Toshiba Cell demo @ CEATEC JAPAN 2005

That's a pity. I suppose depending on what happens with the Cell workstations it still could be interesting, but I was really hoping that perhaps Sony was starting to embrace more openness.

Nite_Hawk

 

What version of CELL is in the Toshiba Reference Set?

DD2 2.4GHz 6SPE?

DD2 3.2GHz 7SPE?

DD2 4.0GHz 8SPE?

If it’s the same as the one in PS3 and they bundle a HD Eyetoy in with the PS3 this could get even more interesting.

 

really cool software... Toshiba will probably only deliver this software on a HD-DVD just the sakes of it..

 

Really cool demo!

Yeah, that is my guess too. That would explain the fairly open case (water cooling unit on the bottom).

One of these days, in 10 years, I am going to buy a CELL server like that just to have one

 

Very likely the DD2 2.4GHz Cells... don't know how many working SPEs, but I would assume 6 or 7.

 

Interesting that nobody bothered to comment on the performance analyzer screenshot so far... Looking at the diagram there, it seems the SPUs spend a fair amount of time idling, either because of efficiency issues with the hardware design or early programming efforts leading to poor performance.

Or perhaps the processor's simply so damn fast it burns through its calculations too quickly and becomes starved for input data. Take yer pick...

 

Hard to feed any CPU 100% all the time.

I had looked at it, but I am not an expert. What *I* drew from it was this: Looks like the SPEs are a lot more useful than the EE VU1/VU0, specifically the underused one

I think utilization on the SPEs will come down to programming model, what type of code you are trying to run on it, and of course how good your code is. In the Multi-core thread I started a little over a month ago it seemed that with so many cores and more of a "dispatch" model you may use them as you need them. So sometimes they will be idle, and sometimes you will be cranking on them.

Which is not surprising considering even a modern game with physics, like HL2, is only being "pushed" when there are things in the game pushing it. So if your *game code* gets 60fps & 100% utilization when you have 100 active physics objects, when those 100 physics objects are no longer active you may be at 40% utlization.

So by design you wont be cranking on the SPEs all the time in most games (I am sure there will be exceptions!).

I look forward to seeing the neat techniques developers come up with to make the use of the design.

 

And off this I wonder if gaming devs are noticing things like this. I wonder if the more developers like Toshiba and the like do, if gaming devs are going to try to find a way to incorporate that same thing into their game? Can you imagne a game putting you in the game and you can actually see yourself move in real-time?

Damn gotta love the future.

 

It would certainly be awesome for games with create-a-player modes, like wrestling games or the Tony Hawk series. And if the image data isn't too big, it could be awesome for multiplayer games (UT2K7?).

 

Off-topic for this thread, kind of, but I never know if I should be creating threads about general Cell stuff in the Console forum or what

Mercury Systems has announced their first Cell product - a dual-blade Cell system (400Gflops) as well as multi-blade solutions at 2.8Tflops and 16Tflops (the much vaunted 16Tflop server! ). Will be available Q1/Q2 next year:

http://www.mc.com/cell/press2.cfm

A render:



And here's the datasheet:

http://www.mc.com/products/view/index.cfm?id=64&type=boards

edit - there's a PDF here: http://www.mc.com/literature/literature_files/Cell_blade-ds.pdf. For what it's worth, they claim "95% utilisation" for XDR.

 

Well Toshiba wasn't the only one at the expo, this is the full coverage:

http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/

LOTS of cool gadgets!!

 

Wow. Thats a pretty cool way to implement Security on a hardware level. I wonder how it works though? If the system detects its being compromised it isolates that core? (seems to be the most obvious thing to do). Seems like Linux is really being emphasized for Cell (or vice versa). A could way to impliment that type of security is to isolate one of the Cells cores when being compromised and having it only be unlocked with Finger Print or Optical scanning (wouldn't work for remote users though).

One step closer to self aware CPUs! or not would be freaky though if the system locked up on its own....the CELL=SKYNET comparison looms in the background

 

Where can I see those Cell make up videos? The links go to page that has tons of different links in japanese, none of them seem to be about "Cell" at least from the pics.

 

you *know* Dave has to do a cell review now.

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

Nite_Hawk

 

This link should work: http://rapidshare.de/files/5891063/fnn-bus_all-movie-001-300k-00.wmv.html

It's very impressive stuff.

 

Thanks.

That demonstration was more impressive than I thought, I really hope the PS3 will have something like that on day one.
That would draw a lot of non gamers interest too.

 

Though this is a Cell demo, do we have anything to compare it to on non-Cell systems? In other words, what is it about Cell that makes it able to do this and how much is it having to do?

Not that either other console will probably be able to match this if possible on PS3 as they don't appear to be getting the needed optical devices. But to rate performance it'd be nice to have a comparison. For all I know a Athlon 1800 can do this, just no-one had invented the algorithms until now!

 

Good to see that the CELL is getting good use already. CELL is already better for Non Playstation stuff than EE was during it's whole lifespan. Good to have IBM on board.