IBM Adopts High-Performance 'Cell' Chip

[Farid]

BOSTON - A highly touted microprocessor designed to provide hyper-realistic imagery in video games is making its first appearance in a computing system made by the chip's leading designer, International Business Machines Corp.

IBM announced Wednesday that it would incorporate the "Cell" chip into a new line of servers for defense, medical imagery, entertainment and other applications that require sterling graphics and intensive computing.

Cell is slated to run Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news).'s upcoming PlayStation 3 video game system and high-definition TVs from Sony and Toshiba Corp.

Sony and Toshiba co-designed Cell with IBM; last month the three companies renewed the partnership for another five years.

While Cell's performance is highly regarded, there are skeptics who say it remains to be seen whether the chip will see enough broader uses to truly count as revolutionary. Before Wednesday's announcement, Cell's main assignment outside of Sony and Toshiba had been specialized medical and defense computers made by Mercury Computing Systems Inc.

Now IBM will use Cell in a line of "blade" servers, so named because they are relatively thin chunks of circuitry designed to perform specialized computing tasks. Because they are smaller than traditional servers, IBM envisions Cell-based blades seeing action in a wide range of settings, possibly including military vehicles.

"It's not going to be a general purpose computer," said Tim Dougherty, IBM's director of blade center strategy. "But for certain things, it is incredible, and it will make orders of magnitude difference."

Cell's fate will be closely watched because Big Blue is anxious to find ways to spur revenue growth.

Cell is touted as a game-changing "supercomputer on a chip" because of its unusual design, which includes an IBM Power processor at its core, helped by eight additional processors working together.

But for the chip to gain wide acceptance, IBM needs to spur outside programmers to write software that takes advantage of Cell's prowess. That could prove a tougher task than usual because Cell is architected so differently from other chips.

IBM hopes this summer's release of the Cell-based servers helps kickstart work by third-party programmers. Eventually IBM is likely to deploy Cell in other kinds of hardware, from supercomputers to data storage systems.

In turn, that could inspire other customers to follow Mercury's lead and try to tweak Cell for their own specialized purposes.

Link to the rest of the article

 

[MuFu]

About time.

 

[Sonic]

I would like to see CELL in render farms for VFX and 3D animated movies. This could help save time because of all the number crunching that goes on. I do understand that the doulbe precision performance leaves a lot to be desired but that doesn't mean a new version of CELL cannot have much needed improved double precision performance. CELL itself seems to be an adaptable architecture and should fit many roles very nicely. While not exactly a general purpose computing beast it should be very good at filling the needs as a DSP and other such things.

If possible it might be good to assist the main CPU with tasks that are too dependent on high floating point numbers and for specific things.

Is the current form of CELL good as a type of physics processor compared to today's CPU's from AMD and Intel?

 

[Titanio]

IBM to adopt Cell into its own servers

It's been a lingering criticism - that IBM itself wasn't using Cell in its own products - but I think we can finally shoot that one down.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060208/ap_on_hi_te/ibm_cell_chip

BOSTON - A highly touted microprocessor designed to provide hyper-realistic imagery in video games is making its first appearance in a computing system made by the chip's leading designer, International Business Machines Corp.

IBM announced Wednesday that it would incorporate the "Cell" chip into a new line of servers for defense, medical imagery, entertainment and other applications that require sterling graphics and intensive computing.

...

While Cell's performance is highly regarded, there are skeptics who say it remains to be seen whether the chip will see enough broader uses to truly count as revolutionary. Before Wednesday's announcement, Cell's main assignment outside of Sony and Toshiba had been specialized medical and defense computers made by Mercury Computing Systems Inc.

Now IBM will use Cell in a line of "blade" servers, so named because they are relatively thin chunks of circuitry designed to perform specialized computing tasks. Because they are smaller than traditional servers, IBM envisions Cell-based blades seeing action in a wide range of settings, possibly including military vehicles.

"It's not going to be a general purpose computer," said Tim Dougherty, IBM's director of blade center strategy. "But for certain things, it is incredible, and it will make orders of magnitude difference."

