IBM Developing Cell Compiler - "Octopiler"

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Slartibartfast

Supreme [H]ardness
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Neodark, you should post that article in the forum. It is DAMNING. You're telling me that any HDTVs that have already been bought will be bunk come the PS3/bluray/HDDVD? WTF!!!!! :mad:
 
steviep said:
Neodark, you should post that article in the forum. It is DAMNING. You're telling me that any HDTVs that have already been bought will be bunk come the PS3/bluray/HDDVD? WTF!!!!! :mad:
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Aw, I can't read it. Somebody Ctrl+V me!!


...please?
 
Slartibartfast said:
Aw, I can't read it. Somebody Ctrl+V me!!


...please?
Click to expand...

Full text:
copyright IGN said:
February 24, 2006 - In perhaps the greatest disservice to the general consumer market yet perpetrated by players in the electronic entertainment industry, it has been revealed that next-generation DVD technologies (HD-DVD and Blu-ray) will only function with monitors and HDTVs with HDMI or DVI connections.

What does that mean to you? If you purchased an HDTV more than a couple of years ago, chances are you are using Component Video (the red, green, and blue plugs) to connect HD sources to your TV. Component Video is an analog transmission, which means that it can't work with the absurdly stringent AACS copy-protection Hollywood has insisted be integrated into the new formats. Thus, no HDMI input on your TV, no hi-def DVD for you. If you don't have a compatible TV, you'll either receive a massively downgraded sub-720p resolution version of the content, or what the studios are suggesting, a warning screen followed by nothing.

Who's to blame for screwing some 3,000,000+ HDTV owners in America that were good consumers and early adopters who purchased TVs without HDMI? A group put together by the major movie studios called Advanced Access Content System (AACS). AACS was responsible for the Reuters report last week that speculated that Sony would miss its spring launch date for the PS3, due to the fact that the AACS had still not finalized the technicalities of the protocol. After a good six months of deliberation since version AACS v.0.9 was put into testing, and only 2 or 3 months away from the supposed release of the first HD-DVD and Blu-ray players, AACS has finally made the baby step of offering provisional licensing to the likes of Sony, Toshiba, and the other early manufactures of hi-def DVD solutions.

Even if you've got an HDTV with HDMI or DVI inputs, it's unlikely your TV has more than one. Just about every HD source these days is best in HDMI, so what are you going to do when both your cable box and next-gen DVD player/PS3 need the same plug? HDMI switchers or enabled receivers are not cheap, or even easy to find. In addition, it would appear that every component involved in the transmission of an HD-DVD/Blu-ray signal must make use of Intel's HDCP technology. This extra level of protection works with the AACS protocols on a hardware level.

Why is this bad? Say you decided to be future proof and purchase a high-end AV receiver with HDMI connections and up-scaling capabilities. Seemed like a good idea last week, but not anymore. Unless it supports HDCP, and it doesn't, because no manufacturers have made HDCP models yet, you won't be routing your HD-DVD or Blu-ray player through it.

Perhaps you're a progressive type and decided to make your media center PC centric. You're screwed too. Even if you purchased a high-end ATI or Nvidia graphics card advertised as HDCP compatible, that all it is: compatible, not compliant. HDCP chips must be bios flashed at the factory, and though these new "compatible" cards have space for a TI HDCP chip, none have them yet. In addition, every link in the chain must be HDCP ready, and only a very few PC monitors have adopted the standard. Get ready to buy both a new high-end graphics card and a new monitor if you want hi-def DVD for your PC.

It gets even worse. At the same time the AACS story came to light, it was discovered that the first wave of next-gen DVD players will not support the "managed copy" option that so many proponents of the new technologies have been hyping. Now that it is apparent Hollywood is willing to absolutely screw more than three million early-adopting consumers (who are probably also some of the best DVD-buyers) is it wrong to be skeptical that the "managed copy" features aren't quite going to be as fully-fledged as we all have hoped, if and when they actually appear? Expect massive downgrades in resolution to be the major movie studio's requirement for any content they allow to escape from the closed AACS-HDCP loop.


This is a dark day for the entire consumer electronics industry. Huge manufacturers like Sony and Toshiba have allowed Hollywood executives to punish consumers for the studios' inability to protect their own content in the wild. Despite the fact that the relationship between movie piracy and the floundering movie theater receipts of recent years has not been proven to be direct, Hollywood is applying an iron fist in their aim to control the next generation of the home-theater experience. You know those previews on DVDs that you can't skip through? That's only the beginning of the ways Hollywood wants to control your entertainment experience.

