[GuyverADL]

IBM Builds Supercomputer Based on Gaming Chip
Fri November 14, 2003 12:01 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IBM Corp. (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday that it has built a supercomputer the size of a television based on microchip technology to be used in gaming consoles due out next year.
IBM said the supercomputer, which can perform two trillion calculations per second, is a small-scale prototype of the Blue Gene/L supercomputer that it is building for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

The computer made it onto the Top 500 supercomputer list, which is compiled by a member of the University of Tennessee's computer science department.

IBM vice president of technology and strategy Irving Wladawsky-Berger said that the supercomputer used 1,000 microprocessors that are based on PowerPC microchip technology. The PowerPC chip is currently used in Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) computers.

It is also the technology that will be the foundation of the next generation of gaming consoles from Nintendo Co. (7974.OS: Quote, Profile, Research) and Sony Corp. (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) , which IBM is working on, he said.

He said the chips were less expensive and consumed less power than traditional microprocessors, making it possible to pack the same amount of computing power into a smaller space. Producing the chips in volume for gaming will help offset the costs of building supercomputers, he said.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=3819632

Well I guess we can assume X-Box Next wont be PowerPC based afterall and N5 wont be using a NEC developed CPU.

[zurich]

Nice find!

[DeadmeatGA]

I told you that CELL was a Blue Gene/L derivative and you people didn't listen....

Sony using CELL is undertandable, but Nintendo too? What's going on here???

IBM builds supercomputer based on gaming chip
Reuters, 11.13.03, 11:59 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. said Friday that it has built a supercomputer the size of a television based on [/b]microchip technology to be used in gaming consoles due out next year.[/b]

IBM said the supercomputer, which can perform two trillion calculations per second, is a small-scale prototype of the Blue Gene/L supercomputer that it is building for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

The computer made it onto the Top 500 supercomputer list, which is compiled by a member of the University of Tennessee's computer science department.

IBM vice president of technology and strategy Irving Wladawsky-Berger said that the supercomputer used 1,000 microprocessors that are based on PowerPC microchip technology. The PowerPC chip is currently used in Apple Computer Inc. computers.

It is also the technology that will be the foundation of the next generation of gaming consoles from Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp., which IBM is working on, he said.

He said the chips were less expensive and consumed less power than traditional microprocessors, making it possible to pack the same amount of computing power into a smaller space. Producing the chips in volume for gaming will help offset the costs of building supercomputers, he said.

Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service

[Panajev2001a]

Originally Posted by DeadmeatGA

I told you that CELL was a Blue Gene/L derivative and you people didn't listen....

Sony using CELL is undertandable, but Nintendo too? What's going on here???

There is difference between "derivative" and slap a bunch of VUs in there...

[Qroach]

??? I don't get it... how can we assume XBox 2 won't be power PC based off of this article? ...and how is the technology in PS3 based on the power PC? This article sounds a little off base.

[DeadmeatGA]

Since IBM has confirmed CELL as a Blue Gene/L derivative, what will Sony fans do??? It took 1000 processors to reach 2 teraflops, and I don't think PSX3 will be packing 500 of those...

[DeadmeatGA]

??? I don't get it... how can we assume XBox 2 won't be power PC based off of this article? ...and how is the technology in PS3 based on the power PC? This article sounds alittle off base.

CELL : PPC440 + a number of APUs.
Xbox2 : Power5-- plus Microsoft specific enhancements.

We will see which approach will come out on top.

BTW, you can forget about that 4 Ghz imaginary monster called CELL, BlueGene/L clocks at 733 Mhz.

[Vince]

Originally Posted by Quincy

??? I don't get it... how can we assume XBox 2 won't be power PC based off of this article? ...and how is the technology in PS3 based on the power PC? This article sounds a little off base

Yes, this article is quite obtuse. It is reuters though... They make a comparason between the Apple PPC and Cell - which shouldn't be there. They also seem to be compressing information, just not preserving what was origionally said IMHO.

Originally Posted by DeadmeatGA

Since IBM has confirmed CELL as a Blue Gene/L derivative, what will Sony fans do??? It took 1000 processors to reach 2 teraflops, and I don't think PSX3 will be packing 500 of those...

Wow, lets talk before we know... as usual. How'd they fit 1,000 physical ICs (packaging and all) in the space of a TV?

