MojoKid writes "On Tuesday, Toshiba launched the
Qosmio G55-802, the first laptop available with the Cell CPU. Yes, think PS3 technology, developed jointly by Toshiba, Sony, and IBM. However, in particular, the Cell CPU is not about gaming, but about the multimedia experience. Taking the load away from the Intel CPU, the Cell processor performs gesture control, face navigation, transcoding and upscaling to HD. Interestingly (and necessary, with 4 GB of RAM), the system comes with 64-bit Vista installed by default, but 32-bit Vista ships as an option as well." However, semi-relatedly, if you'd prefer your Cells run open-source code, 1i1' blu3 writes "IBM's put up an open source project downloads page for the Cell processor — APIs, toolkits, IDEs, libraries, algorithms, etc. Most of the stuff on it right now is from SourceForge, but they are asking for user contributions to add to it." (Terra Soft's also been providing a Cell-compatible Linux distro for a while now, and according to Wikipedia the kernel's supported it since version 2.6.16.)
When is the last time a company come along with a proprietary technology like this and received market acceptance? I seem to recall companies like Aegia and Rambus... Hell RDRAM didn't even require any change to software and provided higher performance, but it was one company and of course the price remained high.... Nah I don't expect to see this go much further than it already has, a few people will buy it and it will ship with some in house programs on it and just like every other system from a major manufacturer support and software will slowly fade into obscurity. Sure a few websites will be started in dedication of this thing and they will light up their message boards with how superior and awesome it was/is/could of been...
The big difference is the availability. Although both the Cell and the PhysX share some architecture design, it's about the only thing they have in common.
PhysX was only available on 1 single type of board. No tools available at all to develop code for the chip, only a physics library which only provided 1 single API. The only thing you could do as a user is buy it, stick it into the computer and hope that game developper will release patches supporting it. The only thing you could do as a developer is write some physics simulation into the game you're developing.
Cell has lot of tools to develop code to run of it. Including open source compilers (gcc for example), and including frameworks dedicated at doing stream computing (RapidMind can produce SPE code). Thanks to the fact that its main CPU part is a plain simple PowerPC, there is even a lot of prior knowledge that can be recycled.
And the Cell is available on lots of devide ranging on small device on which the would-be developer can test some code like PS3 (compatible with Linux out-of-the-box) and this laptop (x86-based with Vista, but offers a cell as a coprocessor) all the way up to big servers with several cell boardlet inside, ready to do some crazy super computing for scientist.
Anyone can develop for Cell and run pretty much everything they want on it, and even have access to a significative range of platform to test the code.
The cell is much more likely to experience some success that the PhysX did.
Chances are big that the laptop would remain an expensive toy for rich geeks.
Linux main driving force are people who try to make out of literally junk computers something usable (and at large they succeed). Majority of people are those who can't afford computers nor proprietary OSs - and they have natural interest in such stuff.
I'd say that if the laptop costs below $600 mark - then it might have chance. But something tells me that at $1600 it would find few followers.
I don't think that will be too much of an issue. My guess it will be used as a device like a GPU or DSP on a sound card.
And we all know how easy it is to add hardware acceleration for products from major vendors like Creative, Nvidia, AMD... The architectures these companies have produced have far greater market penetration then Toshiba could dream to see and yet there isn't across the board support for such common devices. Not many are going to be coding for a piece of hardware only one manufacture is producing. Unless this thing is seen in rigs across the board and/or it demonstrates a highly tangible benefit it simply won't be supported by the fast majority of software.
I've been thinking about porting a CFD code to PS3, but this would be interesting. There's been at least one company making Cell add-in cards but they have been prohibitively expensive.
It's kind of like using your GPU for fast math. No wait, the exact same thing:)
According to the article (and hinted by the summary), the thing has an ordinary Intel Core2Duo CPU. I'm assuming the cell is the "Toshiba quad code HD Processor" mentioned in the article. So it's a co-processor, then. My best guess it it's a 4-SPU cell processor without the PowerPC core.
Weird...
