Eyes-on the Creative Zii (or parts of it, anyway)

We stopped by Creative's booth to see what the haps was with the Zii earlier, and... well, there wasn't a ton going on there, but we wanted to document the experience for you anyway. What we saw didn't enhance our knowledge of what we learned earlier in the day: the system-on-chip architecture for media applications (the first part being the ZMO5 Media-Rich System-On-Chip which is apparently a newer version of 3DLABS's DMS-02 chip) is touted as a springboard for commercial applications -- and we hear that at least PowerLinux has signed on to use the platform for an advanced video conferencing system. Sounds exhaustingly exciting right? And it was. Creative doesn't want anyone getting too close to their components -- they were all encased in glass -- but check the gallery after the break for what we did see.

Gallery: Creative Zii booth

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[ananimus3 @ Jan 9th 2009 4:43AM]

*scratches head..*

Okay, SERIOUSLY! Are there any engineers in the audience? Can we get some hypotheses on WTH is so promising or revolutionary about this freakin' chip?

[superhobo @ Jan 9th 2009 5:18AM]

I say, it will be awesome.

Happy?

[Anthop @ Jan 9th 2009 8:26AM]

From what I understand, the Zii platform is a collection of a bunch of "generic" processing elements (or "PEs" as the Zii people call them) working in conjunction together to make a larger processor. My guess are that these PEs are somehow "general purpose" ALUs/FPUs - a discrete circuit that is capable of adding two numbers together and returning the sum. In computers today, it isn't really this simple because different types of operations are best performed by different circuit elements. The obvious example is that ALUs are good at adding two integer numbers together - by far the most common type of calculation - while FPUs are used for dealing with floating point numbers (decimal numbers) - much more important in graphical and mathematical applications. My guess is that the Zii PEs are ALUs that can also somehow perform floating point calculation, thus making them "general purpose" processing elements.

The advantage of this, as their promotional material suggests, is that you have more flexibility in bringing the resources of the chip to bear for the task at hand. A Zii chip won't necessarily be more powerful than a conventional chip of the same density (unlike what the marketing suggests), and the operating system is still under the onus of smartly managing its limited resources but will be able to bring a greater maximum proportion of its resources to the task at hand, whether that be stuff as different as gaming and word-processing.

All of what I've just said is conjecture, as I really haven't been able to look at the design specs of the Zii chip, so I can't really say what's inside. But if what I'm guessing is true, there are also a few doubts/problems with this architecture that the pot-of-gold marketing glosses over:

One problem is whether or not Zii PEs can truly be considered "general purpose" calculators - and by that I mean - be able to handle fixed and floating point calculations. With the marketing "Zii is only good for the computing that matters to you" grok, I'm guessing the answer is no. Zii probably doesn't truly support floating point calculations, but instead uses fixed-point calculations to some degree of accuracy to simulate floating point operations. If the Zii is really smart, it probably links some number of PEs together to increase the degree of accuracy/range to support calculations that require more significant digits. (For example, if one PE can handle 32 "significant digits", chaining two together will allow you to handle 64.) This is probably enough for most basic floating point calculations, but really doesn't cut it when high degrees of accuracy are required.

The second problem is whether or not the Zii can really scale up as the marketing suggests. You can't simply add more PEs to a Zii chip because some controller is likely responsible for doling out tasks and controlling the various PEs. To make use of an increased number of PEs, the controller (which is basically another specialized circuit) has to be buffed up to manage these new resources. That's why there are only 20-something PEs per Zii chip; that's probably as much as a not-too-powerful (or else it will eat up too much battery) controller on the Zii chip can handle. This is why when the promotional material says that you can string together a bunch of Zii >chips< to increase processing power; these are whole Zii chips we're talking about, and as discrete processors, this actually is not that much different that any other massively multiprocessor environment, with the same loss of performance and synchronization problems as scale increases.

Anyway, if conjecture holds true, the Zii is probably a good solution for the limited computing/power environment of mobile devices. In an environment with constrained resources, being able to bring more of what you already have to the important tasks at hand - this ability along with a smart OS can produce mobile devices that are more responsive and seem more powerful than a similarly dense conventional processor. I really don't see Zii-style architecture becoming popular in desktop or even most laptop environments where those kind of constraints are not that important nor as restrictive.

PS: I can't consider myself a "master" of computer architecture, so take my word with a grain of salt. Also, if you happen to know more than me and wish to correct, please feel free, but also please be kind :).

[Anthop @ Jan 9th 2009 8:28AM]

Whoa. Sorry, now that I look at it, that got loooong. >_

[tekdroid @ Jan 10th 2009 6:06AM]

The Zii platform will allow scaleable, low-watt, cost-effective Engadget comment editing.

[ananimus3 @ Jan 11th 2009 2:00AM]

@Anthop: Please, please, no apologies! Thanks for much for punching all that out. Very much appreciated.

[NG @ Jan 9th 2009 4:55AM]

probably just a scam to keep the investors

[tomaskn @ Jan 9th 2009 5:51AM]

4 huge hd screens with one chip like that? intels atom cant even do that, now thats a hyped chip.

[M3lm0th @ Jan 9th 2009 5:54AM]

a PMP that can ouput 720P HD via HDMI onto any HDTV from 1 watt of power running from battery.

That of course with all the other bog standard features: divx,xvid,wmv etc etc, MSN, Web Browser, 3D satnav, Opengl Gaming, Web cam messaging to name but a few.

I know I would like a PMP that allows me to copy 720P HD films onto it watch them on it on the move and if Im at a mates house or even my own house that has an HDTV being able to plug an hdmi wire right in and watch 720P on the big screen is quite neat

[Marko @ Jan 9th 2009 6:39AM]

I think it boils down to the price. I am sure it can find plenty of uses if it is cheap enough!

[James Young @ Jan 9th 2009 9:17PM]

what the fuck does this have to do with stem cells?

[mb @ Jan 9th 2009 9:45AM]

Is it made of babies?

[ericore @ Jan 9th 2009 11:03AM]

It's as I suspected, a disappointment.
In an other post, this fellow( dboobis ) taunted otherwise.

But as this posts indicates the Zii is for Commericia applications not everyday users like me & you. Further, the Zii is for Media purposes only and does not scale up to everyday computing. dboobis might of said, well its not the chip that's the problem is the lack of software to accompany the chip; assuming this is the case, it is still as of now not a revolutionary product because of that.

The Zii is like the Cell chip in that they are video processing chips like those found in graphics processors and not designed for everyday computing even though the Zii can potentially reconfigure itself for the task; the PE are fundamentally designed for video processing unlike what some of the videos at Zii.com say.

The only thing that's revolutionary is that creative can pair up as many of these processors with next to no bottleneck, but how does that matter if this product is for commercial users only and does not revolutionize everyday day computing on our laptops and desktops? It doesn't.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/08/creative-unveils-zii/

[It_Is @ Jan 9th 2009 4:51PM]

a gigantic FLOP

[XGM @ Jan 9th 2009 5:25PM]

"I know, let's call it the Zii, it's not like Wii are calling iZii atleast."

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 9th 2009 6:10PM]

Regardless of the technical merits of this media processor, I'm fairly confident it is not going to "change everything we know"... The promotional material before CES was just dripping with marketing hyperbole...