Originally Posted by [url=http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=OTN5SAKHW14J2CRBAEOCF FA?type=technologyNews&storyID=3819632

IBM Supercomputer[/url]]SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IBM Corp. (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday that it has built a supercomputer the size of a television based on microchip technology to be used in gaming consoles due out next year

And lets think of it this way... if IBM can fit 2TFLOPs in a TV sized volume, how much can they fit in an ASCI sized space like this?

<img src=http://www.ibm.com/es/press/fotos/ciencia/i/asci.jpg height=200 width=400>

I think you need to take heed of what this announcement stated and STFU.

[Panajev2001a]

Originally Posted by DeadmeatGA

Since IBM has confirmed CELL as a Blue Gene/L derivative, what will Sony fans do??? It took 1000 processors to reach 2 teraflops, and I don't think PSX3 will be packing 500 of those...

Target of 0.5 TFLOPS.

2005 chip, 65 nm technology.

BlueGene/L is, per cycle, 64x slower per node ( I assume 500 nodes = 1,000 processors ): 8 APUs means 8 * 8 FP ops/(cycle * APU).

[DeadmeatGA]

Wake up and smell the coffee, Panajev.

CELL is everything I predicted and nothing that you expected.

Damn, I was right once again.

[Vince]

Originally Posted by DeadmeatGA

Wake up and smell the coffee, Panajev.

CELL is everything I predicted and nothing that you expected.

Damn, I was right once again.

HA! Actually concerning:

Originally Posted by DMGA

BTW, you can forget about that 4 Ghz imaginary monster called CELL

I'd be careful, you never know what your opponent knows that you don't. You will commit suicide when the Broadband Engine is announced, of this I ponder.

[Panajev2001a]

Originally Posted by DeadmeatGA

Wake up and smell the coffee, Panajev.

CELL is everything I predicted and nothing that you expected.

Damn, I was right once again.

Once again...

Lay off the pipe I should say to you in Response

You changed your view of CELL lately... and you are the one who looked to fine tune your prediction to what other people like Vince and I ( and more ) were inclined to draw from patents, news and new technologies...

What you originally predicted is far from what you are predicing now...

If you are right this time ( I will let Vince answer to this ), it would be maybe your second time.

First you just about the 1,000 processors, without understanding what it is... then you compare it with STI CELL, forgetting about several factors ( namely that each APU is 8x faster than any of those single workers PowerPC and that we have a bout 8 of them per PE ).

[Vince]

Originally Posted by Panajev2001a

First you just about the 1,000 processors, without understanding what it is... then you compare it with STI CELL, forgetting about several factors ( namely that each APU is 8x faster than any of those single workers PowerPC and that we have a bout 8 of them per PE ).

Exactly. The physical bounds they imposed (eg. a TV volume) would lead me to believe that reuters (in all it's technical glory) is confusing a thing or two.

Even if there is a thousand actual ICs... if they can fit 2 TFLOPs in a volume bounded by a frickin' TV; then what does they tell you looking at the mammoth rooms that the ASCI and Earth Simulator sit in so they can output merely 2-10 times the preformance. Talk about a differential that's orders of magnitude in size.

[DeadmeatGA]

Exactly. The physical bounds they imposed (eg. a TV volume) would lead me to believe that reuters (in all it's technical glory) is confusing a thing or two.

Other sources quote the size of a dish washer.

Remember Kutaragi Ken's presentation? Each rack contains 64 chips, and you can fit 8 racks per cabinet, so the total is 512 chips. But since each chip carries two processors, the total number of processors is 1024.

[Panajev2001a]

Originally Posted by DeadmeatGA

Other sources quote the size of a dish washer.

Remember Kutaragi Ken's presentation? Each rack contains 64 chips, and you can fit 8 racks per cabinet, so the total is 512 chips. But since each chip carries two processors, the total number of processors is 1024.

Perfect... since that thing would be around 32x slower than STI's CELL chips ( APUs ) in FP calculations ( counting it peaks at 2 TFLOPS, but has a much lower FLOP/cycle performance ): 1,024 / 32 = 32 chips needed.

All thanks to Fuzzy Math (c).

Each chip has 1 FPU in BlueGene/L according to what hs been said so far.

[Vince]

Originally Posted by DeadmeatGA

Other sources quote the size of a dish washer.

Link me?

And even if true, that difference in volume is neglegable compared to an ASCI system.

Originally Posted by DMGA

Remember Kutaragi Ken's presentation? Each rack contains 64 chips, and you can fit 8 racks per cabinet, so the total is 512 chips. But since each chip carries two processors, the total number of processors is 1024.

Wow, so they've fit 512 IC's of your "dual cored" versions in a volume the size of a TV/dishwasher?