Wow - this could be a real win for scientific computing. Traditional GPU-based computation is hindered by the poor I/O (I guess PCI-e is fixing this but I don't know). And PS3-based cell computation is hindered by lack of RAM _and_ poor I/O. But this thing looks like it's hooked up to some nice RAM and a PCI-e bus and could really crunch some FFTs.
We have an experimental PS3-based cell data reduction system here but it's just too slow. I can almost hear my phone ringing as one of our scientists starts ask
Single precision only, non IEEE-754 arithmetic isn't a "real win for scientific computing". It's a win for getting the wrong answers really, really quickly.
Yes, I know that there are problems for which the limitations of the SPEs don't kill the accuracy of the solution, but people (even scientists) rarely do a complete analysis of whether or not their problem is one of those before they set off to use the new faster hotness.
Most scientific calculations use integer opertation of the CPU, impelementing their own Floating/Fixed point if needed. The type of calculations for which single precision gets the wrong answer really quickly, but double precision is perfect is very rare.
So combined with the comment above that Ben Heck already did a PS3-based laptop, we find that the only accurate words in the headline are "toshiba", "launches", and "laptop".
Having a laptop that does Gesture based and Face navigation...So what happens if you give it the finger? Does it shut down? or does rolling your eyes bring up email?
I think giving it the finger will boot Windows, and rolling your eyes will start Firefox and head to YouTube. Sneezing of course, will run an anti-virus scan.
For almost 10-years now, Slashdot has pipmped Terra Soft and Yellow Dog. There's Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and SuSE (you know, distros people actually use out there) available for the Cell processor and PS3, and Slashdot shills for Terra Soft. This was true back when PPC linux was mildly popular too... Debian, Slackware, SuSE... They all supported it, but Slashdot pimps Yellow Dog. What gives?
I've submitted a number of those stories, and from my side I've been surprised at how little interest there is in them compared to yet-another-video-card and vaporware stories, let alone throwing-raw-meat-to-the-mob stuff about SCO and the RIAA.
Anyway, there's a huge difference between a distro specifically designed for a platform and some half-assed port. I don't have a PS3, but can tell you that there was no comparison between Yellow Dog and things like SuSE PPC that maybe could install a bunch of recomp
As somebody who bought a PowerBook G3 when they came out specifically to play with Yellow Dog Linux on it, my experience was the opposite. Perhaps you just don't like SuSE?
My experience was that Yellow Dog was a half-assed port of RedHat to PPC, and Debian for PPC was Debian. With Yellow Dog you felt like you almost had a working RedHat system, but things were out of date, and many of the things you were used to were unavailable. Debian had none of those problems.
TerrSoft was one of the initial (and major) developers of Cell support on Linux. As well they were more or less official supplier of Linux for PS3.
They as well remain one of the major PowerPC/POWER supporters and developers of Linux on PPC*/POWER*. (Largest PPC users now are in embedded market - not in desktop/workstation market where TerraSoft is working.)
Rest of distros, in large part, merely have used the GPLed work done by TerraSoft.
That might sound like shilling, but the guys deserve credit f
I've been wondering, if Cell technology were integrated into general purpose PCs, what kind of tasks it would help with. Could it be used to accellerate. . .
* High resolution video decoding, so the processor doesn't have to chug so much on it? From the article, it sounds like this might be one use of the cell?
* Grid computing - things like World Community Grid, distributed.net, SETI@home etc? I imagine this probably depends, at least in part, on the specific types of computations being done for the project you participate in, but would you commonly be able to do more computation, faster, for those types of projects if you had cell processors?
Can a GPU like one from Nvidia or ATI potentially work together *with* the cell processor to increase the GPU's capabilities? (I'd guess that would probably depend on the drivers having support for the Cell, and I'm guessing that current generation drivers probably wouldn't take any advantage of the Cell?)
Can a GPU like one from Nvidia or ATI potentially work together *with* the cell processor to increase the GPU's capabilities? (I'd guess that would probably depend on the drivers having support for the Cell, and I'm guessing that current generation drivers probably wouldn't take any advantage of the Cell?)
