Nintendo Wi... I mean, Creative Zii

[Kaotik]

Creative is about to unveil a new chip, called Zii, at CES 2009. ( http://www.zii.com )
Little is known about this, except that it, according to Creative, will change everything, and uses "stemcell computing"
Some believe it's something from 3DLabs (subsidiary of Creative), so I figured it would fit the GPGPU tech area the best, as it's some sort of (general?) processing unit at least.

epiZENter reports that it's one of the biggest projects Creative has ever invested in, and that it's something completely different from their x-fis and mp3 players etc
http://www.epizenter.net/comment.php?comment.news.432


Does anyone else have a clue on what's going on, what's coming and so on?

http://creativezii.com has gathered some rumors to one place

[willardjuice]

A (stem)cell based card perhaps? Interesting.

[Davros]

3dlabs died a long time ago though
could it be something dsp based ?

edit just found this: (check out the USPTO listing)
http://gizmodo.com/5118501/what-is-creative-zii-stemcell-computing-your-guess-is-as-bad-as-mine

[digitalwanderer]

Little is known about this, except that it, according to Creative, will change everything, and uses "stemcell computing"
http://www.elitebastards.com/forum/images/smiles/biglol.gif

[Tim Murray]

Perhaps it's an updated version of the X-Fi crystallizer that makes your MP3s sound better than real life.

[bloodbob]

Perhaps it's an updated version of the X-Fi crystallizer that makes your MP3s sound better than real life.

I think this new crystallizer makes your mono mp3 sounds better than a 192khz 24bit 5.1 channel uncompressed audio file with crystallizer running.

[INKster]

Something with really big ARMs, maybe ?

[Skrying]

Well, they seemingly believe in it enough to talk it up a bit. It could be interesting. Creative is such a weird company with their lack of quality/sometimes great products that it's hard to believe they could produce something unique and useful but it's also hard to believe something potentially receiving major funding in a major company could not be at least taken seriously.

[bowman]

Might be interesting, as long as it's not some ridiculous overpriced sound ASIC with its own dedicated 'X-RAM' (a.k.a. DDR RAM) and all sorts of bings, bongs, doodads and extras a sound chip never needs..

Maybe its a processor that generates babies?

[3dcgi]

It sounds like a spoof to me. Like Zii is to Wii as Space Balls is to Star Wars.

[eastmen]

perhaps its a sound card / physic accelerator ?

Might get more people to buy sound cards.

[idsn6]

From "stemcell computing," I'd guess a small, cheap, SPU-like core that can be chained with a variable number of peers to adapt to differing applications/devices, mirroring the ability of biological stem cells to differentiate into other cells.
As long as we're getting our pie-in-the-sky predictions in the hat before the unveiling, anyway.

[bowman]

http://www.techpowerup.com/80707/Zii_Not_an_Audio_Processor_Something_Much_Bigger.h tml

Blah, blah, blah, hype. Although it might make sense, perhaps Creative realised they couldn't live on badly supported, overpriced sound chips forever.

[Kaotik]

Reminds me a lot of todays GPUs with all the possible GPGPU applications, and all the same generation chips being more or less built from the 'same blocks', adding just more for the higher end

[entity279]

Seriously though, it sounds like the next generation of FPGA microchips
(said the first coment from that link)

I also rekon this fits the stem-cell description very much. But honestly, it's hard to believe Creative will have anything to do with FPGAs.

Hydra, Zii and Crossfire Sideport(the latter to a much lesser extent - because it's not at all a... "for now paper product") Just names?

[bowman]

http://resources.vr-zone.com/newvr/image.php?m=540&s=http://resources.vr-zone.com//uploads/6408/Zii_2.jpg
http://vr-zone.com/articles/creative-zii-mystery-unravels--nano-size-supercomputer/6408.html?doc=6408

More slides and text in article.

It's a parallel processor alright.. Seems to be more of a mobile/embedded thing than a Cell/GPU equivalent. Maybe move this to Handheld?

[idsn6]

Hm. I was surprisingly close. I think I'll give myself a backpat.

[INKster]

Whad'ya know ? I was (http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1252423&postcount=7) right, too... ;)

[Ateo]

Zii in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk-g6CRB0O8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7a6yvEDwdE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWP3Fo98iok

[Davros]

Interseting
"If you remember Creative's buyover of 3DLabs back in 2002, it's now clear that the intention was to get hold of 3DLabs' next generation graphics architecture, rumored at the time to be highly scalable and programmable"

Hows that for a motherboard
http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/2291/imagefy0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Rufus]

So ignoring the entire marketing stem-cell crap, this looks like a somewhat interesting chip. I have no clue why they have any supercomputer slides - other than more marketing crap (there's no way something like this could remotely scale). They really just need to say what it is and market it as that, without a pile of fluff around it.

