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Cell Chip Coming To the PC Via a PCI Express Card
arcticstoat writes with an excerpt from Custom PC: "After developing a brand new CPU architecture from the ground-up, you'd expect that Toshiba, Sony and IBM would have more uses for the Cell architecture than the PlayStation 3, and Toshiba has been quick to make use of the architecture's HD video transcoding abilities in its new Qosimo laptops. However, Leadtek is now taking Toshiba's efforts a step further by putting the chip onto a PCI-E card for desktop PCs. The WinFast PxVC1100 is based on Toshiba's SpursEngine SE1000 processor, which is a cut-down version of the Cell chip. The SpursEngine chip features four SPEs (synergistic processing elements) based on 128-bit RISC cores, along with H.264 and MPEG-2 codecs, but it doesn't contain its own CPU as the chip in the PS3 does. The chip is capable of encoding and decoding H.264, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video streams in hardware."
Don't video cards do that? or does this thing just sorta add juice to your system?
I WANT THIS TO BE AWESOME but I'm just a bit underwhelmed.
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
...can it play Crysis?
Because if not, seeing as modern graphics cards all feature hardware MPEG, I'm kind of underwhelmed by this announcement.
CUDA is a matrix processor. This is a serial processor. CUDA isn't really applicable to general purpose tasks. This is. CUDA gets its power by running the same function over an array of inputs to generate an array of outputs.
Different beasts.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Most modern CPUs cannot decode 1080p blu-rays in linux. The video card has nothing to do with it, as there is no support in any linux driver for GPU assisted decoding of anything apart from mpeg2, and even that is shoddy. ffmpeg works well with two threads on dual core, but quad cores isn't buying much right now.
Low bitrate 1080p rips on the net are not the same quality nor difficulty.
Yes, a dual/quad core super-fast intel setup can do it (and the mythtv list has a big thread right now about what it takes for full blu-ray rips) but right now those machines are expensive and loud.
This card could be perfect for people making HTPCs who want a low power and QUIET computer to watch on their TV using myth/etc.
Yeah, and there's that whole "Roadrunner" thing, fastest supercomputer in the world. And IBM sell Cell bladeservers...
Probably. We already have enough information about the CELL processor on its own to make use of it under Linux; this card is just taking a cut-down CELL and tacking a PCIe bus on it.
Unless they purposefully fucked the register table to prevent it, it's probably just a matter of finding the correct PCIe offsets to access known registers/segments on the CELL. While it's possible they could "sabotage" it to prevent the first-day-out-of-the-box Linux driver, chips modified this way usually have to go under more steps of formal validation again (beyond that of just throwing a PCIe controller on, and sheering a few SPUs off), so most companies won't do it.
Before we get too confident, though, there is a history of this kind of intentional fucking. Conexant acquired some video IP from a defunct company Brooktree, the BT8x8 model, which worked fabulously under Linux, which they re-released with virtually unchanged functionality, but with a completely revamped address table. Brooktree was more friendly and released the specs for its chips to the public, so the Linux driver was fantastic. Since Conexant would not release the new specs without an NDA (and is generally is Linux's bane when it comes to hardware), it took months to get the new driver back to the shape that the old one was in (and IIRC, it was only after someone stepped forward and went under the NDA to do so).
Mercury had a PCI-e cell expansion card for over a year now.
Unlike the leadtek one, the mercury version has the full version of the cell processor, with 8SPEs. Dont think it comes with any prebuilt codecs though.
i wouldn't mind having one of these things for a PVR/media center, except for the fact that it needs a one-slot cooler, meaning it probably runs hot and noisy.
Look at the pictures : the cooler looks rather small, and seems to be of the standard type that you find over most low-end GFX cards and some chipsets.
As long as there's sufficient air-flow in your HTPC, you could probably swap if for on of those heat-pipe based monstruosities that you can fit over standard GPU and use passive cooling or low noise big fan. (something like this)
Of course, given the standard shape, you could also put a water cooling block on it.
but seriously though, how much is this card going to cost? is it just for professional video processing or will there be other uses for it as well?
Well, I think this is going to be the tricky part.
On one hand IBM and company have gone through great effort to diversify and push their chip to as much as possible different usage (more product sold = cheaper to build) so I don't think it'll have as much problems as the PhysX chip had.
But on the other hand, the main usage for which this card is marketed for (accelerating HD decoding) is already supported by the hardware acceleration inside latest graphics card on the biggest market (Windows machines).
Most HTPC builder running Windows Media Center, will probably prefer to put in one of the latest HD-enabled GeForce or Radeon (or even the latest onboard Chrome from VIA), rather than having to buy two separate cards, one graphic card AND one HD accelerator.
Thus I don't know if there's going to be enough demand to drive the price low enough.
And that's bad for us Linux users, because we don't get such a good support for hardware decoding in graphics card, and developing it will be slow. Whereas the CELL based solution would be much more easy to tackle as there's already tons of code and tools for the CELL's SPUs.
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Actually, if your video is encoded with the DivX encoder, the PS3 will play it. It's only when the video is encoded by one of the "compatible" codecs do you run into issues. And, it might play them okay.. Sometimes not.
I have a few profiles set up in my various encoding apps, so I always get good DVD (with AC3) Rips for the PS3 and I can always convert downloaded videos/movies if necessary (usually not.)
The PS3 isn't as flexible as a PC for a media player but it's instant-on and it's pretty darned good. I play media over the network via TVersity.
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