There's also a good article from BusinessWeek here, with more detail on Raytheon's plans for Cell:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2006/tc20060208_094930.htm

On Feb. 8, IBM (IBM) introduced the first computer to harness Cell as part of a major upgrade of its so-called blade servers, used in everything from midsize businesses to huge corporate data centers. The Cell blade fits into IBM's BladeCenter chassis -- a box into which you can slide up to seven Cell blades. IBM proclaimed it the dawn of the "visualization computing era."

Says Tim Dougherty, director of BladeCenter strategy: "We think this has the potential to revolutionize the way people address certain marketplaces." The targets: digital media, medical imaging, oil and gas exploration, aerospace, defense, and telecommunications.

Cell could have a major impact on the defense and aerospace industries. Raytheon (RTN) is working with IBM to develop a two-chip package for use in everything from radar and sonar to night-vision goggles. In addition to powering the individual systems and devices, Cell will, ideally, help integrate information from many sensors and sources, so individual soldiers and commanders can have both detailed and holistic views of the action around them. Raytheon plans on using Cell in its entire family of sensor-based products.

"This will be a key enabler for many things that will happen in network-centric warfare," Raytheon Chief Technology Officer Peter S. Pao, says of the Pentagon's plan to use advanced digital-imaging and networking to transform the battlefield of the future.

Also, that Terrain demo seemed to impress..

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/08/AR2006020800784.html

"We see a commercial application for that Cell processor" in corporate data centers, Balog told Reuters. "Several customers approached us to take advantage of this highly graphics-intensive engine, which can render whole cities and landscapes on the fly."

 

[Carl B]

Two things:

1) I have increasing confidence that Cell thermals will become known to us the more of these announcements there are.

and

2) Are there any indications as to how many Cell BE's are going into these servers? And at what speed?

Strong PR by the way, the Raytheon thing. Should provide something of a halo effect to the chip for corporate/institutional customers wary of giving the chip a shot.

 

[archie4oz]

Actually there isn't a terribly large amount of double-precision work going on in something like PRman (which many of the large studios use)...

 

[Titanio]

2) Are there any indications as to how many Cell BE's are going into these servers? And at what speed?

I think I read in one article that their boxes will be able to hold up to 7 blades, each blade has two Cells. No indication of speed.

They'll be available for direct purchase from the third quarter, or can be got now via "special bid".

 

[Carl B]

I think I read in one article that their boxes will be able to hold up to 7 blades, each blade has two Cells. No indication of speed.

They'll be available for direct purchase from the third quarter, or can be got now via "special bid".

That's what I was looking for, the number per blade.

 

[Bobbler]

I think there have been mentions (from some IBM guys) that a much improved DP version was in the works. (only taking a 50% perf hit, I think? -- can't remember exactly)

 

[Titanio]

That's what I was looking for, the number per blade.

They're dual-chip, I think. There's a pic here, it looks like 2 Cells, I think:

 

[mckmas8808]

That's what I was looking for, the number per blade.

So what does that tell you? 2 chips per blade and 7 blades = how many Gflops per second?

For example am I wrong into thinking that the answer would be around 3.1 Terabytes per second?

 

[Carl B]

So what does that tell you? 2 chips per blade and 7 blades = how many Gflops per second?

For example am I wrong into thinking that the answer would be around 3.1 Terabytes per second?

Well, not all the blades would consist of Cell blades in a normal configuration - they're expecting a mixed composition.

I'm actually not trying to derive performance numbers at all, just wondering what the number per blade is as well as clockspeed, simply for purpose of context.

I have no doubt that someone at some point will go and try to build a Cell-based supercomputer, so until then I'm kind of done with the Flop-counts. We all know Cell is a strong performer there, but the corporate space in general will only be looking at Cell for very specialized tasks for the time being.

 

[Farid]

You know IBM servers related PR are not exactly what I'd call Consoles Talk

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28171

 

[Bobbler]

So what does that tell you? 2 chips per blade and 7 blades = how many Gflops per second?

For example am I wrong into thinking that the answer would be around 3.1 Terabytes per second?

Gflops per second is redundant. And, it'd likely be 2.8-3.5 tflops (depending on how they count the gflops and if it's 7 or 8 spes, assuming 3.2ghz) total with 14 Cells (7 dual Cell blades). Powerful little box... depending on what you want to do, of course.

 

[Titanio]

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28171

This is far more console related than PC related

This is console technology truly driving technology more broadly in other domains, which is pretty interesting to see.

