Sony ZEGO/BCU-100 for production professionals

[Nesh]

That sounds interesting

http://www.vfxworld.com/?sa=adv&code=3631a5a1&atype=news&id=24377

[Shifty Geezer]

Nesh : Would have been nice for you to say what it is you're linking too...

The article talks of a new platform that's a combined Cell BE and RSX. They don't say if it's on a chip or not. It's specifically targeted at offline graphics work. If it is all on one chip, this could point to a scalable architecture, which is what a lot of us are expecting and which reflects other industry evolutions.

[Carl B]

It's not one chip:

http://techgeer.com/sony-zego-computing-unit-to-be-launched-in-u-s-this-year/

Essentially it's the ZEGO platform itself, built upon the architecture, that seems the push here. The idea that it is a slim rack offering with on-board video out also helps I guess in positioning, but this isn't the first Cell-equipped hardware targeted towards the space in a general sense. But because Sony themselves are otherwise prominent in the production scene, it might more readily gain traction.

[Arwin]

Sony is additionally exhibiting a prototype 56 inch QFHD (Quad Full High Definition, 3840 x 2160 resolution) LCD video monitor.

Gah, it's not going to stop anytime soon is it? :D We need something to more clearly identify such screens, rather than "Full" HD. Maybe if we take Full HD as the base unit, from now on we can go with something like "4HD"? I doubt it will ever get as extreme as 128HD or more. ;)

[Carl B]

Well for now the 4K resolutions are for mainly theater/professional and mastering purposes. No doubt sometime in the future folk'll try to push this down to the consumer level, but I really do think 4K remains the realm of professionals for quite some time.

[Shifty Geezer]

Gah, it's not going to stop anytime soon is it? :D We need something to more clearly identify such screens, rather than "Full" HD.They've never managed to sort out there PC display nomenclatures (WQXEBBQVGA???). I doubt we'll ever get intelligent naming. But us mere-mortals can happily stick with 1080p.

Is this in essence a PS3 mobo in a rack with more memory slapped on? Or is it a proper architecture in itself? I don't see the point in pairing Cell with RSX when there are far better GPUs out there, except I supposed GPU power efficiency will become very good with process shrinks, so looking to the future existing systems targetting the fixed hardware will be optimal in processor use and clusters will remain efficient adding more units.

[Vitaly Vidmirov]

Quad Full High Definition =)
My HD is more full than yours !

[Nesh]

Nesh : Would have been nice for you to say what it is you're linking too...


Sorry about that

[archie4oz]

I don't see the point in pairing Cell with RSX when there are far better GPUs out there, except I supposed GPU power efficiency will become very good with process shrinks, so looking to the future existing systems targetting the fixed hardware will be optimal in processor use and clusters will remain efficient adding more units.

It also amortizes the Cell/RSX manufacturing costs into another product... I like the extra XDR, and it appears the Cells are full 8SPU enable units which is nice. Hopefully it'll be a relatively affordable solution (i.e. under $1000), although I doubt it.

[Carl B]

The word on price is under $10K, so... probably many multiples of $1000. But that is still a competitive price vs competing solutions if Sony is able to make the entire production chain relatively seamless with BCU-100 integration.

[Shifty Geezer]

The other plus-point is getting productivity companies writing code to exploit Cell. At least we see signs here of the expansion of Cell into media applications as well as the HPC space. No mention of the big CG companies (Autodesk) so we won't get accelerated modelling, but if the platform shows promise we might get some ports.

[V3]

Is this Cell with better DP performance or the PS3 Cell with 8 SPUs ?

[one]

Probably BCU-100 is the final product version of the Cell Computing Board.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=43195

Sony Corp. have been preparing this for years including the Linux-based platform, it's interesting they chose this launch date.

Gah, it's not going to stop anytime soon is it? :D We need something to more clearly identify such screens, rather than "Full" HD. Maybe if we take Full HD as the base unit, from now on we can go with something like "4HD"? I doubt it will ever get as extreme as 128HD or more. ;)Apparently the official wording is Beyond 3D^H^H Beyond HD.
http://www.sony.co.jp/SonyInfo/News/Press/200808/08-095/index.html

[archie4oz]

I wonder if they'll have a turnkey encoding farm solution... If so we'll probably get some pretty quickly...

[patsu]

So this box runs Linux yes ? And RSX is accessible from Linux now, yes ? T_T
Let us have the "same OS" on a regular PS3.

