Who really is the father of CELL, IBM or Kutaragi???

[DeadmeatGA]

This issue has confused some posters here and I would like to clear this.

In 1979, a sleek talking business entrepreneur named Steve Jobs was visiting Xerox PARC for sight seeing. There, Steve saw a new user interface technology so revolutionary he was blown away at sight. Steve immediately felt this new user interface technology was the future of personal computing and decided to be the first to commercialize. Thus Macintosh was born 5 years later.

In 1999, a sleek talking business executive named Kutaragi Ken was visiting IBM for reasons I don't know. There, Kutaragi saw a new kind of computer architecture intended for protein folding calculation so revolutionary he was blown away at sight. Kutaragi immediately felt this new computer architecture was the future of videogaming and decided to be the first to commercialize. CELL was announced 2 years later.

See an analogy here??? Kutaragi did not invent CELLULAR COMPUTING, but he is the first one to commericalize it. When Steve Jobs supervised the Macintosh project, he did not try to recreate the Xerox PARC GUI machine exactly, but customized it to suit his "vision". Likewise, Kutaragi is supervising CELL to have the Blue Gene/L technology customized to suit his vision.

So IBM is the creator of CELL. Kutaragi is the customizer and commercializer of CELL, but not a good one.

 

[Panajev2001a]

but not a good one

You are so predictable...

 

[notAFanB]

just one thing.

In 1999, a sleek talking business executive named Kutaragi Ken was visiting IBM for reasons I don't know. There, Kutaragi saw a new kind of computer architecture intended for protein folding calculation so revolutionary he was blown away at sight.

how do you know this, given that apparently you don't knowthe reason for his presense the (he was taking a walk)?

 

[Vince]

As we all know, it was IBM in 2000 that invented the concept of Cellular Computing.

Nevermind the work of previous men like Moshe Sipper whose 1997 book entitled Evolution of Parallel Cellular Computers: The Cellular Programming Approach was already there. This is a architectural concept, just like another specific concept, x86, rose out of the work of people like Von Neumann.

His 1999 paper: http://www.computer.org/computer/co1999/r7018abs.htm


How I wish the world to purge itself of stupidity. Get a life.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Oh well... I've always had the impression that the Cell is a joint engineering project between IBM, Toshiba and Sony, and that engineers from all these three companies were brought together to work on it, as told in this (infamous) article.
http://www.designchain.com/coverstory.asp?issue=spring03
to this, IBM seem to have the leading role in Cell design, and that the Cell is indeed a project started from 'blank state'

"Kahle quickly realized that this project was unusual in that the designers were starting with a blank slate. "Most chip design projects involve some kind of legacy design and a requirement for backward compatibility," he says. In this case, however, the engineers were chartered to create a completely new design that could satisfy a speculative view of what might be needed in the future."

"Each of the partners brought key strengths to the project, according to Chekib Akrout, vice president of development for IBM Microelectronics. "The three companies are complementary in what they bring to the table," he explains, "Sony has a strong presence in the game market and content definition, Toshiba brings valuable perspective on the technical challenges of chip design for consumer electronics, and IBM is strong on high-performance processor development." The three companies decided in early 2001 to spend $400 million over five years to develop the new CPU, now code-named "Cell." IBM would lead a design team of 400 engineers, the majority of whom would come from IBM but with strong contingents from Sony and Toshiba."

The Cell design team is led by IBM's Jim Kahle, Ken Kutaragi is not part of the design team (after all, he is the president and CEO of SCEI ). His level of participation is more just overseeing the project in PS3 point of view.

"For example, SCEI president and CEO Ken Kutaragi has never missed a quarterly review meeting. Mitsuo Saito, a chief fellow in Toshiba Semiconductor Company who was instrumental in the creation of the Playstation2 CPU, has also remained heavily involved. "It's unusual to see such high-level executives take such a detailed interest in a project," says Kahle, "but Kutaragi-san and Saito-san have very clear ideas of where they want the project to go.""

I don't think it is even possible to single out one 'Father' of such a large project between three companies. If Sony was the first to propose the project to IBM and Toshiba, then maybe K.Kutaragi could be called the matchmaker in this insemination where IBM is the stud, Sony (and Toshiba) the womb, and together they spawn the Cell monster.

 

[Crazyace]

As an aside,

I tend to think of the whole 'cellular' architecture as falling out of the transputer designs that became popular ( fast local computing resources with inter processor communications ) in the early 80's.

 

[ChryZ]

Kutaragi is the customizer and commercializer of CELL, but not a good one.

Last time I checked, the CELL architecture was not released nor demo'd yet. Would you mind to explain in more detail, what your conclusion is based on? What the heck, nevermind ...

I guess this thread will end like most of Mr Meat's threads, 1-2 pages of denial, some trolling, assertions without substance, some flaming, illogical argumentation, some conspiracy theories and in the end locked by the moderators.

 

[nondescript]

In 1979, a sleek talking business entrepreneur named Steve Jobs was visiting Xerox PARC for sight seeing. There, Steve saw a new user interface technology so revolutionary he was blown away at sight. Steve immediately felt this new user interface technology was the future of personal computing and decided to be the first to commercialize. Thus Macintosh was born 5 years later.

...who goes on to create a billion-dollar company, become a billionaire himself, and GUI based OS's are now billion dollar industries...

So what's your point? That the person who invented it doesn't necessarily reap the rewards of his invention? Is that news?

CELL could be invented by you for all I care, if it has technical merit, it has technical merit, regardless of its origin. The origin matters for IP purposes, but it seems that Sony-IBM-Toshiba have no qualms with their IP arrangement.