Consumers shouldn't take this lying down. The difference between HD-DVD and Blu-ray quality and normal DVD isn't huge, especially in light of the rather nice results produced by up-scaling DVD players available today from Oppo, Sony, and others. Should we allow movie studios to force their biggest fans, the early adopters of HDTV and related accessories, to buy entirely new entertainment systems? Is the upgrade even worth it?

Next-gen DVD is looking pretty questionable at this point. Not only do we have a format war to deal with, we've got Hollywood's accounting departments in charge of deciding the minutia of how we're able to enjoy the content we pay for. No copy protection scheme yet developed has been able to stand up to the genius of the hacking collective, and it's unlikely that even AACS and HDCP will last for long. Just long enough, perhaps, to strangle what remains of the traditional disc-based content distribution model and open the door for ubiquitous digital content and on-demand distribution.
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Anyway, regarding this compiler - it sounds like a monster. I've taken compilers and language courses, but this is way beyond anything I could do, since they're seeking to create a compiler that targets multiprocessors. It's a major step forward in compiler design for one. It will also probably be one of the most complex compilers ever devised too. :shudder:
 
Slartibartfast said:
Aw, I can't read it. Somebody Ctrl+V me!!


...please?
Click to expand...

n perhaps the greatest disservice to the general consumer market yet perpetrated by players in the electronic entertainment industry, it has been revealed that next-generation DVD technologies (HD-DVD and Blu-ray) will only function with monitors and HDTVs with HDMI or DVI connections.

What does that mean to you? If you purchased an HDTV more than a couple of years ago, chances are you are using Component Video (the red, green, and blue plugs) to connect HD sources to your TV. Component Video is an analog transmission, which means that it can't work with the absurdly stringent AACS copy-protection Hollywood has insisted be integrated into the new formats. Thus, no HDMI input on your TV, no hi-def DVD for you. If you don't have a compatible TV, you'll either receive a massively downgraded sub-720p resolution version of the content, or what the studios are suggesting, a warning screen followed by nothing.
Click to expand...

It also talks about why video cards and Home theater recievers won't work as a mediator becuase of their lack of HDCP support.

Getting back on topic.
IBM seems to be at the point Intel was 5 years ago trying to force the adoption of a niche and not all that widely understood technology (SSE in Intel's case, SPEs in IBM's) on the market. For Cell to become as widely adopted as IBM wants, Opticompiler has a massive amount of work ahead of it, autovectorization and memory access management are key, but only part of it. IBM really needs to make working wtih all those threads reasonably painless, and that's a major task ahead of them.
 
Thanks for the paste, interesting read. It just goes to show how much the corporations run things in the United States, it makes me sick.

Anyways, this compiler does look like a beast, but it's what Sony really needs in order to bring developers on board for the PS3. Too bad it's still so early in it's development :p
 
This whole HDCP debacle sounds like one more way that the corporations are screwing their most loyal customers AND those who purchase legit content, while those who pirate content barely feel a bump in the road. Way to go, assholes.
 
Wow...great. I guess my 65" Sony Widescreen is obsolete :rolleyes: Absolutely ridiculous...
 
TheOmniscientCreator said:
Wow...great. I guess my 65" Sony Widescreen is obsolete :rolleyes: Absolutely ridiculous...
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no its not... dont worry there will be adapters that will crack the HDCP nonesense
 
Tetrahedron said:
no its not... dont worry there will be adapters that will crack the HDCP nonesense
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Ah yes, illegal things that won't be out for months after the release of HDCP. Bottom line is, legally, everyone's HDTVs are going to be obsolete with these next gen discs formats. Bad for consumers in every way (even beyond the stupid format war). I'm not buying anything in protest. SDTV ftw!
 
none of you new of HDCP? chances are is you bought a tv in the past year with HDMI it probably supports it
 
steviep said:
Ah yes, illegal things that won't be out for months after the release of HDCP. Bottom line is, legally, everyone's HDTVs are going to be obsolete with these next gen discs formats. Bad for consumers in every way (even beyond the stupid format war). I'm not buying anything in protest. SDTV ftw!
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There's also the issue that what they're trying to do might be illegal in some countries with better protected consumers rights. If they are forced to provide a way to watch Blu-ray discs at full quality on non-HDCP-supporting TVs here, I'll love to hear the explanations. (I'm sure it'll be "for our convenience".)

(What might happen is that the workarounds that appear are deemed legal. See the DVD-Jon case for precedent, though the relevant laws have changed since then.)
 
