[mythtv-users] "Cell Microprocessor Simultaneously Decoding 48 MPEG-2 Streams"

[Stef Coene]

On Monday 02 May 2005 19:53, Devan Lippman wrote:
> I hope I can get one of these as the CPU for my machine!  Been a while 
> since I read that explination but I think that its a series of power
> CPUs arranged similar to a beowulf cluster all on one chip which means
> it shouldn't be too far off from existing CPUs that linux will run on
> in the final presentation to the system.
Mhh, 1 cell = 1 stripped down cpu (based on a Power PC) + 8 SPE's.  The CPU is 
stripped from all extra logic.  It will _not_ run power pc binary's.  (I'm 
not a cpu specialist, but there is for instance no memory protection.)

The real power are the 8 SPE's.  You can stream data from SPE to SPE.  So it's 
perfect for decoding / encoding data streams.  1 SPE can filter the input, 
another color adjustment, 2 others can do the encoding and so on.

An other interesing stuff is the fact you have hardware cells (1 CPU + 8 
SPE's) and software cells.  The software cell can use 1 or more hardware 
cells to do the job (in the PS3 there are 4 hardware cells).  Combined with 
the fact that hardware cells can find each other when they are connected, you 
can use the cell in your printer to help encoding mpeg2 streams in your myth 
box.  Actually, you don't have to do anything, the cell in the mythtv bow 
will use the cell in the printer if it need so.

Just do me a favor, and read the papers yourself :)  It's a long time I read 
them and they are really interesting.

Stef