Joe's Links

Hynix Semiconductor has commenced shipping a 1 Gigabit mobile chip - LPDDR2. More at the Inquirer

Spring 2008 IDF attendees viewed Hynix Semiconductor's Metaram, a 1GBit DDR3 chip in an 8GB two-rank DIMM. More at the Inquirer

Rambus Inc. court happenings posted at the Rambus IV Board courtesy of longram7yrs.

Best performing last week and furthest above 50-day moving average at Seeking Alpha. Micron Technology Inc. up nearly 24% and Rambus Inc. up nearly 27% above its 50-day moving average. One has to wonder . . .

Elpida Memory Inc. has received Intel's blessing via validation for its next-generation main memory DDR3 SO-DIMM.

Toshiba Corporation is shipping the SpursEngine SE100, a high-performance stream processor which integrates four Synergistic Processing Element (SPE) cores derived from the "Cell Broadband Engine". More at I4U News, pictures and short video of SpursEngine at CeBIT 2008.

Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. using Cell BE

A leading provider of inspection solutions turned to Mercury to gain a competitive edge for its scanning system. Mercury evaluated several hardware acceleration technologies, including FPGAs and GPUs, before landing on a solution using the multicore Cell Broadband Engine(TM) processor.

Mercury Computer Systems

Cell BE - activity in the defense space

Late in Mercury Computer Systems Earnings Conference call, a listener asked for the '08 projection of revenue from Cell based systems. The answer was positive, but modestly so.

Apparently, 40-50 cell based systems are in different locations in labs under evaluation. '08 revenue may be in the high single digit millions. There is good activity in the defense space.

Listen here.

Mercury Computer Systems Releases Software Development Kit for Sony Playstation 3

From Mercury Computer Systems press release:

The PS3 and its Cell Broadband Engine(TM) (BE) processor have gained worldwide recognition as revolutionary technologies with profound capabilities reaching beyond the gaming market. As the first company to bring the Cell BE processor into commercial and military markets, Mercury is now opening the door to affordable, high-performance computing for a broad range of applications. Using Mercury's proven development environment, developers in research labs, universities, gaming, financial services, oil & gas, electronic data automation, video compression, biotech, and other areas can explore the highest performing potential of Cell BE processor-based computing using PS3 devices.

Pinehurst Joe's Links

Sony has developed a prototype computer board based on the Cell processor and will show it at SIGGRAPH in San Diego, California August 7 - 9.

The "Cell Computing Board" prototype combines the Cell BE (Broadband Engine) with a RSX graphics processor and is small enough to be mounted into a 1U-size server for a 19-inch rack mount.

Read more at Digital Arts.

Read Sony's press release here.

Wired Blogs weighs in:

Alas, this doesn't mean that we'll see a new range of video cards wading in to the mascara-streaked bitch fight between NVidia and AMD—this is for hardcore scientific applications. Requiring a 1U rackmount enclosure and 400 watts of juice all to itself, it's not going to be a consumer toy. But seriously, will someone please check out how it handles Oblivion?

Read more about SIGGRAPH here.

Joe's links

JEDEC finalizes and published standards for DDR3 memory. Read more at Xbitlabs.com or Personal Computer World or TechWorld or the JEDEC standard (188 pages).

Mercury Computer Systems and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have Cell Broadband Engine processor poised to assist U.S. government with national security. Read more at DailyTech.

HT Pinehurst Joe.

Mercury Computer Systems to increase Cell portfolio

Mercury Computer Systems (MRCY) announced (6/20/07) that it is collaborating with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to apply multicore technology such as Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and the Cell Broadband Engine(TM) (BE) processor to help tackle computational challenges in national security, cyberspace, and bioinformatics.

"We're excited to be working with PNNL, and about the possibilities of applying multicore computing technology to enable the development of economically viable computing solutions to previously intractable problems," said Jay Bertelli, President and CEO of Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. "Early results from our collaboration show that, together, we can analyze streaming data in real time, which has been a critical challenge for data-intensive computing. Our goal is to open the door for new applications."

Mercury Computer Systems press release linked here.

Mercury wins a "Beacon"

in the category of "Best IBM Embedded Power Architecture(TM) Solution."

Mercury collaborated with Mentor Graphics to design and develop a fully integrated electronic design automation (EDA) platform based on the Cell Broadband Engine(TM) (BE) processor. Mercury successfully migrated Mentor's Calibre nmOPC EDA software product to its Cell BE processor-based high- performance compute cluster.

Read Mercury's press release linked here.