Not likely, since they are competing with each other for the same markets (acceleration of graphics and computation, including all the examples you gave like encryption, etc.). They are two approaches to
Yes, think PS3 technology, developed jointly by Toshiba, Sony, and IBM.
Saying that the Cell BEA was developed for the PlayStation 3 is like saying the wheel was developed for razor scooters. The PlayStation 3 uses the Cell, but the Cell was not made solely for the PlayStation. The Cell was developed to be a floating point and vector arithmetic monster that would be at home in a supercomputer, which it is.
I have nothing against the PlayStation 3, but I get upset when a myth like this is perpetuated. Saying that one of the most powerful processors available today was 'made to play video games' detracts from it and gives readers an incorrect impression (in my humble opinion).
Yes, think PS3 technology, developed jointly by Toshiba, Sony, and IBM.
Saying that the Cell BEA was developed for the PlayStation 3 is like saying the wheel was developed for razor scooters. The PlayStation 3 uses the Cell, but the Cell was not made solely for the PlayStation. The Cell was developed to be a floating point and vector arithmetic monster that would be at home in a supercomputer, which it is.
I think you're reading his/her words incorrectly. The way I see it, the author wrote that you get technology used in the PS3 in your computer. After all, the Cell is PS3 technology since it consists of one.
Cell was the brainchild of Sony's hardware genius Kutagari and IBM's Hofstee...
Kutagari may have been thinking about consoles when he came up with the idea that would become the Cell BEA, but when development started on the Cell the design team's goal was high performance in a many different applications. Many of the Cell processors sold thus far have been in PlayStations, and it may be their most visible application, but I believe the PlayStation represents only a fraction of Cell's potential utility.
There's got to be some upper limit to be called a laptop. I looked at screen resolution first, it's 1680x945. It's an odd size, not as many pixels as some other laptops. Then I noticed the size in inches: 18.4! Base weight: 10lbs.
I don't have a problem with large computers you carry from room to room with a built-in UPS. But at some point it's a desktop all-in-one or something else.
This is not a Cell based laptop. It's a PC laptop with a Cell processor inside.
The Cell is a cool add-on but it does not make this a very interesting laptop by itself.
I would love to see a pure Cell-based laptop, mostly because it would be a decent performer and an outstanding number-cruncher. The fact that it would be completely Windows-proof would be a nice bonus.
Anyone else curious about what kind of battery life this thing gets? I know that the ps3 sucks enough power to black out a small country, so I'm interested (read: worried) in how long this thing will last on battery power.
Qosmio? What a stupid name. It totally drips with unnecessary marketing affectation. It's like they were trying to cram as much cheesy bullshit into one name as they possibly could.
Cosmo? Not quite. Cosmio? Hm, needs a little more bullshit. Qosmio! Yes, good job. That 'q' really ratchets up the puke factor. Well done.
I hope the appearance of the Cell in actual PCs, not just the RAM-hardwired and GPU-lockedout (and no PCI) PS3 will reignite official support of Cell Ubuntu. Until last year, Ubuntu was officially supporting the PPC-based Cell version of their distro. Now it's just a community effort that needs your help [psubuntu.com]. Ubuntu is working, with some bugs (right now mainly the installer, and beta bugs in the Cell SPE video driver). If there were more diverse Cell PC HW, and a larger, more diverse developer community coming
On closer examination of the specs, this laptop isn't a Cell CPU at all. It's Toshiba's "Spurs" coprocessor, which is like a Cell but with the central PPC core stripped out and only half the Cell's 4 SPE DSPs, hooked up to a Pentium Core 2 Duo instead. That might be an interesting platform for experimenting with Linux and DSP, but it's not a Cell, and has practically no relation to any Cell/Linux project, nor Ubuntu in particular.
Both the Slashdot story and the actual article lie about the CPU being a "Cell
Because of the way that windows "pages" memory (and I'm assuming your running a server version of the OS, cause XP and vista don't work with PAE) you still can't have a single process with much more than 3GB of ram on a 32bit system. You can have multiple processes running with 3GB of ram, but then you get some slowdowns from paging in and out the memory.
