzgerald · · Score: 2, Informative

    During the motion sensor demo with the Transformers movie it was Vista.

    --
    ~ Ron Fitzgerald
  9. Reminds us of ATARI Falcon, NeXTstations by Saffaya · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Those had a 56001 DSP along their motorola main CPU for extra mathematical oomph, and impressive realtime visual or sound effects.
    If this Cell inclusion could become a trend, it could lead to a lot of interesting applications.
    (especially from the free software world, demo-scene, etc ...)

  10. Re:nice advertising pitch by DrXym · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Toshiba make the cell processors for Sony. They probably do test the processors to see which have 7 or 8 working SPUs and send them off to Sony. The rest could be used for other tasks that require a general purpose chip with DSP-like functionality but require less SPUs.

    BTW it's the ultimate irony that Toshiba make the processor for the machine that was / is killing HD DVD. But I expect the Japanese electronics industry is full of incestuous, contradictory partnerships like this.

  11. think of the possibilities by philmack · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm totally going to buy one of these just to sort my porn collection

  12. Re:nice advertising pitch by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Informative

    Talk about ironic! Toshiba uses Sony techonology to improve on a laptop.

    It's not "Sony" technology. Sony, Toshiba, and IBM joined together several years ago to co-develop the Cell processor. Also, if I'm not mistaken, Toshiba is handling the manufacturing of a good number of the chips.

    --
    This guy's the limit!
  13. NBA by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

    Son.. I didn't understand a word you just said. I understand that most people who live outside North America don't follow U.S. professional basketball as closely as U.S. residents do, so I'll help you out: Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs are clubs in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
  14. M$ should be happy . . . by thesuperbigfrog · · Score: 4, Funny

    Finally there's a laptop that can give you the Windows Vista Aero experience as Microsoft intended!

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    42
  15. Re:nice advertising pitch by antek9 · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's not incestuous at all, it's called a win/win situation. Although everyone (except IBM) also keeps losing a little bit at the same time. BTW, the summary is incorrect in that it completely forgets about/ignores the Cell chip also powering IBM's Blade servers. Not a small factor if you want to determine the chip's relative failure or success.

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  16. Quadra 660AV/840AV by SuperBanana · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Those had a 56001 DSP along their motorola main CPU for extra mathematical oomph, and impressive realtime visual or sound effects.

    The Quadra 660AV and 840AV had an AT&T DSP in it that handled all of the sound and video functions. It could also do voice recognition of any menu item, button, or a universal command set within a decent amount of time. It also had a telephone interface box which let it mimic a fax machine or data modem (and I say mimic, because it was horribly unreliable at the latter; fax transmissions were short enough that your chances were better), or behave as an answering machine.

    There was also exactly ONE application that I remember for the DSP aside from what Apple used the DSP for: one could use the DSP to do fractals in a fraction of the time the 68040 processor could, though the DSP ran at about twice the clock speed (25mhz vs. 55mhz I believe.) In short: utterly useless, and it was discontinued after a year or two. It did have a clever feature or two, one of which was that it could load the ROM (for those of you who don't remember, all the system toolbox commands were in ROM, not on-disk) into RAM, which would suck several precious MB- but would dramatically and noticeably speed up the system. The functionality came via a third-party hack.

    The best "feature", however, was its crashes. Given this was an old System-7/8/9 machine and 68040 based, it suffered from the usual stability problems, only multiplied by about ten-fold because of all the shit that was needed to handle the funky DSP graphics/sound/etc. The best part: the main CPU and the DSP would get out of sync during these crashes, and would feed garbage to each other. Kind of like catting /dev/random to the input of a 10-foot-tall milling machine, you have no idea what you're going to get, but it'll be impressive to watch.

    Ask any 660AV/840AV owner. It was kind of like watching a dozen first-grader buggy logo scripts running, accompanied by the sound of a dozen Amigas crashing into a dozen Commodores whilest each was running a 'tracker' playing a corrupted MOD file, with pushy solos by a bored 6 year old Recorder player.

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
  17. Toshiba and BS Bios by sgt+scrub · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Strange that they disable the VMX extensions in their laptops and refuse to allow the owners to re-enable it but then add more functionality to the machine. I'd be happy if they would just let me take advantage of what I thought I was buying. It would also be nice if they would fix the ACPI incompatibilities with nVidia graphics so I don't have to rewrite asm files to get the gpu cooling fan to work properly. I'd go into the whole list of things that helped me to decide to never buy anything with the Toshiba name on it but there isn't enough space or time. This link, however, says it all.

    http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/phoenix-bios-only-works-with-vista.html

    --
    Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
  18. Re:Does it run Windows by Sketch · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Xbox360 runs a version of Windows. The Xbox360 is PPC-based. Therefore, Windows runs on PPC. Maybe not a standard desktop version you could buy, but Microsoft could probably be persuaded to give a test version to a major vendor if they thought it would be a worthwhile project.

    --
    -- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
  19. Photos from CES by barl0w2 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I took pics of a lot of cool stuff at CES here: http://flickr.com/photos/barl0w/ There are some pretty cool things there this year, but I think web-cam hand gesture recognition is overrated.

  20. Great research! by aliquis · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yeah, everyone knows 8*3 is 75% more than 4*1.5, just because the later one is 25% as much doesn't make the former one 75% more, and will never do...

    Also why would this be that expensive considering the PS3 got 4 times as much SPE power, the ppc core, good gfx chips, blu-ray and so on and still doesn't cost that much of a fortune compared to laptop prices?

  21. Re:Just two letters short of... by kernspaltung · · Score: 2, Funny

    Obviously, I'm in dire need of this new laptop and its awesome computational capability.

  22. Parent NOT informative by imsabbel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sorry, but maybe you should come into this century. Your nice old f*I^2 is not true at all anymore. ESPECIALLY for laptop chips.
    And hasnt been since we reached 90nm.

    Check out Wikipedia and read up on leakage currents and the way to deal with them (and realize that your hypothetical laptop cell would use those 15W for leakage alone... tons of ugly logic transitors and little cache that can be efficiently power-managed)

    --
    HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
  23. Losing? by reiisi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Losing MSWindows compatibility could be seen as a win by some, ...

    --
    Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.