2CPU.com » News » January 2006 » First Cell-Powered Computer Ships

The first product based on IBM/Toshiba/Sony's Cell processor has shipped, reports Mercury Computer Systems. Mercury's Cell Technology Evaluation System (CTES) is a 470-pound behemoth with one or two dual-Cell blades running Linux. It targets defense, medical, and industrial inspection markets.
Dual-Cell Blade

The CTES system is available with one or two of Mercury's Dual Cell-based Blade units. Each Blade features two Cell processors clocked at 2.4GHz, and running Linux in SMP (symmetric multi-processing) mode. Each Blade also has 512MB of "XDR" SDRAM, a 40GB hard drive, and dual gigabit Ethernet interfaces (dual PCIe Infiniband HCA add-in cards will be available in Q2). The Blades run a net-bootable Yellow Dog Linux variant called "Y-HPC" that was developed by Terra Soft Solutions, one of Mercury's VARs (value-added resellers).

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3591350722.html

vash SMP Newbie Posts: 63 Joined: 2002-08-07

#38639 Posted on: 01/12/2006 05:37 PM Is anyone else a *little* skeptical about the Cell system? Sure, it has the potential to be REALLY kick ass (once you learn how to program for each DSP), but the learning curve has to be steep! MOST of the multithreaded apps that are out today aren't geared for specialized CPUs; CELL would have to be one HELL of a ROI for returns to be worth it. PS3 is looking to be a powerful beast, but how many chips are enabled for the PS3? The technology of Cell is there, but the PS3 *can't* possibly have the full tilt of this power in the small box.

apolloa To Erorr Takes Some Sand Posts: 165 Joined: 2004-12-10

#38640 Posted on: 01/12/2006 06:49 PM I have to agree, from what I've read on the net about the PS3, there is a lot of talk about developers finding it difficult to program due to it's complexity, whilst this will mean great looking games cause of the power it may also mean longer development times for the games. I think it was a similar story with the PS2 no? As the PS3 only has 1 cell chip then I will remain sceptical about how well they can perform in multi CPU PC enviroments, but give it a couple of years when they've figured out how to program it and we may find we are all screaming to own a cell cpu as it's the most powerful chip ever. Is'nt the cell supposed to be similar to the CPU Arnie had stuck in his head in The Terminator? Scary! 2 Prestonia Xeon 3.06 533fsb, 2 36GB cheetah's 15k rpm in raid 0, LSI 0 Channel PCIX Raid, 120GB Hitachi, 2gb Infineon ram, MSI E7505 mobo onboard SCSI, Quadro FX4000,Sound Blaster ZS, 2 LG 17" LCD's, Silverstone Temjin TJ05S with Fan Controllers. + Loads More

proffesso Winner of the Internet Posts: 1532 Joined: 2001-06-25

#38642 Posted on: 01/13/2006 12:31 AM we have some ps3 dev kits here (2nd gen) and while I havent seen any code other than the ducks / ships tech demo...its bloody impressive. the demo has realtime on the fly generated particle explosions generating metaballs, with full pixel shaded refraction, caustics and reflection. the water is raytraced (yep, bouncing rays) with the bath, the collision detection (running on another spe) handles 200 ducks, 2 ships + cloth (flapping AND tearing) with cannon balls bouncing off everything in the scene...all running super-fluid smooth with flawless AA....I was impressed...and this was only 1024x768 (defualt VGA for the demo)....1920x1080p will be most impressive....but we only have the kits connected to pc monitors at the moment. our TDG boys (Tech. Dev. Group) are excited, funnily enough about the fact you can actually unload things onto the spe's (I thought it would be a pain in the ass) the 2nd gen kits only have 7800's in em, and very limited bus speed aparently. will be intersting to see the final hardware chasing tokyo girls

vash SMP Newbie Posts: 63 Joined: 2002-08-07

#38643 Posted on: 01/13/2006 12:46 AM Originally posted by proffesso: we have some ps3 dev kits here (2nd gen) and while I havent seen any code other than the ducks / ships tech demo...its bloody impressive. My friend works for a game company up north. I prodded him simply with: Do you have a PS3 dev kit in your hands? In September: NO. He's not at a tier 1 company, but he is working for a company with a good relationship with Sony. When the 360 was announced, devkits had been in the wild a bit already, so it was no surprise to see the 360 launch in November. It's January now, second gen kits are shipping to devs -- it seems unlikely a March launch in Japan is going to happen.

proffesso Winner of the Internet Posts: 1532 Joined: 2001-06-25

#38644 Posted on: 01/13/2006 01:51 AM the only people with 1st gen kits would have been konami / square / polyphony / maybe capcom and sega too the dev lists seem that only the last 1 - 2 months have people been getting kits...and mostly just unpacking them...dev is only just starting. march launch = no way....try june / july at least chasing tokyo girls

2CPU.com » News » January 2006 » First Cell-Powered Computer Ships