Mercury puts Cell processor on a PCI-E card

dafloppyone · 1 Aug 2006 at 23:17

Mercury Computer Systems has come up with a new application for Cell, the multi-core processor jointly designed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM and due to appear in Sony's PlayStation 3 in November. Mercury's new product is called the Mercury Cell Accelerator Board, and it consists of a discrete Cell processor on a PCI Express card intended for use as a co-processor of sorts.

Featuring the Mercury MultiCore Plus(TM) Advantage, the CAB is designed to deliver an unprecedented 180 GFLOPS of performance in a PCI Express(R) ATX form factor suitable for compute-intensive applications such as rendering, ray tracing, video and image processing, and signal processing.

The Mercury Cell Accelerator Board features a 2.8GHz Cell processor, 1GB of Rambus XDR DRAM, 4GB of DDR2 SDRAM, Gigabit Ethernet, and a PCI Express x16 interface. Rated power draw is a whopping 210W, and the card is 12.283" long—about an inch shorter than NVIDIA's GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics card. Expect the Cell Accelerator Board to become available in early 2007 at a price of $7,999. Incidentally, the Mercury Cell Accelerator Board won't be Mercury's first Cell-based product. In January, the company started shipping Cell-based blade servers, and Mercury's product portfolio shows a number of other Cell solutions. Thanks to DailyTech for the tip.

http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/10463

Defcon5 · 2 Aug 2006 at 00:02

So, er... what does it do?

Zefan · 2 Aug 2006 at 00:03

It's Cell, DUH!!

I think it's meant to just be showing the possibilities of cell as a processor not only available to the PS3 but to other components such as GPU's, PPU's, or maybe even some extra CPU power.

Cyber-Mav · 2 Aug 2006 at 01:34

sounds like another entry into either gfx card market or physics market.

Raikiri · 2 Aug 2006 at 01:41

Cyber-Mav said:
sounds like another entry into either gfx card market or physics market.

It is for rendering/ CAD etc. at $8k even the daftest of people wouldnt go out and buy one of these for their home computer

Cyber-Mav · 2 Aug 2006 at 01:44

Raikiri said:
It is for rendering/ CAD etc. at $8k even the daftest of people wouldnt go out and buy one of these for their home computer

well there are those that bought the ageia physx boards

Zefan · 2 Aug 2006 at 01:45

I think what mav means is that it shows a possible new entrance and use for the cell, it's clear that it's infantile at present. Just guessing, cuz that's what I see it as.

Raikiri · 2 Aug 2006 at 01:46

Cyber-Mav said:
well there are those that bought the ageia physx boards

Who do you think I meant by daftest?

@Zefan, good point... PS3 on a card

Zefan · 2 Aug 2006 at 01:47

Raikiri said:
@Zefan, good point... PS3 on a card

Riiiidge Racer!

silversurfer · 2 Aug 2006 at 02:38

GT5 on my pc - cool :cool:

Seriously, completely bonkers idea which makes it amazing of course

I didnt realise the Cell was allready on sale, so why is PS3 so slow to appear. Bluray I guess?

Zefan · 2 Aug 2006 at 02:39

Christmas, stock building. They've already made the first batch of mainboards.

silversurfer · 2 Aug 2006 at 02:42

Yea I guess so, I want to see cell vs conroe. 2 cores vs 8 hrmm. Ok maybe kentsfield would match it

bluebox · 2 Aug 2006 at 03:41

Cell going to be big in High Performance Computing. It's being put in Cell Blades running Linux for big compute farms for things like risk analysis and render farms

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/27/ibm_demos_cell/

FrankJH · 2 Aug 2006 at 06:21

Zefan said:
I think what mav means is that it shows a possible new entrance and use for the cell, it's clear that it's infantile at present. Just guessing, cuz that's what I see it as.

Personally I think that shows how little you know - just because you cant see any use for it

At that price its not meant for windows users etc , more like render farms as used by hollywood etc

FreeStream · 2 Aug 2006 at 09:09

FrankJH said:
Personally I think that shows how little you know - just because you cant see any use for it

At that price its not meant for windows users etc , more like render farms as used by hollywood etc

Yep! I doubt any program you can bu for Win XP would make use of it

Gibbs · 2 Aug 2006 at 09:51

i knew this was going to happen but they just havnt said what its going to be used for. Why put a Cell chip on a PCI-e borad and tell no one what you can do with it.

and at $8k its a very costly gfx card lol

Zefan · 2 Aug 2006 at 10:25

FrankJH said:
Personally I think that shows how little you know - just because you cant see any use for it

Yes I can't see any use for windows customers as of yet... but you go on to say that so I don't see what your point is. Why does this mean I know not a lot about it? I understand how farms using their own made software could take advantage of this extra power very easily.

FrankJH said:
At that price its not meant for windows users etc , more like render farms as used by hollywood etc

As I said, I know it's not meant for windows users as the price is too high, but there will be a cheaper version like that which is being used inside the PS3. To be honest I think this card is so pricey because of the RAM that's onboard and the fact that it's the first implimentation of cell in public.

FrankJH · 2 Aug 2006 at 11:04

Zefan said:
Yes I can't see any use for windows customers as of yet... but you go on to say that so I don't see what your point is. Why does this mean I know not a lot about it? I understand how farms using their own made software could take advantage of this extra power very easily.

As I said, I know it's not meant for windows users as the price is too high, but there will be a cheaper version like that which is being used inside the PS3. To be honest I think this card is so pricey because of the RAM that's onboard and the fact that it's the first implimentation of cell in public.

I was referring to your use of the word "infantile" which is just stupid in my opinion as there will be plenty of uses for this type of card even if its in financial / weather prediction / atom analysis type of applications all of which are highly possible

TimW · 2 Aug 2006 at 11:10

FrankJH said:
I was referring to your use of the word "infantile" which is just stupid in my opinion as there will be plenty of uses for this type of card even if its in financial / weather prediction / atom analysis type of applications all of which are highly possible

Perhaps "in its infancy" rather than infantile??? (Or perhaps not!)

Zefan · 2 Aug 2006 at 11:13

FrankJH said:
your use of the word "infantile" which is just stupid in my opinion

Ummm is it just me, or is the Cell in a VERY VERY early stage of its life? Jeez Louise stop trying to make out that I'm stupid, it's a fact that the cell is in its "infancy".