 

[Carl B]

I'm kind of with Titanio on that, but in any event, it's exciting news. I'm wondering if/when Cell will 'break-out' into this vastly networked paradigm Kutaragi envisioned when he sat down and dreamt Cell up. Truthfully, though these high-end imaging applications speak well to Cell's ability to thrive outside of simply the console/HDTV space, there are competing pressures being brought to bare there in that segment.

Did you guys catch this architecture mentioned on EETimes?

Article

HERZELIA, Israel — The Israeli startup Lenslet has developed a revolutionary electro-optic processor that hits the unprecedented speed of 8 tera calculation operations/second — one thousand times faster than any known digital signal processor...

...The EnLight processor, will be used for intelligence, analysis of intelligence, weather forecasting, airport security, and for multimedia, cellular and video compression applications. The EnLight256 — the first in a line of ultrafast DSPs — can be used for voice analysis, face recognition, image processing and other applications. The device will improve detection and extraction of image and audio features, as well as such parameters as behavioral analysis. Moreover, it will allow reliable automated screening of a massive amount of data to help identify potential threats....

Now, if Cell is exotic, this is only moreso, and who knows if it will ever take off in a practical environment - or even when it will be ready commercially. But it stands to reason that STI shouldn't rest on their laurels pushing Cell into other areas just because at the moment it seems to have a bright future within a certain niche.

I suppose that will take care of itself though in the coming years, and only time will tell to what degree Cell will outperform the Emotion Engine from an adoption standpoint. But I mean, in a way it already has.

 

[Titanio]

Another tidbit:

Although IBM said it will sell the Cell blade under special arrangement, meaning there's no set price, it's not for the faint of heart right now. It requires a special version of Linux--Red Hat's Fedora, supplemented by IBM patches downloadable from a University of Barcelona Web site--and there aren't any applications available yet, said Ted Maeurer, senior manager of Cell for IBM.

"We're very early in the life of this technology. Today, we are just starting the collaboration with partners. One of the prerequisites to progress is having hardware out there," Maeurer said. However, he added, more than 260 potential partners have requested briefings under nondisclosure agreements.

http://news.com.com/IBM+refurbishing+blades+with+Cell,+PowerPC/2100-1010_3-6036943.html

 

[aaronspink]

Actually there isn't a terribly large amount of double-precision work going on in something like PRman (which many of the large studios use)...

Nor are most rendering packages FP limited, quite contrary to public opinion. CELL would likely have a negative perforance impact vs a lot of the current processors in use.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.

 

[bbot]

Caution:


"It's not going to be a general purpose computer," said Tim Dougherty, IBM's director of blade center strategy. "But for certain things, it is incredible, and it will make orders of magnitude difference."


http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060208/ibm_cell_chip.html?.v=5

 

[Titanio]

Prices...

The Cell-based server computers will be available this summer. The machines, an I.B.M. official said, will be priced at $25,000 to $35,000, while full-fledged supercomputers can cost millions of dollars.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/technology/08cnd-blue.html?_r=1

edit - this article seems to give different prices. I guess there's a range:

The BladeCenter JS21 is IBM's first Cell-based product. Its Cell Broadband Engine processor's multi-core architecture is designed for intensive workloads and broadband media applications. It is the first blade with built-in virtualization capabilities. It supports Power Architecture, AIX 5L and Linux operating systems.

It offers top price-performance for bioinformatics, grid computing, retail manufacturing and petroleum research. It is a 64-bit UNIX blade server that holds two times the memory and is three times faster than its predecessors.

"This is what we've been waiting for," Don Morse, of Bryant University, told Senior Project Manager Don Bullock during a demonstration Wednesday morning.

The BladeCenter JS21 will be available in March, beginning at $2,499.

The new cell processor, based on Power Architecture, accelerates 3D rendering, compression and encryption for highly visual, graphic-intensive, real-time applications. Its multi-core architecture and high-speed communications capabilities deliver supercomputer capabilities for high performance workloads in digital media, medical imaging, defense, aerospace and communications.

The Cell BE, developed with Sony and Toshiba, drew crowds and praise during demonstrations at the news conference. It is available through special bids now and should be available for direct purchase by the third quarter of 2006.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=179102452&subSection=Columns