 

[London Geezer]

what i dont think Deadmeat is getting here is that Ken Kutaragi is mainly "a man who knows how to do business".

he did not "INVENT" PS2. he did not "INVENT" Cell.

ONE MAN cannot do that.

the most logical explanation is that Mr Kutaragi knows VERY WELL how to make money out of technology and has teams of people telling him what the technological situation is at any given time. he is given options and he decides (probably with the support of other finanical related teams) what the best option is from a financial point of view. the option that will make the most profit but at the same time not being a piece of jusk-hardware.

Ken Kutaragi has knowledge about electronics. might be basic, we'll never know, but it is enough for him toknow what goes on inside a console. he does not need more than that because he has LOADS of people taking care of EVERYTHING....


and why was the other thread locked? not like we were calling each other names.... we were having a discussion...

 

[megadrive0088]

I just hope that PS3's rasterizer has more than just Sony designed pieces. I mean that companies with more experience than Sony are involved, like Nvidia.

If PS3's rasterizer (part of its GPU) has Nvidia-designed tech in it, if not, fully designed by from them.
then, basicly, PS3 will be have SGI tech since much of Nvidia's core technology is from SGI (SGI or 3Dfx, which is SGI anyway)

Or it could be as little as S3's contribution to GameCube's Flipper, a single function like texture compression.

as for Ken K. there is no way he could be responsible for such a project like Cell. I'm sure he has some influence, but overall, he is overseeing the development as well as putting together the pieces for PS3. Cell is only one of those pieces.

 

[London Geezer]

I just hope that PS3's rasterizer has more than just Sony designed pieces. I mean that companies with more experience than Sony are involved, like Nvidia.

If PS3's rasterizer (part of its GPU) has Nvidia-designed tech in it, if not, fully designed by from them.
then, basicly, PS3 will be have SGI tech since much of Nvidia's core technology is from SGI (SGI or 3Dfx, which is SGI anyway)

Or it could be as little as S3's contribution to GameCube's Flipper, a single function like texture compression.

I'M SURE THAT Sony has the balls to make a pretty GPU, given they just could stuff as many features as they want without necessarely have Nvidia doing it for them....
still, more help is always welcome...
hell, this piece of hardware would have IBM-Sony-Toshiba-Nvidia written on it. sounds prett cool dont u think

 

[cthellis42]

Not only that, but he's perpetuating myths about the Jobs visit, too. Heh...





P.S. Deadmeat, did Ken run over your dog or something? What the heck fuels your burning hatred of this man? What's the dillio-yo?

 

[V3]

So IBM is the creator of CELL

Well, that is if you ignored the connectionist architecture and that IBM took similar philosophy for their Blue Genes design.

In regard to Sony and Cell, those persons associated with the patent are SCE employee AFAIK.

 

[Squeak]

This issue has confused some posters here and I would like to clear this.

In 1979, a sleek talking business entrepreneur named Steve Jobs was visiting Xerox PARC for sight seeing. There, Steve saw a new user interface technology so revolutionary he was blown away at sight. Steve immediately felt this new user interface technology was the future of personal computing and decided to be the first to commercialize. Thus Macintosh was born 5 years later.

Steve Jobs didn't go to Xerox Parc for a sightseeing. He (and the people with him) knew exactly where to go, what to look for, and what questions to ask. How you ask? Because Jeff Raskin sent him.

Jeff Raskin knew about PARC a long time before anyone at Apple.
In the early days of the lab he was a regular visitor and personal friend of many of the researchers.

Raskin had proposed and named the Macintosh project almost a year earlier. He and some programmers had a running demo of a GUI some months before Jobs visit to PARC.
If anyone is the real father of the Mac it's Jeff Raskin

My point being, that such "strokes of luck" as the one in the "Jobs go to PARC" myth, very seldom happens in real life, and are even rarer in corporate cultures as in Sony and IBM.

 

[Squeak]

See an analogy here??? Kutaragi did not invent CELLULAR COMPUTING, but he is the first one to commericalize it. When Steve Jobs supervised the Macintosh project, he did not try to recreate the Xerox PARC GUI machine exactly, but customized it to suit his "vision". Likewise, Kutaragi is supervising CELL to have the Blue Gene/L technology customized to suit his vision.

So IBM is the creator of CELL. Kutaragi is the customizer and commercializer of CELL, but not a good one.

As mentioned before in this tread architectures similar to Cell have been done many times before in various iterations. Some of the most famous examples are Illiac IV and the Connection Machine.
Cell isn't as much an invention as an evolution.

 

[cthellis42]

If anyone is the real father of the Mac it's Jeff Raskin

...for stuff he made a thesis about in 1967, called the "Quick-Draw Graphics System," too.

It's been a long time since inventions at ALL stages are entirely in the hands of one person. Excepting perhaps the Segway, and just look how THAT "revolutionized everything."

 

[London Geezer]

FUNNY some people bother asking themselves who is the father of Cell or geeky stuff, when i don't even know who my father is.....

 

[Almasy]

FUNNY some people bother asking themselves who is the father of Cell or geeky stuff, when i don't even know who my father is.....

That sucks man...It really does. Do you have any clues?

 

[Josiah]

actually...Kutagari seems like a businessman to me, not an engineer...so whether the design is more from IBM, Toshiba, Sony, or whoever, Kutagari probably didn't design any of it

 

[Panajev2001a]

Kutaragi is an engineer, but he is not directly on an active MPU team anymore which does not mean he forgot tricks of the trade and is not interested in trying to oversee projects ( and his experience helps him ).