Zig&Zag: Now Sony management change, layoffs

I don't know what sort of answer you are really looking for (actually I do, in that it wasn't an "answer" you were seeking, in the first place). You've logically reached a point where it should be evident that there is no great necessity to doubt its usefulness, anyway. The potential is there to go into a lot of stuff for a lot of uses. It may do it, or it may not. There's really no great reason to have such a negative stance on it, barring some pathological loathing of anything "Sony".

 

My camcorder is a DCR-HC90, i own a PSP with 4 games, i have a Gig worth of memory stick duos, and a Sony DVD burner in my pc. I dont loathe Sony. Do i think they can sometimes be TOO self serving at the consumer's expense? Yeah. Are they worse than any other large company in any industry? Probably not.

I dont have a negative stance on the cell, i just want some idea on how the claims thrown around by Sony are going to be implemented. It seems at this point no one has any idea what Sony means, thats ok, i was jsut trying to understand their master plan.

I dont doubt its uselfulness, just to whom it is useful.

J

 

This remark may have been believable had it been taken in a vacuum. Unfortunately, we have your entire posting history in recent weeks to weigh against your claim here. It's really no question of whether or not you are so negative, but why are you so negative (a rhetorical one for me, as I don't really care, personally). It matters little if you own a few Sony trinkets of your own or you buy $10k of stuff. The theme of your post history speaks far more in volume. Sorry.

 

When you sober up, maybe you can explain what youre talking about.

J

 

No shortage of material here to formulate an observation...

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/search.php?searchid=53587

I think others can continue the topic, as needed, from here.

EDIT: Link to search provided with posts back to front, for your pleasure:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/search.php?searchid=53598

 

Wow a list of posts from a single thread where i have an opinion on one of Sony's practices. Good work.

J

 

(just a little, whittle hint- pay mind to the little multi-page links towards the bottom of the page?...but this is more for everyone else, rather than you. Obviously "you" don't need to verify to yourself why you are here.)

 

Ok, i'm out of this one. I have no idea what youre talking about and now youre borderline 'creeping me out.'

J

 

When you two have finished your marital counselling, let us know so we can proceed with the topic's discussion. No pressure.

 

Expletive asks for ideas, and when I give them he says they don't count?

Really?! You're saying it's easy for...I dunno, a MIPS based portable digital camcorder running PalmOS to interact with a PPC based Linux based console so the both work on the encoding simulataneously to speed it up? And a TV with a custom IC to interface with an XB360 to help it render 3D content faster? Perhaps yo don't understand how Cell's scalability works.

If your processes are written as Apulets, they can be distributed among available SPE's. In the TV example, you've an apulet that says 'take a batch of vertex data and render it to a back-buffer held in the TV's RAM'. In a 1:2 TV Cell two of these Apulets are running concurrently. Attach any Cell device and the TV's PPE should say 'woohoo, some more SPE's' and farm of some more workload. So attach your PS3 and the SAME PROGRAM, the Apulet, that the TV is using is passed to the PS3's SPE's, and they fetch data from the TV over the network, process it, and send it back, addressing the TV's memory and working as though they are components in the TV. So you get 9 SPE's doing the work instead of 2.

No other solution can manage this. You can't mix and match different processors and have them share processing, share the same software. The same could be managed through virtual machines, and a standard for EC software could be developed to share programs on totally different hardware, but that's an overhead and doesn't exist yet. Cell offers a hardware solution.

So there you have it. At least one person does have ideas how 'Cell will somehow change the face and interactivity/interoperability of CE', and it does it in a way that other ICs can't. Hardware level compatibility and code sharing across multiply devices.

Also it's worth noting this DOESN'T mean you HAVE to buy Sony goods. Toshiba will be supplying Cell goods, and AFAIK the idea is to introduce the Cell as a platform bought into by other CE goods manufacturers, just as they buy processors from other processor manufacturers. It's not to be an exclusive tech to Sony+Toshiba; they want it to become a standard and make a killing selling the chips.

 

Apologies if i missed your post, my intention was not to ignore it nor dismiss it.

I see your point but why does the TV need 9 SPEs to beign with? Why dont they just design it to do what it needs to right out of the box?

J

 

Because a TV doesn't know what it's future requirements will be. Something like web browsing has gone from just being text and pictures to being Flash movies and Java programs. 6 years ago you could have made a portable web-browser or TV with web-browser, that could read text and show pictures. It'd only need a very simple processor and graphics system. But as the format grew the hardware couldn't grow with it. That simple machine that showed text and pictures couldn't run the current Flash and Java applications. But when they first built that browser handheld or TV no-one would have anticipated how the HTML format was to expand.

There currently isn't any real standard for embedded 3D content in TV teletext or digital pages, but it might (and probably will) happen. Those 2 SPE's needed for picture and audio processing may well one day be used for new content. And if it's not enough power, the scalability of Cell would allow you to access more demanding content without needing to buy a new TV.

For me a single scalable hardware platform with software solution is the ultimate electronic hardware system. If the same hardware can be used for any software, I can buy Cell devices that use their Cell processor for specific tasks, and then call on them to help with other tasks. I could run a raytracer on my Cell PC and have any Cell chips in the house help out. I could run an accoustic synthesis modeller in a Roland Cell keyboard, upgrade the software to get new features and modelling algorithms, and when I start using lots of instruments and the inbuilt Cell isn't enough, I can connect up another Cell box to help out. To me this makes a lot more sense in use of resources then a dozen different seperate computers. At the moment any processors I have in my keyboards, PC, TV, and other gadgets, do their own thing and never help each other. Okay, a lot of the processing power of these devices is virtually insignificant to the demands modern software solutions can make, but in the future algorithms and processes are going to be super complex and you'll never have too much power.

 

Well i asked for an example and youve certainly provided one, thanks.

Now to discuss the actual possibility or practicality, well thats another thread entirely. Wanna start it?

J

 

The problem with interacting benefits (TV + recorder = faster encoding etc) is you need both ends to make it work. Toshiba + Sony won't be enough to make something like that work, they would need to sell Cell to the rest of the CE manufacturers or it just winds up being a consumer cost burden with no benefit. You have to sell the consumer on why Cell makes his TV better, not why it might make something else he may or not purchase better.

 

To be facetious, I think there is no shortage of persons here to cite that "Cell Hype" is already quite adequate to inspire people to buy stuff. What stuff?...why that would be "Cell stuff", if you want to be "in" on all the "action". So no need to worry if the stuff will have a "good reason" to the buyer to be bought.