Toshiba Cell Strategy - Amiga OS4 Laptop Possibility?

Toshiba announced the SE1000 in September 2007, and began sampling the product in April this year.

The SE1000 packs in four of Cell's Synergistic Processing Element (SPE) cores. Cell has up to eight SPEs to handle vector data, along with a PowerPC-based general purpose computing core for everything else.

Each SPE is a SIMD Risc processor specialising in single- and double-precision floating point maths. The SE1000 also has a memory controller on board that links the SPEs to 128MB of Rambus XDR memory over a bus capable of pushing data at 12.8GB/s.

The chip is capable of MPEG 2 and H.264 encoding and decoding at 1080p full HD resolution, and those are the applications it's pitching the product at rather than 3D graphics.

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@meet.mrnrg

Power consumption rating? I want battery life, and not to be tethered to the nearest outlet like my PC laptop forces upon me. A laptop needs to run off battery for a useful amount of time. My iBook gives me about 3 hours, ehich is OK, my PC gave me 45 minutes when the battery was brand new, which isn't very good at all. How long would a laptop with this Cell last? Less than 3 hours, then don't bother IMNSHO.

Hmmm.
http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20080409/toshiba-spursengine-se1000-image-processor-ships/
says 10W to 20W. Not horrible. Not as good as PA Semi's expectations, but this would probably work OK in a laptop, assuming this expectation becomes reality. I was disappointd in the difference between Freescale's announced 8641D power and the later reality, it's more power hungry than I'd like. I hope to find more info on this thing now. :)

Hmmm, it uses XDR memory. Not very convenient for a user upgradable system. :( It does have PCI-Express links though, which is good for connecting it to other components in a PC-style system like a laptop. I was worried about that part as for some reason it seemed the original Cell chips didn't have that, or maybe I remember that wrong.
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2008_04/pr0801.htm

Last edited by billt on 09-May-2008 at 02:41 PM.
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@meet.mrnrg
1. Pricing? Everything to date that has been sold except PS3 with Cell, as a computing platform, has been quite $$$. Why would this be an exception to that? If it's meant for use in TV and other digital video devices, ok, maybe it'll be 'cheap enough.' But, link with real data? Is there one?

2. Worse, pricing in small numbers? I don't see any 'Amiga company' buying more than a few hundred at a time, if at all. No $ there.

3. Who would make the laptop? It's obvious 'everyone' wants one, but tooling a custom laptop case is far more expensive than using commodity existing laptops. Realistically, I'd expect if someone actually made one, and the other issues were resolved, OS4 could be made to run on it at some point, but 'laptop from scratch' just isn't in the 'economy of Amiga' nowadays by a long shot.

4. Not least at all - licensing. We weren't able to see OS4 on SAM, how would anyone else manage to get one while the court case continues? And, given the court case at this point, who would spend such $$ just to 'make the attempt'?

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@wegster

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3. Who would make the laptop? It's obvious 'everyone' wants one, but tooling a custom laptop case is far more expensive than using commodity existing laptops. Realistically, I'd expect if someone actually made one, and the other issues were resolved, OS4 could be made to run on it at some point, but 'laptop from scratch' just isn't in the 'economy of Amiga' nowadays by a long shot.

I would imagine that making an "Amiga laptop" would include harvesting some other laptop for the shell, screen, keyboard, etc. Just make a new motherboard that directly replaces the original one. Not much else makes sense in our miniscule market. For myself, I'd go with the Asus Z81K laptop as a starting point. it's kindof big, but that's part of why I'd choose it. It also has an unusual way of removing the entire bottom panel of the casework to get to the memory slots, battery etc. which could be useful toward "production" motherboard swaps. Though I'd really prefer something smaller than that, and a lower-res LCD panel, but it's the best solution for this kind of thing that I've seen.

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@wegster

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1. Pricing? Everything to date that has been sold except PS3 with Cell, as a computing platform, has been quite $$$.

So your saying the Cell processor is a failure from a price point, No?

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@meet.mrnrg

Toshiba's SpursEngine doesn't have PPE CPU i.e. it relies on host's CPU. In this case it's X64 processor.

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The chip is capable of MPEG 2 and H.264 encoding and decoding at 1080p full HD resolution, and those are the applications it's pitching the product at rather than 3D graphics.

SpursEngine is a co-processor that integrates a hardware codec for full HD encoding and decoding of MPEG-2 and H.264 streams.

SpursEngine has 4 SPUs clocked at 1.5GHz with consumption range of 10W to 20W.

In PC laptop context, nVIDIA has recently enabled CUDA 2.0 beta on Vista based setups.

Last edited by Hammer on 09-May-2008 at 09:35 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 09-May-2008 at 09:33 PM.

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@Interesting

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Interesting wrote: @wegster Quote: 1. Pricing? Everything to date that has been sold except PS3 with Cell, as a computing platform, has been quite $$$. So your saying the Cell processor is a failure from a price point, No?

For a general purpose computing platform or desktop type system? More like - one doesn't exist today, outside of the PS3 and it's underwhelming amount of RAM. Every other Cell based system I've seen has been 'specialty market' - either a computing blade by IBM, or the 'multiple Cells' for simulation, in mil-spec casing or similar, none of which are exactly taking over the desktop world.

It doesn't mean we'll never see such a thing, but right now, it's as likely as Amy or SAM being useful or running OS4.

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@billt
Even if a pre-existing shell could be found, then you have requirements to make the motherboard in a very specific, and unusual, shape, in order to fit that specific case. I've yet to see any laptop mobos that will 'interchange' with one another.