If Memory serves, this is part of the reason that Exchange 2007 requires 64-bit OS's and processors. (except for the demo and SMB versions)
Not, in fact, the first Cell laptop (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/10/the-ps3-laptop-from-ben-heck-to-engadget-with-love/ [engadget.com]
Where are the apps coming from? (Score:2)
Re:Where are the apps coming from? (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably the people who buy it.
Linux will support it of course. Offload video decompression (XVID/MPEG4/whatever) and audio decompression to the PPEs.
I'm sure Audacity and any other audio processing tools will support it. The GIMP could make use of it as well. Matlab of course.
Those are just off the top of my head.
Parent
Re:Where are the apps coming from? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Availability (Score:5, Interesting)
I seem to recall companies like Aegia
The big difference is the availability.
Although both the Cell and the PhysX share some architecture design, it's about the only thing they have in common.
PhysX was only available on 1 single type of board. No tools available at all to develop code for the chip, only a physics library which only provided 1 single API.
The only thing you could do as a user is buy it, stick it into the computer and hope that game developper will release patches supporting it.
The only thing you could do as a developer is write some physics simulation into the game you're developing.
Cell has lot of tools to develop code to run of it. Including open source compilers (gcc for example), and including frameworks dedicated at doing stream computing (RapidMind can produce SPE code). Thanks to the fact that its main CPU part is a plain simple PowerPC, there is even a lot of prior knowledge that can be recycled.
And the Cell is available on lots of devide ranging on small device on which the would-be developer can test some code like PS3 (compatible with Linux out-of-the-box) and this laptop (x86-based with Vista, but offers a cell as a coprocessor) all the way up to big servers with several cell boardlet inside, ready to do some crazy super computing for scientist.
Anyone can develop for Cell and run pretty much everything they want on it, and even have access to a significative range of platform to test the code.
The cell is much more likely to experience some success that the PhysX did.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Chances are big that the laptop would remain an expensive toy for rich geeks.
Linux main driving force are people who try to make out of literally junk computers something usable (and at large they succeed). Majority of people are those who can't afford computers nor proprietary OSs - and they have natural interest in such stuff.
I'd say that if the laptop costs below $600 mark - then it might have chance. But something tells me that at $1600 it would find few followers.
P.S. But you might expect rab
ps3 emulation! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ps3 emulation! (Score:4, Informative)
The PS3 uses one cell processor, which has 8 SPEs, one of which has been dctivated so it only uses 7.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think that will be too much of an issue. My guess it will be used as a device like a GPU or DSP on a sound card.
Re:Where are the apps coming from? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that will be too much of an issue. My guess it will be used as a device like a GPU or DSP on a sound card.
And we all know how easy it is to add hardware acceleration for products from major vendors like Creative, Nvidia, AMD... The architectures these companies have produced have far greater market penetration then Toshiba could dream to see and yet there isn't across the board support for such common devices. Not many are going to be coding for a piece of hardware only one manufacture is producing. Unless this thing is seen in rigs across the board and/or it demonstrates a highly tangible benefit it simply won't be supported by the fast majority of software.
Parent
me (Score:2)
It's kind of like using your GPU for fast math. No wait, the exact same thing
Not cell-based, cell-assisted (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not cell-based, cell-assisted (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We have an experimental PS3-based cell data reduction system here but it's just too slow. I can almost hear my phone ringing as one of our scientists starts ask
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Single precision only, non IEEE-754 arithmetic isn't a "real win for scientific computing". It's a win for getting the wrong answers really, really quickly.
Yes, I know that there are problems for which the limitations of the SPEs don't kill the accuracy of the solution, but people (even scientists) rarely do a complete analysis of whether or not their problem is one of those before they set off to use the new faster hotness.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most scientific calculations use integer opertation of the CPU, impelementing their own Floating/Fixed point if needed. The type of calculations for which single precision gets the wrong answer really quickly, but double precision is perfect is very rare.
Re:Not cell-based, cell-assisted (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Not cell-based, cell-assisted (Score:5, Funny)
Oh man I hope the combination of those three words involves a trebuchet.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Gesture based and Face navigation.. Sweet! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Big, big let-down (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought this was going to be the first fuel-cell based laptop.
