Leadtek demos Cell chip on a PCI-E card

[initialised]

Source: CustomPC

Leadtek’s low-profile card also comes with 128MB of 1.6GHz XDR memory, and has a one-slot cooler. According to Leadtek, the card can be installed in 1x and 4x PCI-E slots, and it also requires external power from a four-pin floppy drive power connector. The company hasn’t revealed the clock speed of the SpursEngine chip on the card, although the SPEs in Toshiba’s SpursEngine-equipped laptops run at 1.5GHz. Leadtek says that the card will enable both encoding and transcoding at speeds that are ‘faster than real-time.’

Apart from HD transcoding what is it for and will it be as flexible as a GPGPU coprocessor?

[clonez]

now we need a devoted haxor to make ps3 games run on that beauty...

i guess it should be quite good at code- and decodeing stuff... but a gpu should be faster than that card (in hd transcodeing too, but even the cheapest amd and nvidia card cards (cuda) can do that, too. 2 videos simultaneously, of course)

[MarlboroMan]

now we need a devoted haxor to make ps3 games run on that beauty...

+1

even Mac OS X

[[XC] gomeler]

This better for crunching than a GPU? Run the PS3 F@H WUs on it.

[Bobsama]

I hope they write a F@H client for those: I'd love to populate the PCI-E x1 slots on my motherboard with 2 or so of those. Depending on price, of course. If it's a cheap way to get additional folding capability, these things will sell well to our DC teams.

[G.Foyle]

Already done: Cell Accelerator Board

[NeedMoMegaHurtZ]

I'm not that impressed. Retail price is $286

It has 1/2 the cores as the Cell, each run @ 1/2 speed. Since PS3 gets ~900ppd If you F@H with it, you would get <~200ppd? A $100 Nvidia card gets 4000ppd ($50 after MIR)

As for video encoding, I doubt it will encode with any decent level of quality with those "claimed" speeds. Similarly, Badaboom for Nvidia cards is pretty much flop

[Revv23]

interesting but doesnt seem practical unless we get PS3 games running on it lol.

[zanzabar]

now we need a devoted haxor to make ps3 games run on that beauty...

i guess it should be quite good at code- and decodeing stuff... but a gpu should be faster than that card (in hd transcodeing too, but even the cheapest amd and nvidia card cards (cuda) can do that, too. 2 videos simultaneously, of course)

+1

even Mac OS X

u wouldent want PPC OSX, the ps3 uses a cell 2x as fast but the 360 uses PPC code and dosnt have as much power as the ps3 cell (about 1/3rd) but its still at 3.2ghz with 3 cores so it would be vary complex but if u could off load reverse operations to the cell to translate then execute on x86/64, and translate the dx libraries it would be much easier than the ps3 that renders in the cell, processes physics in the cell and dose everything but AA and frame buffer operations in the cell

[Shintai]

This better for crunching than a GPU? Run the PS3 F@H WUs on it.

No, its between a GPU and CPU. Well..CPU is close to pass it. A Bloomfield should be faster than Cell for folding. Not sure about OCed Yorks.

But when a GPU can do 10% of the WUs, the Cell can do maybe 30% and the CPU all.

A GPU is many times faster than a Cell.

[OzJustin]

interesting but doesnt seem practical unless we get PS3 games running on it lol.

I'm of much the same opinion. Good luck to anyone hoping to crack that task though.

[BulldogPO]

What softwares support that monster?

Already done: Cell Accelerator Board

[hecktic]

hmmm should be useful in a home/office security surveillance server using H.264

question: when do these hit the market and what will be the msrp ?

p.s. I think I just found my new replacement dvr card

[Stukov]

hmmm should be useful in a home/office security surveillance server using H.264

question: when do these hit the market and what will be the msrp ?

p.s. I think I just found my new replacement dvr card

Why not just use a 4550? Its cheap and works great for that.

[Shintai]

Why not just use a 4550? Its cheap and works great for that.

Encoding?

[Turok]

The only usefulness I see with this is PS3 emulation, and maybe even better emulation with older Play Station consoles. MGS4 on a PC would be nice

[awdrifter]

Why not just buy a PS3 for $399?

[EniGmA1987]

Well if this sells for $200 or less, and you already have some game controllers, then my guess would be it is a lot cheaper than buying a PS3?

[awdrifter]

You would still have to buy a Bluray drive. That's another $150.

[Dr_Swizz]

Since it doesn't have a PowerPC core emulating a PS3 won't be easy.

[STEvil]

Only $8K for the Cell Accelerator Board

[Decami]

Omg if someone figues out how to emulate though, I am totally buying into this. SOCOM on my pc, my god, hell yes. I could seriously just die then.

Why not just buy a PS3 for $399?

mouse....keyboard...end of story.

[zanzabar]

u can get the PS2 emu

Since it doesn't have a PowerPC core emulating a PS3 won't be easy.

the cell uses PPC to my knowledge there arnt any non ppc cells

and why do u gugys think that u can emulate teh ps3 u need to have about 2x the power of anything that u have to emulate, since u wouldent need to emulate the gpu thats a huge leap for the 360 but it also uses a ppc 2 core 3.2ghz so thats a huge deal to emulate it u would need a cell and a vary fast cpu. i dont think that we will see anything but a passable wii emu until the next gen of cpus (next generation not update so thats atleast 2-3 years out)

[Sr7]

If you wanted to emulate a PS3 on your PC (not really sure why but..), you'd need to have an RSX graphics chip as well... the Cell doesn't run the graphics..

[iddqd]

Well, the whole point is that if you have a Cell, you wouldn't need to emulate the PS3, merely port the OS to work on your Cell card.