CES 2008: Toshiba shows power of cell processor in HDTVs

Although the cell processor is most famous for powering the PS3 game console, one of Sony's partner in the chip's development is now showing off what it can do in other electronic devices. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Toshiba showed off a new HDTV that takes advantage of the cell processor's advanced video processing capabilities.

Although the video processing circuitry in a HDTV is something most consumers know nothing about, and usually don't even consider when making a purchase, it's often the difference between a picture that looks good and one that's merely really big. From scaling between different resolutions to deinterlacing, the video processor is what makes it possible to support the wide variety of video standards in use today in a single TV.

The cell processor signals a quantum leap over the processors used in current generation HDTVs. At CES Toshiba demonstrated some of the chip's capabilities, including decoding multiple TV signals in real time. Although the 48 simultaneous video streams were in standard definition, Toshiba says it could do the same thing with up to six HD signals.

Source: PC World

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Written by: Rich Fiscus @ 10 Jan 2008 22:39

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8 comments

ZippyDSM

A question for the tech gods, so the cell can thoughput data better/faster but when it comes to software it is mostly slowed at least for advanced graphics and physics.

My question is how dose it really compare for "hardware" applications?

Also we do you think the CELL CPU or CPUs like it will become mainstream for PCs?

11.1.2008 06:41 #1

ikari

Zippy.

Wouldn't that take a complete rewrite of the major OSs to do this? Although, it would be amazing to see what a cell could do if it had an OS specifically designed for it created.

11.1.2008 11:07 #2

escalante

Quote:Although, it would be amazing to see what a cell could do if it had an OS specifically designed for it created.Hopefully the Linux coders can do something like that for the PS3 :D

11.1.2008 18:22 #3

ZippyDSM

Quote:Quote:Although, it would be amazing to see what a cell could do if it had an OS specifically designed for it created.Hopefully the Linux coders can do something like that for the PS3 :Dya its time for the lunix coders to shine :P

11.1.2008 18:41 #4

CaLiMaCk

slowed for advanced graphics and physics? thats what it excels at! the latest havok engine is one of the first to showcase the cell's physics capabilities and they barely even cracked it, havok is one of the most popular physics engines btw, used in motorstorm, i think halo, a lot of other games as well and upcoming mercenaries 2.

also they were doing ray tracing with like 3 ps3s with just the cell processor, thats very advanced, and they are using deferred rendering and lots of other advanced techniques for games like killzone 2.

will it become mainstream for PCs? no, because of influence by devs like valve, they hate parrallel processing and multithreading oddly enough. if it was up to them all us pc gamers would have nothing but overclocked singe cores.

but it is becoming more widely used in the medical professions, military, even discovering/examining the universe. it wont catch on in pc gaming though, moreso these tv's, hd players, and the other stuff i mentioned.

11.1.2008 18:53 #5

ZippyDSM

Originally posted by CaLiMaCk: slowed for advanced graphics and physics? thats what it excels at! the latest havok engine is one of the first to showcase the cell's physics capabilities and they barely even cracked it, havok is one of the most popular physics engines btw, used in motorstorm, i think halo, a lot of other games as well and upcoming mercenaries 2.

also they were doing ray tracing with like 3 ps3s with just the cell processor, thats very advanced, and they are using deferred rendering and lots of other advanced techniques for games like killzone 2.

will it become mainstream for PCs? no, because of influence by devs like valve, they hate parallel processing and multithreading oddly enough. if it was up to them all us pc gamers would have nothing but overclocked singe cores.

but it is becoming more widely used in the medical professions, military, even discovering/examining the universe. it wont catch on in pc gaming though, moreso these tv's, hd players, and the other stuff i mentioned.
The main trouble with the PS3 is that the code is not very optimized undermining the power of the cell...its like the N64 or Saturn in terms of optimized code, of coarse sony is putting more effort into optimization but even so it will take another 2 years to make the PS3 shine.

The main trouble with the CELL is its limitations due to a limited amount of people wanting to spend the effort on optimizing it...

Its slowed for advanced graphics and physics and just about everything else because the mainstream dose not want to adapt to it to use its power,it would be interesting to see linux/unix rise in the next 10 years due to a focus on just that think of what a linux OS could do with a PP CPU centered rig, even Windose emulation would rock on it due to the better performance.

Right now cell cpu configurations seem to offer fair amount power at more cost than more standard configurations, however parallel processing is the future once the Multi core fad dies in say 5-10 years, parallel processing is like 64bit was underused and unoptimized but give it 5-10 years and the industry will have no chose but to adopt it.
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Let me clearfiy my question the Cell CPU can do computing faster than normal CPUs thus offering more computing power at the hardware level, when it comes to software its all about how optimized it is.

11.1.2008 19:15 #6

skite

12.1.2008 08:02 #7

borhan9

Toshiba makes great products and this would be worth a look at.

23.1.2008 16:41 #8

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