In reality it's just a standard ARM SoC targeted at cell phones, GPSs, and other embedded devices. I don't think they've released enough specs to really compare the chip, but it falls in line with the rest of the market:
Texas Instruments: OMAP 3 (http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbuproductcontent.tsp?templateId=6123&navigationId=12837&contentId=52605) is ARM Cortex A8 (http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM_Cortex-A8.html) + PowerVR SGX graphics + all the I/O, display, etc (this is what's in the Palm Pre)
Nvidia: Tegra (http://www.nvidia.com/page/handheld.html) is ARM11 MP (http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM11MPCoreMultiprocessor.html) core + NV graphics + all the I/O, display, etc
Creative: Zii is ARM-926 (http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM926EJ-S.html) core + 3dLabs graphics ("processing elements") + all the I/O, display, etc

It's interesting that all 3 are ARM, but use different cores (I really don't know enough about ARM's different families to know the tradeoffs between them). It'll interesting to see what design wins the 3 different families end up getting, since they are inherently so similar.

[Ateo]

Data Spec sheet is up:
http://www.zii.com/resource/zms/DMS05-PB-23DEC08.pdf

[Ateo]

So ignoring the entire marketing stem-cell crap, this looks like a somewhat interesting chip. I have no clue why they have any supercomputer slides - other than more marketing crap (there's no way something like this could remotely scale). They really just need to say what it is and market it as that, without a pile of fluff around it.

In reality it's just a standard ARM SoC targeted at cell phones, GPSs, and other embedded devices. I don't think they've released enough specs to really compare the chip, but it falls in line with the rest of the market:
Texas Instruments: OMAP 3 (http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbuproductcontent.tsp?templateId=6123&navigationId=12837&contentId=52605) is ARM Cortex A8 (http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM_Cortex-A8.html) + PowerVR SGX graphics + all the I/O, display, etc (this is what's in the Palm Pre)
Nvidia: Tegra (http://www.nvidia.com/page/handheld.html) is ARM11 MP (http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM11MPCoreMultiprocessor.html) core + NV graphics + all the I/O, display, etc
Creative: Zii is ARM-926 (http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM926EJ-S.html) core + 3dLabs graphics ("processing elements") + all the I/O, display, etc

It's interesting that all 3 are ARM, but use different cores (I really don't know enough about ARM's different families to know the tradeoffs between them). It'll interesting to see what design wins the 3 different families end up getting, since they are inherently so similar.

Read the thred before posting, please:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWP3Fo98iok
After 1:10 there is real time raytracing going on...so it scales quite well...

[Rufus]

Read the thred before posting, please:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWP3Fo98iok
After 1:10 there is real time raytracing going on...so it scales quite well...

I hadn't watched that video but it is quite intriguing. My question is how on earth does that thing work? It looks like 2 boards each with a solid mesh of about 9x7 chips. Umm, where's the memory? How do you get data into/out of the mesh (and to/from the chip in the middle of it) without saturating the network? What on earth is the programming model?

I'm genuinely surprised that they're pretending to go down this path since there's no way it would be practical. They claim 8 GFLOPs / chip, so the box is about 8*9*7*2=1,008GFLOPS. A single chip GTX285 is ~1,000 GFLOPs. So you have an entire box of chips (with 500 useless usb ports and 375 useless display ports) vs a single PCIe card. It's an interesting (and expensive) press stunt, but nothing more.

Again this looks like a very interesting embedded chip for exactly the applications they list on their datasheet: PMPs, MIDs, navigation, PDA/phone, etc. They really need to drop the rest of the marketing crap (stem cell / super computer / etc). They're never going to sell a box full of these chips, this demo's not going to get them any embedded system design wins, and it just makes the look ridiculous.

[Brad Grenz]

Yeah, that teraflop prototype with the blinking lights was kinda cool.

[bowman]

I hadn't watched that video but it is quite intriguing. My question is how on earth does that thing work? It looks like 2 boards each with a solid mesh of about 9x7 chips. Umm, where's the memory? How do you get data into/out of the mesh (and to/from the chip in the middle of it) without saturating the network? What on earth is the programming model?