It's not impossible, but... ?

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@meet.mrnrg

Toshiba to use Cell processor in future notebook

the rest of the Cnet story

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@Interesting

Seeing as Toshiba actually has the resources to do this, this one might actually happen. I wonder what OS they're planning to run it on and what their target market is.

Hans

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@wegster

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Even if a pre-existing shell could be found, then you have requirements to make the motherboard in a very specific, and unusual, shape, in order to fit that specific case. I've yet to see any laptop mobos that will 'interchange' with one another. It's not impossible, but... ?

Considering the Amiga fan must design a new board to put a Power PC on it instead of an x86, then this Amiga fan must make this new PPC board in that particular unusual shape for that particular laptop shell. Certain connectors of certain types must be places in particular locations on this board, etc. If one is capable of doing a PPC board at all, then the shape and connector locations should be of minor inconvenience to this PCB engineer. The new "Amiga" laptop board would be engineered specifically to interchange with the chosen laptop shell. I don't consider this issue to be a problem at all considering everything else involved.

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@Interesting

Sounds like this particular Toshiba chip may not bea full Cell implementation, but only includes the SPE and the codec. it does not sound like this particular chip includes the PowerPC core as in the full Cell spec. Even if they put it in a laptop, it doesn't give us a PowerPC laptop. Apple already did that and we still can't use those, so it wouldn't likely be useful to us anyway even if it did have the OS4 requisite PPC core in there somewhere.

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@billt

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Apple already did that and we still can't use those, so it wouldn't likely be useful to us anyway even if it did have the OS4 requisite PPC core in there somewhere.

so close and yet so far......sighs

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An article I read at theregister may make things clearer.

Toshiba to ship laptops with Cell-based GPUs this year

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@Skunkfish

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Skunkfish wrote: An article I read at theregister may make things clearer. Toshiba to ship laptops with Cell-based GPUs this year

The problem I see is Cell is used as a GPU in this laptop. I would prefer a laptop with Cell as CPU (that could do the heavy graphical computing) with Linux in a first time.

@wegster

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For a general purpose computing platform or desktop type system? More like - one doesn't exist today, outside of the PS3 and it's underwhelming amount of RAM.

At least my definition of "general purpose computing platform" definitely requires proper video playback nowadays, and that's where PS3 fails (in "Other OS" mode) - in XMB it of course has BluRay playback, limited DVD playback and limited support for video files.

(Well of course you COULD chose to not install any software updates to PS3 and use hacked graphics drivers, which means no Playstation Store access and no new games, BUT does allow limited graphics acceleration, which enables fullscreen video playback, maybe even in HD resolution)

@Skunkfish

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Skunkfish wrote: An article I read at theregister may make things clearer. Toshiba to ship laptops with Cell-based GPUs this year

Mainstream GPUs from ATI and NV can do full decode H.264 @1080p resolution. AMD Radeon HD GPUs can also do full decode VC-1. NV’s PureVideo HD (G84/G86)accelerates VC-1 decoding except bitstream/entropy decode stage.

http://www.elementaltechnologies.com/how_it_works.php
NV's G8x/G9x GPUs and CUDA's can accelerate H.264 encoding. In April 2008, NV released NV drivers (174.55 beta) that supports CUDA 2.0 in MS Vista 32bit.

Last edited by Hammer on 13-May-2008 at 11:28 AM.
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@Jupp3

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At least my definition of "general purpose computing platform" definitely requires proper video playback nowadays, and that's where PS3 fails (in "Other OS" mode)

No it doesn't.

Cell alone is quite capable of playing back video, in fact it can handle multiple streams HD simultaneously.

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minator wrote: @Jupp3 Quote: At least my definition of "general purpose computing platform" definitely requires proper video playback nowadays, and that's where PS3 fails (in "Other OS" mode) No it doesn't. Cell alone is quite capable of playing back video, in fact it can handle multiple streams HD simultaneously.

Decoding multiple MPEG-2 HD streams is not that hard to do with todays SIMD/MIMD/VLIW video co-processors.

A full CELL (with access to the video processor) can simultaneously process six streams of high-definition (HD) contents or 30 streams of standard definition (SD) contents.

SpursEngine SE1000 is clocked @1.5Ghz, 4 SPUs and 12GB/s memory bandwidth. SpursEngine is about 1/4 of the power of a full CELL.

Autumn 2009 release date would competing against ATI’s post-R7x0 and NV’s post G9x GPUs.

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@minator
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@Jupp3 Quote: At least my definition of "general purpose computing platform" definitely requires proper video playback nowadays, and that's where PS3 fails (in "Other OS" mode) No it doesn't. Cell alone is quite capable of playing back video, in fact it can handle multiple streams HD simultaneously.

Cell alone is NOT capable of playing back video, it's a CPU not GPU, after all. But as I explained in the part of my comment you failed to quote, it's not about CPU power.

Have you even tried playing videos on PS3 in "Other OS" mode with latest firmware updates (thus with faster gfx blocked) - sounds like you haven't.

The issue isn't about being able to decode video, Cell can do that just fine. It's the crippled framebuffer that's the bottleneck.

Afaik, PS3 can decode and display DVD-resolution material just fine. But only as long as there's no scaling involved (which means no fullscreen, except maybe if you're running on "SD" resolution)

PS3's framebuffer can NOT handle even 720p@30/25fps material (which even DVD's basically are, when scaled fullscreen) in realtime.