I plan on making my point by sticking with plain old dvd. If I can't back up what I spent a lot of money on then by all means hollywood, thanks for making my decision for me. Also so far anything Hi-Def related hasn't impressed me. Just puts a smile on my face, that i've never been an early adopter.
 
Don't worry guys, several people have claimed to have cracked HDCP, and I bet a few realy have. Heres one guy:

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/236

Heres a choice passage:
Ferguson is a Dutch citizen, but travels to the U.S. regularly for both personal and professional reasons. He worries that if he presents his research, he will not be able to enter the U.S. without fear of persecution. "This is a country that tells others they should protect human rights, but they have trampled on mine," says Ferguson. "The U.S. Congress is telling me what I can or cannot say in my own country."
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Kinda shows what a shit country we live in.
 
If people don't buy the companies' products, then they will HAVE to change to copmly to our demand. However, the sad truth is that once the products come out, people will gobble them up.
 
From a blog entry I read recently... something to consider when thinking about the SPE's and the demos that will surely be shown and claimed to be "real time" come Sony's upcoming press conference:

Maybe you dont understand the suggestive use of buzzwords in the industry. Exactly what does "rendered realtime" mean? The Ps2 had a technical limit of 75 million polygons per sec. Does this mean it was even seen in game? Using the in-game engine does not in anyway shape of form vary based on the number of polygons in a model, nor the numner of pixels onscreen. To that end the software engine will throw out whatever the hardware can produce. That being said. Functions that require integer processing, DSP, and branch prediction take an 80% HIT, read that 80% hit when processed on an SPE. How do I know? IBM did internal benchmarking. In an actual PLAYABLE game, interactive physics, certain varieties of AI, (not scripted), and the gameplay code are not nearly as ridiculously parrelel as graphics code, which the SPEs were literally born to do. I said all that to say this. The graphics seen on the MSG4 demonstration are definitely possible and achieveable but not at this time. That is NOT to say that the Polygons and 3D models were no rendered realtime. They definitely were. The fact is the use of physics, AI, or anything that appeared to be gameplay code, what just a very good Pixar movie. which created or "rendered" the polygons "realtime" Dont be fooled into believing every calculation you saw on screen was interactive and being processed as you watched. Again Im not saying that MGS4 wont look and play like that when it finally makes it to retail. HOWEVER. At the time the demo was shown, it was as legitamate as any other pre-rendered cutscene. Kudos to nvida on such a nice GPU, but if you are familar with PC cards and their demos, they do the EXACT same thing that game makers do with their trailers. The REAL IN-GAME graphics never come close to the tech demos.
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Ballz2TheWallz said:
none of you new of HDCP? chances are is you bought a tv in the past year with HDMI it probably supports it
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QFT. My cheapo $900 proview lcd has hdmi, and my $2500 vizio plasma has 2. Picture quality in the past year or year and a half on both technologies has gotten much better, which will give you a far bigger increase that simply switching from component to hdmi. Its not like people who bought plasmas 2 years ago didnt know they were adopting immature technology. I dont see the ruckus of people freaking out about technology advancing. People are gonna buy hd-dvd, then complain about that going kaput too :) Things change, you just have to be careful about when you buy things. Most of this information is out there on the net, you just gotta do some research before you drop a couple thousand dollars on new equipment.
 
I don't feel screwed about HDCP, but then again my TV has it, and it is almost 4 years old (pays to do your research before you buy). I don't know about AACP yet, but I guess I will find out. If it doesn't support it, whatever, I will buy a new TV, this one (while it has incredlbe image quality) is getting long in toothe anyway (it is a CRT based RPTV, and it weighs over 300lbs, and it is an absolute bitch to move, I had to hire professional movers last time I switched apartments because none of my friends were willing to help me lift it)).

On the topic: Cell has awesome potential, and I think it could have success before they hit level IV. Programming is a long, tedious, and thankless job (one of the big reasons I dropped that major into my sophomore year). Plus, with the global economy as it is now, if people around here won't do it, you can pay some guy in India or China $5 an hour (or less...) and he will work his ass off day and night till it works. We have the brainpower, it is just a matter of who is going to do it first.

IBM has a lot to lose with Cell, but a lot to gain now. They lost the Mac contract, but they have the contracts for all three next-gen console systems. The PS3 will obviously be their biggest priority (360 is done with, MS took care of the dev tools, and the Rev is a suped up version of the Gamecube, again, dev-tools pretty much taken care of). I have no doubt they will get it done.
 
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