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Cell based Blade server running Linux

This is halfway between "Uh-oh..." and "Woah!".

Apple can either jump on the boat now whilst it's a young technology, opening themselves up to enormous risks, or stay with relatively tried-and-tested options like the dual-core G5.

Make or break time?
 
Lurch_Mojoff said:
IBM Cell based Linux blades
Click to expand...

Whoa, 3 buzzwords rolled into one product. How about Cell-Based Linux SAN Blades...thats got to generate even more revenue. If I were to apply this to tech marketing I could put a lot of people out of work. Just put :[high-margin hardware] running [high-margin software] on [cheap OS with high-margin service support] in the headline and rattle a bunch of "context-free-grammar" for a few pages from the above link and you can launch a product for free! How about this:

Cell Processor Running H.264 Hardware Encoding on Mac OS X Tiger
or maybe this in a few years:
Cell-Based Mac Mini Running HD Movies from the iTunes Movie Store on Mac OS X Cheetah
 
Lloyd1994 said:
or maybe this in a few years:
Cell-Based Mac Mini Running HD Movies from the iTunes Movie Store on Mac OS X Cheetah
Click to expand...

Ughmm... why going back to Cheetah? In a few years it would be more like Cougar, I guess. :p

Seriously though, buzz words and marketing aside, this is the first living, breathing Cell based computer. How far do you thing STI will be able to push this? Will they be able to realise their "Cell everywhere" concept?

brap said:
Apple can either jump on the boat now whilst it's a young technology, opening themselves up to enormous risks, or stay with relatively tried-and-tested options like the dual-core G5.
Click to expand...

I think you are right, but wouldn't a dual-core G5 have to go through at least a 12 month lifecycle? For what I know, comercial application of Cell (in servers or workstations) is not really plausible in the next 6 months if not more. But scraping a new chip design so soon (or in even less time, dual-core G5s are not here yet, after all) would be a big financial mistake. Oh, and Apple are not the kind of company that would fear falling in with bleeding edge technology.
 
Yes, yes. So sorry. Brain fart. Cheetah is old news. I meant Lion or Ocelot or Siberian Lynx or Cheshire or Tabby or...

The whole Cell/Apple topic does raise some interesting questions though. With the rate of adoption of distributed computing in the consumer market, at least some of the Cell technology is bound to trickle down into the desktop its just a question of what form it will take. I'm sure many things will be proposed and implemented but the market (or the marketing department) will probably decide what will stick (i.e. Cell-CPU vs. G5+Cell co-processors vs. anything else you could dream up) and what we will end up buying. Apple is a pioneer in adopting and developing new tech but you can bet that they will enter this arena with the right strategy, even if it means they have to sit out the first few rounds as the application of the technology solidifies and people understand exactly what the $2000 shiny piece of metal does for them that their 3-year-old $2000 shiny piece of metal couldn't do for them.
 
How about cell-based processor cards you can add to your PCI-e slots? It could be programmed to do anything from H.264 encoding, to F@H or even for distributed renderings.
 
I think Apple should try to jump on the cell bandwagon. Current CPU architecture is more or less reaching the end of its lifecycle - the fact that dual-core processors are coming out shows that manufacturers are beginning to realize that there's not a ton more left to do.

I could be wrong. I for one happen to really like the Cell processor.
 
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