Especially after reading how a fuel-cell the size of a regular battery can operate a cell phone for 2,700 hours of talk-time. [slashgear.com]
Does Terra-Soft pay Slashdot? (Score:4, Interesting)
For almost 10-years now, Slashdot has pipmped Terra Soft and Yellow Dog. There's Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and SuSE (you know, distros people actually use out there) available for the Cell processor and PS3, and Slashdot shills for Terra Soft. This was true back when PPC linux was mildly popular too... Debian, Slackware, SuSE... They all supported it, but Slashdot pimps Yellow Dog. What gives?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe Malda really liked the movie "Old Yeller".
Re: (Score:2)
Anyway, there's a huge difference between a distro specifically designed for a platform and some half-assed port. I don't have a PS3, but can tell you that there was no comparison between Yellow Dog and things like SuSE PPC that maybe could install a bunch of recomp
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As somebody who bought a PowerBook G3 when they came out specifically to play with Yellow Dog Linux on it, my experience was the opposite. Perhaps you just don't like SuSE?
My experience was that Yellow Dog was a half-assed port of RedHat to PPC, and Debian for PPC was Debian. With Yellow Dog you felt like you almost had a working RedHat system, but things were out of date, and many of the things you were used to were unavailable. Debian had none of those problems.
Admittedly, I've not gone back and tried Yel
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, Slashdot has been giving Ubuntu nearly enough coverage!
Re: (Score:2)
[...] and Slashdot shills for Terra Soft.
TerrSoft was one of the initial (and major) developers of Cell support on Linux. As well they were more or less official supplier of Linux for PS3.
They as well remain one of the major PowerPC/POWER supporters and developers of Linux on PPC*/POWER*. (Largest PPC users now are in embedded market - not in desktop/workstation market where TerraSoft is working.)
Rest of distros, in large part, merely have used the GPLed work done by TerraSoft.
That might sound like shilling, but the guys deserve credit f
Good price too (Score:3, Informative)
PS3 + linux = shit (Score:2, Informative)
The RSX is still locked away and there is no decent video driver. It's like using an old Pentium machine.
So, would cell help with. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been wondering, if Cell technology were integrated into general purpose PCs, what kind of tasks it would help with. Could it be used to accellerate. . .
* Crypto functions (like whole-disk encryption, or encrypted volumes (like TrueCrypt)?
* High resolution video decoding, so the processor doesn't have to chug so much on it? From the article, it sounds like this might be one use of the cell?
* Grid computing - things like World Community Grid, distributed.net, SETI@home etc? I imagine this probably depends, at least in part, on the specific types of computations being done for the project you participate in, but would you commonly be able to do more computation, faster, for those types of projects if you had cell processors?
Can a GPU like one from Nvidia or ATI potentially work together *with* the cell processor to increase the GPU's capabilities? (I'd guess that would probably depend on the drivers having support for the Cell, and I'm guessing that current generation drivers probably wouldn't take any advantage of the Cell?)
Re: (Score:2)
Not likely, since they are competing with each other for the same markets (acceleration of graphics and computation, including all the examples you gave like encryption, etc.). They are two approaches to
Re: (Score:2)
At that point you'd probably be better off with a couple of FPGAs.
The cell was NOT developed for the PS3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, think PS3 technology, developed jointly by Toshiba, Sony, and IBM.
Saying that the Cell BEA was developed for the PlayStation 3 is like saying the wheel was developed for razor scooters. The PlayStation 3 uses the Cell, but the Cell was not made solely for the PlayStation. The Cell was developed to be a floating point and vector arithmetic monster that would be at home in a supercomputer, which it is.
I have nothing against the PlayStation 3, but I get upset when a myth like this is perpetuated. Saying that one of the most powerful processors available today was 'made to play video games' detracts from it and gives readers an incorrect impression (in my humble opinion).
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, think PS3 technology, developed jointly by Toshiba, Sony, and IBM.
Saying that the Cell BEA was developed for the PlayStation 3 is like saying the wheel was developed for razor scooters. The PlayStation 3 uses the Cell, but the Cell was not made solely for the PlayStation. The Cell was developed to be a floating point and vector arithmetic monster that would be at home in a supercomputer, which it is.
