Siggraph

In scheduling a 9am press conference on the opening day of the Siggraph, Sony lost no time in providing an answer to the many who–over the years since technology was first announced—questioned the value of the Cell processor initiative.

The joint venture with IBM and Toshiba to develop a new type of media-savvy processor initially appeared in the PlayStation 3, but seemed adrift for any other applications, since the hardware design was significantly different from the legacy x86 the computer industry has grown comfortable with. (The Cell processor—referred to by the consortium as the Cell Broadband Engine microprocessor , or Cell/B.E., is a relatively unusual design that combines a general-purpose IBM POWERPC processor core that communicates with eight special-purpose, on-chip DSP cores.)

What we saw demo’d was the BCU-100 ZEGO, expected to ship by the end of the year with a tab under $10K. The 1RU device–here stacked together in a rack of nine some units—consists of a Cell processor and RSX ‘Reality Synthesizer’ GPU, a graphics chip co-developed by Nvidia and Sony for the PlayStation 3.

The ZEGO is coming out of the newly formed Sony B2B of America division of Sony Electronics. Announced earlier this year, the LA-based unit was conceived to offer integrated support to the digital cinema industry; the gear sheparded by the unit include capture with Sony CineAlta systems, storage on SRW series tape decks, codecs, and projection on the CineAlta 4K SXRD systems, according to “Toshi” Ohnisi, senior vp at Sony B2B.

Sony’s roll-out of its 4K projectors on a large scale, which has seemed an on again/off again affair struggling to take off (Sony’s not alone of course, as the rest of the industry has struggled with a range of technical and economic issues over the past few years) is now “very close to finishing” a roll-out as the company completes contracts with studios and cinemas, says Lance Kelson, businsess development manager, Beyond HD Workflow Development, Sony B2B.

Kelson lead the assembled reporters through a demo of the rack of BCU-100 units—lashed together via Gigabit Ethernet—working with the first two apps ported to the ZEGO: a rendering program from mental images and an inclusive Side Effects Software’s Houdini server tool offering modeling, lighting, advanced physical simulations, particle effects, compositing, and rendering.

The operating system is Yellow Dog Linux, provided by Colorado-based Terra Soft Solutions.

The BCU-100 scales from small 1RU units designed to meet the needs of a single CG artist to many dozens combined into rendering farms. Sony’s on the right side of the argument, as the rig is small, and its performance/watt efficiency will save on increasingly pricey electricity charges. Unlike most gear that might be used in render farms, the OpenGL-based RSX chip can also run a hi-res monitor or projector out of the box without any added graphics card, enabling less expensive set-ups.

Dr Paul Salvini, CTO and VP of Canadian Operations, Side Effects Software, answered questions after his demo artist sped through 4K compositing and effects sequences using footage from Sony’s F35 CineAlta.

We’ll have to see how the industry accepts the introduction of another hardware/software combo.