Congradulations, you've just proved that the Cell IC isn't a thermal hot-spot appearently! You don't think these things threw, huh?

[Wunderchu]

Originally Posted by DeadmeatGA

I told you that CELL was a Blue Gene/L derivative and you people didn't listen....

Sony using CELL is undertandable, but Nintendo too? What's going on here???

IMO the article does not imply that CELL is going to be a Blue Gene/L derivative ....



the article states:

"...the supercomputer, which can perform two trillion calculations per second, is a small-scale prototype of the Blue Gene/L supercomputer...

it then goes on to state:

"...the supercomputer used 1,000 microprocessors that are based on PowerPC microchip technology. The PowerPC chip is currently used in Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) computers.

It is also the technology that will be the foundation of the next generation of gaming consoles from Nintendo Co. (7974.OS: Quote, Profile, Research) and Sony Corp..."


Keep in mind the "It" which I made bold ...... IMO, that "It" which I made bold, is referring to "PowerPC microchip technology" ... "It" is not referring to Blue Gene/L



i.e.: the article is saying the following:

[IBM has built a television-sized supercomputer... this supersomputer a "small-scale prototype of the Blue Gene/L supercomputer" ... this "small-scale prototype of the Blue Gene/L supercomputer" is made out of 1000 microprocessors ... each of these microprocessors is based on PowerPC microchip technology ... PowerPC microchip technology is also the technology that will be the foundation of the next generation of gaming consoles from Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp.]





The speculation that CELL is going to be based on PowerPC technology is not new ....

For example, check out the document linked to in this post:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8947
(the section about PowerPC is somewhere around page 8 )

[ShinHoshi]

What a ity it won't be using a NEC chipset. I was thinking in this:

http://www.extremetech.com/image_pop...d=16924,00.asp

[Panajev2001a]

That is not a bad chip, but I do not know how efficient in transistors/area usage it is for 3D Graphics processing and multi-media.

[DeadmeatGA]

Wunderchu

He said the chips were less expensive and consumed less power than traditional microprocessors, making it possible to pack the same amount of computing power into a smaller space. Producing the chips in volume for gaming will help offset the costs of building supercomputers, he said.

This pretty much destroys your arguement. Here, IBM's vicr president is talking about how the volume production of BlueGene/L chip for gaming will offset the cost of building supercomuters. By this statement he is confirming that CELL and BlueGene/L are closely related.

Yap, CELL = customized BlueGene/L....

[Panajev2001a]

An Alpha EV8 would have been a customized Alpha EV45 under that logic.

[MfA]

If mr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger was quoted correctly, and knew what he was talking about, the Cell from the patent is history.

[cthellis42]

It's mainly looking like people shouldn't treat Reuters "info compilations" with literal interpretations, as it's hard to follow what refers to who and where. Waiting on the people who make the technology to make official releases about their technology = smartur.

[Ender]

I agree with the post above..
The bit about IBM doing a processor for Nintendo is a comment from Reuter and not a press-release from IBM themselves..

[chaphack]

IBM plans to reveal the first indication of the performance of its Blue Gene/L supercomputer Friday, a machine about the size of a dishwasher that can perform 1.4 trillion calculations per second.

http://news.com.com/2100-7337_3-5107422.html?tag=st_lh

http://news.com.com/2100-7337_3-5107422.html?tag=st_lh

When IBM launched the Blue Gene project in 2000, it hoped to build Blue Gene/P in 2004 or 2005. Now it appears Blue Gene/L is will arrive in 2005 and Blue Gene/P in 2006, said Debra Goldfarb, vice president of products and strategy for IBM's Deep Computing group.

The chip itself will extend an IBM design philosophy that will emerge in coming years with IBM's Power4 processor. That processor will package four CPUs on a single chip, IBM has said.

Blue Gene will use 32 CPUs in a single chip, Goyal said. But in a new twist, these chips will contain the computer memory as well, which in today's computers it is completely separate from the CPUs. "We'll put memory together with processors, many packaged on the same chip. We'll get more mathematical calculations out of a chip than is traditionally possible," he said.

The system will inherit some "self-healing"(IIRC Sony, not only snitched the Blue Gene chart, they too talk about this "self-healing" for Cell) capability that IBM uses in its S/390 supercomputer line,

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-233954.html?tag=nl


Could it be that Cell really = Blue Gene derived!? KK might have saw what IBM is R&D in 2000, and think it be cool to use it for his parallel dreams. So it is also PPC based too...?