SONY and mental images to Bring mental ray to the Cell

[mech7]

http://www.mentalimages.com/1_1_news/news_texte/070808.html

This is interesting :D have the PS 3 as cheap rendering server :D

[soulburn3d]

For a second I thought this subject meant you could render with mentalray on your cell phone :O

- Neil

[cresshead]

i belive it's a ibm/sony cell computing board NOT a sony ps3...so your game console won;t be rendering with mental ray anytime soon!

[slipknot66]

For a second I thought this subject meant you could render with mentalray on your cell phone :O

- Neil

loll, me too, i was thinking , damn now that i spent some money buying a new computer , you say that i can render with a cell phone...

Im really curious to see some news about the new mental ray, and specially the Maya integration.

[Mr Moose]

Side Effects are also onboard with this - http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=869&Itemid=55

:)

[stevecullum]

A bit more info on this 'Cell computing board'

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070809-sonys-new-cell-computing-board-takes-the-play-out-of-playstation.html

[MrHooper]

Seems to me that Pixar showed us long ago that specialized hardware is not the answer to rendering. Renderman was originally very specialized harware that never finished prototype, before its creators realized that the transputer chip (at the time) could run it all in software. They understood that by the time they could create, test and sell such hardware, that general-purpose chips would approch such speeds, or at least catch up quickly.

Seems that all Hardware-oriented rendering solutions have stayed in the bg, or died altogether. Such a sad thing that it's even being considered. At least MR is (to my knowledge) still working with nvidia on using the gp-gpu for certain tasks.

Andrew

[jewalker]

This isn't really specialized rendering hardware, but more like an 8-core cpu with super high bandwidth between each core. Rendering is just one of the things that the Cell processor should excel at. It's not like they are building the hardware around a specific rendering algorithm, but rather porting an already successful rendering software to a procssor that should make it much faster. I'm looking forward to other people writing software specifically for the Cell.

[jasonio]

I'm finding it hilarious the lengths that Sony is going to in order to circumvent the EU tax laws!!!

[Venkman]

This isn't really specialized rendering hardware, but more like an 8-core cpu with super high bandwidth between each core. Rendering is just one of the things that the Cell processor should excel at. It's not like they are building the hardware around a specific rendering algorithm, but rather porting an already successful rendering software to a procssor that should make it much faster. I'm looking forward to other people writing software specifically for the Cell.

It isn't an 8 core processor.

It's one "Power Processor Element" ("PPE") (sometimes called "Processing Element", or "PE")at 3.2 GHz with 8 SPEs ("Synergistic Processing Elements").

But according to Wikipedia, Cell is optimized towards single precision floating point computation. Would that lend itself to unbiased and/or HDRI rendering?

[MrHooper]

some more info link (http://www.informationweek.com/research/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=3W0QLYBB3AYTEQSNDLQCKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=201202502)

From my understanding, it is precisely a hardware rendering solution that incorporates gpu functionality with cell procs for more flexible software rendering as well.

I don't knock MI for porting a version or MR to the cell architecture. Expanding their software on more platforms has been essential to their success.

I am knocking Sony for building yet another "hyped" hardware solution (add-on board) when historically, they all go dodo on us (or never get off the ground). The article says that the board is for real-time rendering of multimedia at up to 4k. That's fine, but won't nvidia be doing that on their own in another couple months?

Hmm. a gpu with added multicore cpus. Isn't that a computer inside a computer? I'll bet you that in no time, my computer that houses said board will outperform the board... so why bother? Pixar got it. Why can't the rest of the industry?

Kudos to MR for supporting such a wide array of platforms (though they could be spending their time more wisely by improving algorithms, and more properly supporting apps such as maya and max).

Andrew

[BillSpradlin]

A Cell processor raytracing rendering video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKqZKXwop5E

[Apoclypse]

A Cell processor raytracing rendering video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKqZKXwop5E

Mama Mia! That's pretty. I wants one!

[stew]

But according to Wikipedia, Cell is optimized towards single precision floating point computation. Would that lend itself to unbiased and/or HDRI rendering?
Not any more or less than for any other kind of rendering. There's nothing special about unbiased or HDRI rendering (except that unbiased seems to be the latest fad despite many people not even knowing what bias means).

[jewalker]

It isn't an 8 core processor.

It's one "Power Processor Element" ("PPE") (sometimes called "Processing Element", or "PE")at 3.2 GHz with 8 SPEs ("Synergistic Processing Elements").

I was greatly simplifying the Cell by calling it an 8 core processor. I know that the SPEs are not full blown cores but rather vector processing units with their own local storage, but that was just an easy way to describe it.

The cell should be really good at rendering, but that is not all that it does. It should be excellent at any jobs that can be run with a streaming algorithm (video encoding/decoding) or run with massive amounts of data in parallel (physics and other simulations). Research institutions would be really interested in these kinds of boards. I'm not sure how usefull it would be to set up a renderfarm using them as oppossed to just using a lot of Intel Core2 Duo boards.

[cresshead]

or a ''stack'' of the new mac minis [core 2 duo now]

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.