Cell Technology - Professional Video Market

Mercury Computer Systems and IPV Limited will demonstrate "new-generation technology that enables an order-of-magnitude performance improvement for video processing applications" at NAB2007, April 16-19, 2007 held in Las Vegas, Nevada.

As announced in March, Mercury and IPV are collaborating to develop and deliver software tools, libraries, and applications based on the Cell Broadband Engine(TM) (BE) processor. The Cell BE processor was developed by IBM, Sony, and Toshiba for the Sony Playstation(R) 3 video game console and other consumer electronics devices. Mercury is leading adoption of this powerful multicore processor in non-gaming markets that include, medical imaging, video processing, semiconductor, seismic computation, and ray tracing.

Read the Mercury press release linked here.

IBM shrinks Cell BE

. . . and with the shrinkage, less power . . . less heat.

Read more at Investors Hub, courtesy of ThreeJack.

HT Pinehurst Joe.

News summary

Texas MP3 Technologies bought a patent and the next day (2/15/07) filed a lawsuit against the major MP3 manufacturers - Apple, Samsung and SanDisk . The Register reports:

Chief executive Ron Edgerton explained the company's rationale last July. "We made this decision because this patent may require millions of dollars of legal fees to optimize its value, and otherwise would have required a significant amount of SigmaTel's management attention," he said. "SigmaTel's customers, however, will not have to worry about this patent being enforced against them, as SigmaTel has retained the necessary rights to protect its customers."

Not so new news department, IBM plans on having Roadrunner up and running for the US Department of Energy early 2008. Roadrunner will bounce along at 1 petaflop or 1,000 trillion calculations per second. DailyTech reports:

Roadrunner will use a conventional cluster of 16,000 AMD Opteron processor cores alongside 16,000 Cell B.E. chips, with both chips working together to handle a share of the calculating work.

The chip world is changing, so says Wally Rhines, CEO of Mentor Graphics, speaking at the Globalpress Summit (2/26/07). From EDN:

With process differentiation rules out of the equation, companies will have to rely on design differentiation, according to Rhines. This means expertise at four levels: system architecture innovation; proprietary IP blocks; implementation efficiencies and higher yields.

More:

On the intellectual property (IP) side, the independent IP industry is now growing at 20 percent a year. Rhines said it was worth about $2 billion this year and he expects it to double by 2010.

HT Pinehurt Joe.

Mercury Computer Systems - Cell BE

In an 8-K filing (1/25/07) Mercury Computer Systems reported the results of its quarter ending December 31, 2006, with GAAP losses per Share of $0.05 and Non-GAAP Earnings per Share of $0.01.

Many of its reported (pages 3-6) recent highlights laud its Cell Broadband Engine successes:

In the second quarter of fiscal 2007, the Company reported several new customers in life sciences, increasing interest in Mercury’s Cell Broadband Engine ™ (BE) processor-based solutions, and continued adoption of industry-standard technology which Mercury helped to create. These trends signal the growing need for performance acceleration, as well as a growing transition from in-house design and build to third-party solutions, for computationally intensive applications. Organizations are increasingly moving toward optimized, more cost-effective solutions that help to free up valuable in-house resources and deliver faster time to market; and as evidenced in the second quarter, they are turning to Mercury.

Mercury also signed a strategic cooperation with The Institute of Medical Physics (IMP) of Erlangen for the joint development and commercialization of medical imaging technology deployed on the Cell BE processor. Preliminary results show a 100x improvement in CT (computed tomography) reconstruction speed as well as enhanced visualization of medical imaging data.

Mercury is working with numerous technology companies and educational institutions in leveraging the performance capabilities of the Cell BE processor, to solve various specialized application challenges in seismic computation, video processing, various semiconductor process applications, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), molecular modeling in biotech, and ray tracing. Organizations such as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Software Integration and Visualization Office (SIVO) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have purchased Mercury Cell BE processor-based hardware, software, and/or optimization services. Other companies highlighted in second quarter announcements include Boston University and Mentor Graphics.

In November, preliminary results of an order-of-magnitude performance improvement were announced for the joint development effort with the Structural Bioinformatics Lab of Boston.

Mercury Cell BE press releases linked here.

(Cell Broadband Engine is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.)

Toshiba has plans to put a cell processor in your home

ComputerPartner reports that Toshiba expects to release Cell-based consumer products ahead of Sony - maybe early 2008.

Image: Trusted Reviews

Cell BE Processor in short supply?

The Inquirer repeats a rumor that the supply of Cell BE Processors is thin thanks to Sony Playstation 3 and a run on IBM server blades featuring Cell BE.