I think you're reading his/her words incorrectly. The way I see it, the author wrote that you get technology used in the PS3 in your computer. After all, the Cell is PS3 technology since it consists of one.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Cell was the brainchild of Sony's hardware genius Kutagari and IBM's Hofstee...
Kutagari may have been thinking about consoles when he came up with the idea that would become the Cell BEA, but when development started on the Cell the design team's goal was high performance in a many different applications. Many of the Cell processors sold thus far have been in PlayStations, and it may be their most visible application, but I believe the PlayStation represents only a fraction of Cell's potential utility.
18.4" Screen: Laptop? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's got to be some upper limit to be called a laptop. I looked at screen resolution first, it's 1680x945. It's an odd size, not as many pixels as some other laptops. Then I noticed the size in inches: 18.4! Base weight: 10lbs.
I don't have a problem with large computers you carry from room to room with a built-in UPS. But at some point it's a desktop all-in-one or something else.
Re: (Score:2)
The technical term is "Luggable".
Buh? (Score:2)
Cell CPU is not about gaming, but about the multimedia experience.
Not sure about anyone else, but by my definition, gaming is a multimedia experience
huh? (Score:2)
Not Cell-based (Score:2)
This is not a Cell based laptop. It's a PC laptop with a Cell processor inside.
The Cell is a cool add-on but it does not make this a very interesting laptop by itself.
I would love to see a pure Cell-based laptop, mostly because it would be a decent performer and an outstanding number-cruncher. The fact that it would be completely Windows-proof would be a nice bonus.
Battery life? (Score:2)
Qosmio? (Score:3, Insightful)
Qosmio? What a stupid name. It totally drips with unnecessary marketing affectation. It's like they were trying to cram as much cheesy bullshit into one name as they possibly could.
Cosmo? Not quite.
Cosmio? Hm, needs a little more bullshit.
Qosmio! Yes, good job. That 'q' really ratchets up the puke factor. Well done.
But Does It Run Ubuntu? (Score:2, Informative)
I hope the appearance of the Cell in actual PCs, not just the RAM-hardwired and GPU-lockedout (and no PCI) PS3 will reignite official support of Cell Ubuntu. Until last year, Ubuntu was officially supporting the PPC-based Cell version of their distro. Now it's just a community effort that needs your help [psubuntu.com]. Ubuntu is working, with some bugs (right now mainly the installer, and beta bugs in the Cell SPE video driver). If there were more diverse Cell PC HW, and a larger, more diverse developer community coming
Not a Cell CPU (Score:3, Informative)
On closer examination of the specs, this laptop isn't a Cell CPU at all. It's Toshiba's "Spurs" coprocessor, which is like a Cell but with the central PPC core stripped out and only half the Cell's 4 SPE DSPs, hooked up to a Pentium Core 2 Duo instead. That might be an interesting platform for experimenting with Linux and DSP, but it's not a Cell, and has practically no relation to any Cell/Linux project, nor Ubuntu in particular.
Both the Slashdot story and the actual article lie about the CPU being a "Cell
Quosmio (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:PAE mode? (Score:4, Insightful)
Modern hardware except one particular Pentium M stepping (which was popular for a while) handles PAE. 64G RAM on 32-bit
But Windows does not [microsoft.com].
Parent
Re:PAE mode? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because of the way that windows "pages" memory (and I'm assuming your running a server version of the OS, cause XP and vista don't work with PAE) you still can't have a single process with much more than 3GB of ram on a 32bit system. You can have multiple processes running with 3GB of ram, but then you get some slowdowns from paging in and out the memory.
If Memory serves, this is part of the reason that Exchange 2007 requires 64-bit OS's and processors. (except for the demo and SMB versions)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Actually to me it looked moke like Toshi, while the giants - nVidia/ATI/Intel - are wrestling on GPU-CPU split, tries to stab them in a back.
If they had ever tried to deliver on promise of cheap Cell, they might have already won the ongoing CPU acceleration war.