Why Do Cell Workstations Still Need Their Own Zip Code?

[Arsynic]

Why so large? Are these the original 4.6 GHz Cells with 8 SPUs active?

 

[inefficient]

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2006/0720/ibm.htm

You should link article not just post the images. And its not a Cell workstation. It's a multiprocessor Cell blade server.

 

[Carl B]

Seriously Arsynic, are you unaware of what you're looking at there?

You gotta be less trigger happy on the FUD.

 

[Ty]

PS3 devkits are around that wide but maybe a 1/5th through a 1/7th of that height.

We have tons of them at work.

 

[Bobbler]

That case could be holding 12 dual Cell blades for all we know. I think you'd find any box holding 12 1U blades (whether they be full or not) to be a sizeable unit.

 

[Skrying]

Blade servers are so bad ass looking. Even seeing them all the time, I just love them.

 

[Titanio]

PS3 devkits are around that wide but maybe a 1/5th through a 1/7th of that height.

Are they quieter than before? Someone on another board made the claim that the newer ones were much quieter, but no one really corroborated that..

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Let's try and salvage this into something useful. What's the article about? Any info? From the movie, looks like Alias' cloth simulator. If the Cell device working off the Mac as a sort of bolt-on accelerator? Or are they running applications off the Cell device?

 

[Guden Oden]

That guy in inefficient's first post looks rather like a somewhat older Egon Spengler to me.

Cool to see a full blade chassis, that's like looking at a pic of a high-powered sports car to a hardware geek such as myself...

 

[Demirug]

Blade Servers are nice but unfortunately useless if you need a bunch of image processors for your cave/wall. I would be more impressed from a Cell PCIe card. I heard that IBM have many 6 SPU Cells and don’t know what to do with them.

 

[one]

Let's try and salvage this into something useful. What's the article about? Any info? From the movie, looks like Alias' cloth simulator. If the Cell device working off the Mac as a sort of bolt-on accelerator? Or are they running applications off the Cell device?

The article is about the IBM press seminar at the IBM Yamato Lab in Kanagawa, Japan. They showcased various technologies incl the Cell blade. It's the Alias cloth physics simulation demo with 8 SPEs doing 8 independent cloth simulation while the Mac does graphics rendering. (Yes a pretty boring demo!)
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2006/0720/ibm_10.mov

BTW this guy at YouTube has some videos of (again boring) Cell demo by IBM and Mercury at some events in Japan.
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=ets2006
They are from the Linux World Tokyo and the IBM Systems and Technology Innovation Forum where Kutaragi gave a speech. (He appears in this video as the third speaker but the video quality is very bad)
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20060609/sce.htm
This speech is about a recap of all his speeches so far and how great IBM is. For Gran Turismo, SCEI is getting CAD data from automobile makers around the world, and some makers even ask them to do drivebility simulation for a new feature in an actual car. Also he met Spielberg at E3. According to Kutaragi 10 years ago Spielberg said he didn't want to think about creating a movie with a computer, but now he wants PS3 badly. (But Kutaragi quickly denied the possibility of Spielberg's commitment to the PS3 and told the media not to write about it, at which the audience laughed)

 

[DeanA]

Are they quieter than before? Someone on another board made the claim that the newer ones were much quieter, but no one really corroborated that..

Yeah, the current revision of devkit (DEH-R1040) is way way quieter than earlier versions. I'd actually go as far to say it's quieter than the last version of PS2 dev hardware.

Dean

 

[Bad_Boy]

Yeah, the current revision of devkit (DEH-R1040) is way way quieter than earlier versions. I'd actually go as far to say it's quieter than the last version of PS2 dev hardware.

Dean

Sounds like good news, but is there anything you could compare to with the PS2 dev kit? Never heard one myself.

 

[Guden Oden]

That's nice to hear Dean, anything else you want to add perhaps? Like, is the current PS3 devkit finally reflecting final hardware (apart from having more RAM or possibly harddrive space, etc)? Ie, is the southbridge final, RSX final etc?

 

[Titanio]

For Gran Turismo, SCEI is getting CAD data from automobile makers around the world, and some makers even ask them to do drivebility simulation for a new feature in an actual car.

Heh, that's cool. Thanks for translating, as always.

Yeah, the current revision of devkit (DEH-R1040) is way way quieter than earlier versions. I'd actually go as far to say it's quieter than the last version of PS2 dev hardware.

Cheers, that is good to hear! Presumably bodes well for the retail model (and that "as quiet as a slim PS2" claim)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

For Gran Turismo, SCEI is getting CAD data from automobile makers around the world

I presume COLLADA is being used here, which would be nice if so, as that's what it was intended for. From the CAD package into the game modeller for a shrink down as needed, would make the content creation a hell of a lot cheaper than GT4 where they spent 3 months per model or whatever figure it was. Now all the design work that's being done by the companies can be recycled into the games, instead of duplicating the effort. I don't suppose anyone knows for sure though.

 

[Titanio]

They managed to get some CAD data in previous iterations of GT already. I don't know if that's become more common now or not, but for some of the cars they include, it wouldn't be possible to get CAD data on them anyway. So I'm not sure if that'll alleviate the workload much versus previous entries in the series (even with the CAD data, it seems there was still a lot of work to do per car).

 

[ROG27]

Yeah, the current revision of devkit (DEH-R1040) is way way quieter than earlier versions. I'd actually go as far to say it's quieter than the last version of PS2 dev hardware.

Dean

Are these the final kits, Dean, or are there further iterations/revisions to come?

According to the public schedule, I would presume they are the final kits.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

AFAIK there's never really final kits, in that revisions are made along the way. But hardwarewise, the chips should be final. Well, nVidia are saying that they've been making RSX for months, and we know Cell has been being made for over a year, so if they haven't the real components now what's missing is going to be pretty minor, like a different BRD drive to PS3s.

They managed to get some CAD data in previous iterations of GT already. I don't know if that's become more common now or not, but some of the cars they include, it wouldn't be possible to get CAD data on them anyway. So I'm not sure if that'll alleviate the workload much versus previous entries in the series.

True enough. I guess they can only use data for modern vehicles, and all those older cars will need remodelling yet again for higher specs.

 

[Titanio]

AFAIK there's never really final kits, in that revisions are made along the way. But hardwarewise, the chips should be final. Well, nVidia are saying that they've been making RSX for months, and we know Cell has been being made for over a year

Well, when Sony says they've been manufacturing Cell since last summer, that obviously does not mean 3.2Ghz Cells The process might have started then, but it wouldn't have been until much more recently that they had ramped and refined to a point where final chips were available. It would be interesting to know if the new kits were 3.2Ghz, though, given that the E3 kits were at least mostly 2.8Ghz according to reports. The R104x series was due after E3 I think (according to the March update..but then the March update reported a schedule that subsequently may have been revised, and probably was given when they said certain things would be made available).