I'm genuinely surprised that they're pretending to go down this path since there's no way it would be practical. They claim 8 GFLOPs / chip, so the box is about 8*9*7*2=1,008GFLOPS. A single chip GTX285 is ~1,000 GFLOPs. So you have an entire box of chips (with 500 useless usb ports and 375 useless display ports) vs a single PCIe card. It's an interesting (and expensive) press stunt, but nothing more.

Again this looks like a very interesting embedded chip for exactly the applications they list on their datasheet: PMPs, MIDs, navigation, PDA/phone, etc. They really need to drop the rest of the marketing crap (stem cell / super computer / etc). They're never going to sell a box full of these chips, this demo's not going to get them any embedded system design wins, and it just makes the look ridiculous.

Their teaser site makes fun of supercomputers (specifically the Roadrunner) anyways so I doubt they're looking for that market by burning bridges. :razz:

[rpg.314]

Data Spec sheet is up:
http://www.zii.com/resource/zms/DMS05-PB-23DEC08.pdf

fluff > spec in that data sheet

[Nano]

Funny marketing, but I think the technology is incredible. I would be very interested to see where they eventually take this chipset.

I remember Sony speaking about the idea of "Micro-Cell" processors in the future, this reminded me a lot of that.

[Arun]

I had a news piece in the works, but I canned it because it was just too negative and pointless. What's incredible, however, is that this data sheet is less interesting than I thought it was! Sigh, ah well... I guess given the budget they likely had (not $1B; more like $1K I'm sure! :p) it's not too bad for sure.

[Jugix]

How on earth can they cram 256 Zii chips on one blade board? Seems like Zii needs zero surrounding logic to be operational and only surface area of the board is restrictive element for putting more Ziis on board! :O Zii does not need memory?

Now, if this would be true then we're at the edge of the revolution... but somehow I feel we are not! :D

[bowman]

How on earth can they cram 256 Zii chips on one blade board? Seems like Zii needs zero surrounding logic to be operational and only surface area of the board is restrictive element for putting more Ziis on board! :O Zii does not need memory?

Now, if this would be true then we're at the edge of the revolution... but somehow I feel we are not! :D

Oh, come on, it doesn't need to be functional! It only needs to be able to run tiny little operations that fit in the ARM's cache. Obviously 32-bit floats only.

http://crd.lbl.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/twelve-ways.pdf

[PeterT]

http://crd.lbl.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/twelve-ways.pdfThanks for this! I had never read it before and it's very entertaining. (And, as someone working in the field, it is a bit scary how much of it is still perfectly applicable 18 years (!) later)

As for the Zii, it seems like a nice architecture for embedded systems, but I'd rather fill my supercomputer with GPUs.

[rpg.314]

Oh, come on, it doesn't need to be functional! It only needs to be able to run tiny little operations that fit in the ARM's cache. Obviously 32-bit floats only.

http://crd.lbl.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/twelve-ways.pdf

Love it.:razz::razz::razz:

[Blackraven]

I could see this work on their own soundcard line (which will bring a boost to the Creative X-FI name) as well as their PMP/MP3 player lineup (which could possibly bring them to the top three in that market along with Apple and Sony)

It should give their products a boost if they play their cards right.:wink:

[Lazy8s]

The consequence of not having much in the way of dedicated hardware for 3D graphics is specs like its 42M texels/second fillrate.

The ZMS-05's handling of compressed textures and other texture operations would be interesting to know with its claimed support for the OpenGL ESs.

[Entropy]

Oh, come on, it doesn't need to be functional! It only needs to be able to run tiny little operations that fit in the ARM's cache. Obviously 32-bit floats only.

http://crd.lbl.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/twelve-ways.pdf

Thanks!
I'll echo PeterT and say that it's a bit scary how perfectly relevant this is 18 years down the line.

[Nick]

http://crd.lbl.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/twelve-ways.pdf
Ah, so that's where NVIDIA got its inspiration from when comparing GPU PhysX with their craptastic CPU implementation! :twisted:

[_xxx_]

Looks like just another FPGA with some fancy power saving tech and maybe less periphery required. Meh.

[codedivine]

Ah, so that's where NVIDIA got its inspiration from when comparing GPU PhysX with their craptastic CPU implementation! :twisted:

And thats where most GPGPU papers get their inspiration from when they compare only 32-bit FP performance against single core non-optimized CPU code.