With more open source software support, they should be able to sell BCU-100 better.

[Npl]

So this box runs Linux yes ? And RSX is accessible from Linux now, yes ? T_T
Let us have the "same OS" on a regular PS3.From the thread one linked, the RSX-Chip has no dedicated V-Ram, but feeds through Cell. I wonder if those security-concerns on PS3 are because RSX has no "Supervisor" on top, and its a big hassle (or impossible) to ensure you cant read/write into important memory areas...
Routing it through Cell would probably make it easier to restrict access.

[The Seventh Taylor]

I don't see the point in pairing Cell with RSX when there are far better GPUs out there, except I supposed GPU power efficiency will become very good with process shrinks, so looking to the future existing systems targetting the fixed hardware will be optimal in processor use and clusters will remain efficient adding more units.

Surely the plan for PS3 is still to integrate the Cell BE and RSX somewhere down the road, maybe with the next shrink. That will not only make PS3 cheaper but also this box.

[tuna]

Here is a video of it: http://www.sony.co.jp/SonyInfo/News/Press/200808/08-095/index.html

The Cell and RSX are of the same size it looks like....

[jandlecack]

Holy crap do they have a website like that in English?

[one]

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/news/2008/2008-08-13.shtml

LOS ANGELES, California - 13 August 2008 - From the showfloor of SIGGRAPH, Sony booth 521, Terra Soft today announced a partnership with Sony Corporation for the provision of Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux as the defacto operating system for the Sony ZEGO BCU-100, a computing unit with its built-in Cell Broadband Engine(TM) and RSX graphics processor.

Over the course of the past year, Terra Soft worked closely with Sony to develop a version of the Yellow Dog Linux operating system specifically for the Sony BCU-100. This board support package (BSP) provides end users with a best-of-class, high performance Linux OS that seamlessly blends ease of installation with the Cell/B.E. SDK with full 3D support for the on-board RSX GPU.

Hiro Fujita of Business Development Manager at Sony's B2B Solutions Business Group states, "We chose to work with Terra Soft for their extensive experience with the Cell/B.E.. Their Yellow Dog Linux operating system provides support for all products that adopt Cell/B.E. manufactured by Sony, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and IBM with a single kernel family. The Terra Soft team's experience with high performance computing, clustering, and the film industry is perfectly matched with our intended market."

In addition to Yellow Dog Linux, Terra Soft offers the Y-HPC cluster construction suite which enables the rapid network deployment of a single node image across dozens, even hundreds of BCU-100 compute nodes in a matter of minutes for the rapid construction of a homogeneous video effects render farm.

Terra Soft's Y-Film ties OSX, Windows, and Linux artist desktops to backend BCU-100 render farms with a powerful suite of asset management and workflow pipeline tools.

Owen Stampflee, Director of Engineering for Terra Soft states, "The BCU-100 is a very unique product with a powerful offering for the image processing markets. To match this industry leading offering, we have made certain the Yellow Dog Linux BSP is at its best."

Development tools include the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), GNU Debugger (Gdb), Eclipse, Subversion, and a large collection of libraries and toolkits.

YDEL for the BCU-100 may be purchased directly from the Terra Soft Store.

[one]

ZEGO Cell Platform
http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/ext/ZEGO/ZEGO.shtml
BCU Brochure with the spec sheet
http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/ext/ZEGO/files/BCU-100_Whitepaper.pdf

[Crossbar]

ZEGO Cell Platform
http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/ext/ZEGO/ZEGO.shtml
BCU Brochure with the spec sheet
http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/ext/ZEGO/files/BCU-100_Whitepaper.pdf

Thanks one, your contributions are always top notch.

Graphics programs for the RSX support the subset of OpenGL
1.5, which is an industry standard for graphics APIs. They
also support the Cg shader language developed by NVIDIA
Corporation for RSX-native graphics control. Therefore, the
RSX acceleration can be programmed at a low level.
I wonder if this will be part YDL for the PS3 when Sony stops subsidizing the console? If Sony starts making a profit from the hardware why wouldn´t they allow it?

I also find it funny that they enagmatically left out the operating frequency and other performance numbers of the RSX in the white paper just like they enagmatically removed those numbers from the PS3 spec right before launch. Call me conspiracy theorist but I smell something fishy. :wink: