Cell XServe Render Stations?

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
OK, so it looks like Cell is Swell (sorry, couldn't resist), and we have now, a new need render and DSP our fuzzy-HD-butts off, thanks to the likes of H.264 and all manner of network based, rendering activities (audio, video, BLAST, yadda yadda yadda).



It also looks like, as mega-snazz as Cell happens to be, it's not really meant to run a OSX, i mean, the thing DOES have an ok PowerPC chip in there, but that's not it's strong point, rather it's meant to be a serious bang-for-the-buck, low(ish) power consumption, number-crunch-box: nothing wrong with that.



Sooooooooo ....



I wonder if Apple is going to create a new version of the Xserve called a "Render Station", or whatever moniker isn't otherwise patented, trademarked, tattooed on some lawyers litigious libido; stuffs the thing with some sort of TOE Megabit NIC (we've talked about this previously), and a Cell chip (or Two) ...



No, you wouldn't want to run your OSX front end client on it, nor would you likely want to run your mail server, file server, etc etc ...



BUT, Mein Gott, you'd definitely want to off-load your rendering !!!!!!! All your freakin' rendering , in fact, if you bought say, 10 of these things, you'd probably be able to render every trailer on the Apple Site in full resolution HD H.264, and probably find ET, in real time.



A value proposition worth considering I'd say.



OT
«1

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 37
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Yes I'm feeling this. XGRID/Qmaster running on Cell.



    If Sony can pack a 7 SPE Cell into a sub $1k box with all the trimming then Apple could make a capable 1U Render Node for about $1k that boosts AVC Encoding, 3D and whatever else they wish to push across. They may even want to create a version for $1495 that has 2GB Fibre built right in. Thus you'd link these Render Nodes right into a XSAN environment. They'd have a 2.5" hard drive for a small amount of local storage but most of the heavy lifting would come right off the local XRAID. Simply add XSAN and add to your Fiber Switch. Multiple nodes would cascade like a stacking switch(Apple would recommend adding 4Gb Fibre in these configs).
  • Reply 2 of 37
    mellomello Posts: 555member
    I thought I read somewhere that getting the Mac OS working on cell would be

    extremely difficult. Wouldn't it be easier if Apple & IBM designed another

    power pc chip that would be specifically designed for grid computing/render

    farms. They can strip out what would not be needed & they could style it to be

    similar to the cell chip except that it can run easily on the mac. Putting 2-4

    mac cell chips in an xserve-sized node would be pretty sweet.
  • Reply 3 of 37
    smalmsmalm Posts: 677member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by hmurchison

    Apple could make a capable 1U Render Node for about $1k



    This childish.
  • Reply 4 of 37
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by mello

    I thought I read somewhere that getting the Mac OS working on cell would be

    extremely difficult. Wouldn't it be easier if Apple & IBM designed another

    power pc chip that would be specifically designed for grid computing/render

    farms. They can strip out what would not be needed & they could style it to be

    similar to the cell chip except that it can run easily on the mac. Putting 2-4

    mac cell chips in an xserve-sized node would be pretty sweet.




    That depends on if Apple plans to leverage the Cell architecture in other ways. Thus if they have plans for Cell based STB then they may already be working on migrating some parts of OSX or Quicktime to Cell. I don't doubt that it would be difficult but the performance benefit is undeniable.



    It all boils down to cost in the end. However with cell poised to be "the" multimedia chip coupled with Apple's relationship with IBM leads me to believe that Cell will indeed factor into Apple's future plans somewhere.



    Quote:

    This childish.



    Depends. People don't need much in a Render Node. The current Node Xserve is overkill for many environments.
  • Reply 5 of 37
    mikenapmikenap Posts: 94member
    I for one would love to see FCP get some help in the rendering department. My business partner uses a PC with an accelerator board from a company called "Canopus" (sp?). He would love to switch to FCP/Mac, but is so addicted to his systems ability to never render a thing, including output render, not in real time, that he wont make the switch. In other words, he does all his edits, color corection, etc. in real time, then simply saves, the final render is already done waiting for him! I think he paid a grand for this board, altho it comes with a nice breakout box. Talking to people from Pinacle at an Macworld Expo a couple years back, they expressed frustration that Apple would not open up the necessary code to them for FCP, only select pieces. this person seemed to beleive that if Apple allowed hardware acceleration from a 3rd party, people would be less likely to upgrade to faster workstations as frequently. According to him, FCP would scream on there hardware if everything was given to them that they needed to tie it to the equipment. Not sure what was true... but it was an interesting convo.



    Also, anyone have a curent gen G5 dual using FCP and DV? I wonder how much rendering is needed for standard DV work, (final render that is). My partner brags about getting 7 streams of DV with effets with never having to render a frame...
  • Reply 6 of 37
    blackcatblackcat Posts: 697member
    Stuff 1U Render Nodes, why not a card for G5s? Cell is a very low power system, if it can go in a consumer plastic console with graphics card, high speed RAM, HDD, BD-ROM etc etc it's both small and cool. Seems perfect for a $500 card to me.
  • Reply 7 of 37
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Mike



    Pinnacle shouldn't have told you that. They've been selling Cinewave for Final Cut Pro since like version 3.0. It wasn't $1k though it did accelerate a lot of functions. Apple hopped into bed with Matrox and then promptly hopped out and from that point their attitude seems to be that they don't want to deal with 3rd party internal hardware other than your basic capture cards and interfaces.



    Apple would be remiss to not take advantage of the built in Xgrid capabilities of Tiger. Whether it be Cell or a specialized IBM Powerpc microprocessor there is a huge amount of interest in pooling processor resources.
  • Reply 8 of 37
    kossikossi Posts: 5member
    I may sound stupid in this, but if I remember correctly, Apple and ATI are rumored to be working rather closely as of late on integrating graphic systems more into the design of the computer, using the graphics architecture to do graphics... Why isn't it possible that, perhaps, they are developing a cell-based architecture for the a graphics coprocessor, much like there used to be a separate math coprocessor on some older systems?
  • Reply 9 of 37
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Blackcat

    Stuff 1U Render Nodes, why not a card for G5s? Cell is a very low power system, if it can go in a consumer plastic console with graphics card, high speed RAM, HDD, BD-ROM etc etc it's both small and cool. Seems perfect for a $500 card to me.



    Because then that card ties it to one machine. If that machine loses power or network connectivity then no one accesses it. Put it in a box and assign it a unique ID and you can add redundancy to that node and efficiency.



    I'd love to see Cell as co-processor of sorts. Anything to improve the speed of the computer. It's funny..we're witnessing a transition here away from the CPU. 5-7 years ago they were telling you that the CPU would handle all these functions. Well reality is it's best to have the CPU be a mothership yet still have capable satellites processing specialied data and thus relieving the burden of the CPU.



    Computers are a commodity. I talke to people everyday on them and there is little excitement. The Network is the hot thing



    Wireless technology is growing by leaps and bounds.

    GigaE networking is now pervasive

    Storage or rather Network Storage is absolutely huge.



    The computer is now just a cog in the networking chain yet we're still not seeing enough diversification of products. I should have a small laptop that I connect to the network and not only sync data but gain the distributive processing power of a workstation. I don't care what processor Apple uses as long as it gets the job done.



    I should be able to have a bank of render nodes and rather than buy a new computer every few years I just get attaching faster render nodes to the network. Eventually I'll collect too many and I'll consolidate them to faster render nodes. The render nodes will have levels of priority so that the family of the future would have father and mother with higher priorities than the children. Once the higher priority computers access the network they would get a lion's share of the power



    The iMac G5 is a prime example of where computers are heading. Just a seemingly thicker than average display with ports for attaching local peripherals.
  • Reply 10 of 37
    vinney57vinney57 Posts: 1,162member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by mikenap

    Also, anyone have a curent gen G5 dual using FCP and DV? I wonder how much rendering is needed for standard DV work, (final render that is). My partner brags about getting 7 streams of DV with effets with never having to render a frame...



    I do, though personally I don't do the sort of projects that would require 7 layers in FCP. Anything like that and I'm in After Effects or Motion. Also I try and avoid DV if at all possible since it looks so disgusting. So anyway, yes FCP can do 7 streams DV in real time with CC etc. if your discs are up to snuff. 10 bit uncompressed is a lot less strain on the processors so the limiting factor for professional projects is actually the discs not the CPU's.



    You have to understand that Apple's philosophy for some years now has been that the CPU, and laterly the GPU, are powerful enough without producing the headaches and inflexibility of specialist add ons. Its highly unlikely you'll see any sort 'Cell render nodes' are such like from Apple. They will be working to make XGrid distributed computing more achievable for the Mac developer.



    Just buy more Macs! is the mantra.
  • Reply 11 of 37
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    I am so sold on that PS3 it's not even funny.



    Look at the trailer for motor storm on the PS3 here

    ( sometimes there is a short advertisement commercial first. If you see mud bogs that's it! )



    http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=5841&type=mov



    This is freaking outrageous.



    I hope Apple does something spectacular like use 2x 970MP's, and a CELL processor for..... whatever... That game is freaking so awesome looking. The closest thing I've seen on the 360 was Ghost Recon 3, and that doesn't look much different from Republic Commando.
  • Reply 12 of 37
    programmerprogrammer Posts: 3,457member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by mello

    I thought I read somewhere that getting the Mac OS working on cell would be

    extremely difficult.




    People write all sorts of things even though they don't know sh!t. The Cell has a 64-bit Power processor (with VMX no less) as one of its components, and getting MacOS X up and running on that wouldn't be terribly hard. Taking full advantage of the SPEs would require more work, but this is the kind of thing engineers like to tackle. Apple is in a terrific position to do much of this by leveraging their OS technologies (CoreImage, etc).
  • Reply 13 of 37
    blackcatblackcat Posts: 697member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by hmurchison





    I'd love to see Cell as co-processor of sorts. Anything to improve the speed of the computer. It's funny..we're witnessing a transition here away from the CPU. 5-7 years ago they were telling you that the CPU would handle all these functions. Well reality is it's best to have the CPU be a mothership yet still have capable satellites processing specialied data and thus relieving the burden of the CPU.





    As a former Amiga and CD32 developer, I despaired at the desire to make the CPU do everything in PCs. Back in 1985 having custom chips for graphics, sound etc made a 7MHz machine incredibly powerful.



    I'd love to see a return to this approach, with a Cell in each Mac, and with CoreImage it certainly looks as though it is being considered.



    If we are struggling to reach higher CPU speeds we need to offload as much number crunching as possible to chips designed for specialized tasks, especially with HD needing so much oomph.
  • Reply 14 of 37
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Blackcat

    As a former Amiga and CD32 developer, I despaired at the desire to make the CPU do everything in PCs. Back in 1985 having custom chips for graphics, sound etc made a 7MHz machine incredibly powerful.



    I'd love to see a return to this approach, with a Cell in each Mac, and with CoreImage it certainly looks as though it is being considered.



    If we are struggling to reach higher CPU speeds we need to offload as much number crunching as possible to chips designed for specialized tasks, especially with HD needing so much oomph.




    Agreed! Offloading to the GPU is one thing Apple has done something with, but using a CELL design as a single coprocessor is an exciting idea. Expensive as it may sound, With all the development, and sales on CELL designs to Sony for PS3, and other technologies it could be feasible. Problems occur if Apple is only looking into it now. If that were the case it's hardly in the foreseeable future. They knew CELL was being designed years ago, and hopefully they have been following it for some time, but chances are this is as far away as Multi Core processor Macs were when the Power4 went Multi Core. (years away)

    Apple has a new tendency to let technology development slip, or flow right past them. I think these next generation of consoles and games is really going to cut into Apples increased sales, and drive product sales for MS OS based media PC's, and other technology up.
  • Reply 15 of 37
    overtoastyovertoasty Posts: 439member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by onlooker

    Agreed! Offloading to the GPU is one thing Apple has done something with, but using a CELL design as a single coprocessor is an exciting idea. Expensive as it may sound





    I agree with much of what you say, but I personally can't see Apple putting both chips into the same box, I think a separate super-cruncher, Cell-based Xserve would likely be the most viable option. I supsect Tiger could likely be made run more than well enough on the beast for this purpose, since - as a separate purpose built "crunch-box", it's not really intended as a general purpose CPU anyway, it's really just there to off-load in a very intelligent, integrate manner, all the kind of stuff so many apps are struggling to crunch through these days, like media rendering or DSP (especially) and bio-med (BLAST, folding etc).



    The appeal is Cell was designed specifically to be purpose built,and cheap, so hopefully, Apple could make a crunch box Xserve in exactly the same manner, and sell walls of 'em.



    Distributed processing seems to be where much of this type of thing is going anyway, I suppose the question is, does Apple see enough of a market for a cheap, purpose built crunch box, to justify the marketing and R + D.
  • Reply 16 of 37
    blackcatblackcat Posts: 697member
    Allegedly, Cell isn't designed for general purpose OS use (although Cell workstations are being built by IBM and Sony, presumably running Linux) but it would be ideal as a copro for audio or video processing.



    So...



    G4/G5 - running the core OS

    Video card - running the GUI via Quartz

    Cell - running Quicktime & high intensity CoreVideo



    With Cells designed to work in groups, Apple can differentiate lines by the number included - 1 for iMac, 2 for Powerbook, 4 for PowerMac.
  • Reply 17 of 37
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Where does this crap keep coming from?????



    Cell has a full blown PPC processor in there. It will run general purpose OS'es just fine thank you! The advantage that Cell provides to the general purpose is to off load a lot of vector type work via the SPE's. That should probally be vector work and whatever else the SPE's can handle.



    Since modern computers are often loaded with several streans that could ideally be handled via independent vector units Cell is ideal for delivering and developing new general purpose compute hardware. One chip with the ability to dedicate compute resources for audio, video, networking and possibly other task is an ideal processor for todays computing needs.



    DAVE





    Quote:

    Originally posted by Blackcat

    Allegedly, Cell isn't designed for general purpose OS use (although Cell workstations are being built by IBM and Sony, presumably running Linux) but it would be ideal as a copro for audio or video processing.




  • Reply 18 of 37
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    Which is why I'm liking the idea of the co-processor. Processors are always going through these growing spurts, and "speed lul's". They are not getting much faster per update as they used to, and even after Dual core, Quad core, and CELL come into their own, there wil again be these long development cycles that put computing into a talespin while people wait for the next big thing. Anticipating, and planning the next computing hardware lul could have been of some serious beniit to Apple. But, if in the future they had their main processoir spec'd out, and in a "lul", and they were using the CELL design as their co-processor, what would be to stop them from improving the co-processor dramatically, and giving smaller bumps to their main processors to reach higher levels of performance?

    The PC world could be sitting still while Apple is still improving performance, and if Apple is way behind as they were in the past with the 500MHz G4 they could use it to break back into the hunt.
  • Reply 19 of 37
    mellomello Posts: 555member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by mello

    I thought I read somewhere that getting the Mac OS working on cell would be

    extremely difficult. Wouldn't it be easier if Apple & IBM designed another

    power pc chip that would be specifically designed for grid computing/render

    farms. They can strip out what would not be needed & they could style it to be

    similar to the cell chip except that it can run easily on the mac. Putting 2-4

    mac cell chips in an xserve-sized node would be pretty sweet.




    Now this is what I'm talking about:



    The IBM Corp. fellow who led the design team said his company currently has no plans to make Cell-based chips for its own systems or for the merchant market. Instead, IBM has set up a team in its engineering services division to help others custom-design versions of Cell that could be made in IBM's fabs.



    Full story here.
  • Reply 20 of 37
    blackcatblackcat Posts: 697member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by mello

    Now this is what I'm talking about:



    The IBM Corp. fellow who led the design team said his company currently has no plans to make Cell-based chips for its own systems or for the merchant market. Instead, IBM has set up a team in its engineering services division to help others custom-design versions of Cell that could be made in IBM's fabs.



    Full story here.




    So basically, all Apple has to do is ask.
Sign In or Register to comment.