According to IBM's site:

IBM BladeCenter QS20 blade features:

Two 3.2 GHz Cell BE processors

1 GB XDRAM (512 MB per processor)

410 GFLOPS peak performance

Blade-mounted 40 GB IDE hard disk drive

Two 1 Gb Ethernet (GbE) controllers that provide connectivity to the BladeCenter chassis midplane and BladeCenter GbE switches

BladeCenter interface that offers Blade Power System and Sense Logic Control

Double-wide blade (uses two BladeCenter slots)

InfiniBand (IB) option, supporting up to two Mellanox IB 4x Host Channel Adapters (External IB switches are required for the IB option.)

Peak performance of 2.8 TFLOPS in a standard single-chassis configuration, and over 17 TFLOPS may be possible in a standard 42U rack (There is a maximum of seven blades per chassis. Each Cell BE blade requires two slots. Cell BE blades should not be intermixed with other blades within a chassis.)

***

Do you want to purchase a Dual Cell Based Blade? Prices linked here. ($18,995 and up.)

IBM to cash in on its chips

While Intel and AMD focused on a perceived need for speed, IBM followed an path of multi-core design and partnerships. IBM chips are in Wii, Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3 and it hopes to parley its recent success into billions of dollars over the next decade. Part of IBM's hope hinges on the Cell processor.

"From a technological perspective, we still have a tremendous amount of upside," said Bernie Meyerson, chief technologist for IBM's systems group. "We've only gone down this road one turn."

IBM is working with other companies, such as Mercury Computing Systems Inc., to adapt Cell and other chips for their own new devices. Cell powers a line of IBM servers and is being used in a supercomputer for the Los Alamos nuclear lab. Toshiba plans to use the chip in TVs.

However, even with Cell's performance boosts, it could have limited paths into other systems unless IBM can encourage many software developers to create applications that take advantage of Cell's unusual architecture.

Read an interesting article about IBM linked here at the Baltimore Sun.

Sony PS3 worth $250 million to Rambus Inc.?

GameDailyBiz reports:

Research firm Strategy Analytics claims that with the PS3 now launching the pressure is actually on Microsoft to convince consumers and loyal PlayStation gamers to "switch camps." Ultimately, the firm sees Sony trouncing the competition with over 120 million units sold by 2012.

Read the complete article linked here.

Hager Technology Research/CurrinResearch Weekly Update (11/19/06) estimates that Rambus Inc. is making a couple bucks on each Sony Playstation 3 sold:

We believe the components that include the Rambus technology make up more than 40% of the total cost of the PS3 system. Though Rambus is required to be tight lipped about royalties, we estimate Rambus will take in close to $2 per system. That number may moderate if the PS3 ultimately ditches the Emotion Engine for emulation in the Cell itself.

Read the complete Hager Technology Research/CurrinResearch Weekly Update by subscribing. Links found in the right side bar of Treowth.

Mercury Computer Systems Inc. & Cell BE Processor

Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. announced (11/20/06) a cooperation with the Institute of Medical Physics (IMP) of Erlangen, Germany, which is focused on the joint development and commercialization of medical imaging technology deployed on the Cell Broadband Engine (TM) (BE) processor.

Under the terms of the agreement, Mercury is working together with the IMP on designing and implementing ambitious reconstruction and visualization algorithms with real-time performance on the Cell BE processor, to deliver orders-of-magnitude performance increases while also reducing the complexity and costs of medical image processing systems. Together with IMP technology, Mercury will integrate the algorithms into high-performance Cell BE processor- based systems designed to significantly accelerate the reconstruction and visualization of medical imaging data for medical OEMs.

Read the entire press release linked here.

Cell BE finds home medical imaging

Mercury Computer Systems will demonstrate its Visage 3D at the 92nd Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiology Society of North America at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, November 26-30.

From Mecury's press release: (emphasis added)

In Reconstruction, Mercury will demonstrate more than 100X improvement in CT reconstruction performance over solutions with conventional microprocessors, with the Mercury Cell Accelerator Board (CAB). Based on the Cell Broadband Engine(TM) (BE) processor, the CAB is a PCI Express(R) accelerator card and is available with optimized algorithms, and multicore and multicomputer programming expertise from Mercury. The Cell BE processor's extensive parallelism, along with vast I/O capabilities, permits efficient implementation of complex CT reconstruction algorithms with close to real-time performance. The CAB with Mercury software enables system designers to develop medical imaging solutions that can create images obtained from more precise algorithms, with higher quality and much faster than ever before.

Read Mercury's press release (11/15/06) linked here.