The ZEGO ("Zest to go") is a

rackmount A 19-inch rack is a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple electronic equipment modules. Each module has a front panel that is wide. The 19 inch dimension includes the edges or ''ears'' that protrude from each side of the ...

server platform built by

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

, targeted for the video

post-production Post-production, also known simply as post, is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording indivi ...

and

broadcast Broadcasting is the data distribution, distribution of sound, audio audiovisual content to dispersed audiences via a electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), ...

markets. The platform is based on Sony's

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It is the successor to the PlayStation 2, and both are part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. The PS3 was first released on ...

as it features both the Cell Processor as well as the RSX 'Reality Synthesizer'. It is aimed to greatly speed up postproduction work (in particular in the computationally extremely taxing

4K resolution 4K resolution refers to a horizontal display resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels. Digital television and digital cinematography commonly use several different 4K resolutions. In television and consumer media, 38402160 (4K UHD) with a 16:9 asp ...

3D rendering 3D rendering is the 3D computer graphics process of converting 3D models into 2D images on a computer. 3D renders may include photorealistic effects or non-photorealistic styles. Rendering methods Rendering is the final process of creati ...

and

video processing In electronics engineering, video processing is a particular case of signal processing, in particular image processing, which often employs filter (video), video filters and where the input and output Signal (electrical engineering), signals are vid ...

. In some respects it is rather similar to

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

's QS20/21/22 blades (such as used in the Roadrunner supercomputer that took the top spot in the

Top500 The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non-distributed computing, distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these ...

in May 2008), although Sony seems to target the DCC ( Digital Content Creation) markets rather than scientific like IBM, which can be seen by the inclusion of the RSX graphics processor in the ZEGO platform. ZEGO runs Fixstars's Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux, which was also Sony's favourite Linux distribution for the PlayStation 3.

Architecture

The architecture is not identical to the PlayStation 3. One difference is that the BCU-100 has 1 GB XDR

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

instead of the PlayStation 3's 256 MB.

Video RAM Video random-access memory (VRAM) is dedicated computer memory used to store the pixels and other graphics data as a framebuffer to be rendered on a computer monitor. It often uses a different technology than other computer memory, in order to b ...

is missing in Sony's system diagrams, but it is listed as 256 MB (like the PlayStation 3) further down in the tech specs. The XDR memory is shared by both the Cell and RSX. Sony uses the SCC (Super Companion Chip) to handle I/O tasks ( HDD, USB 2.0,

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use in ...

and other unspecified I/O); the SCC has its own dedicated memory of 1 GB DDR2 as well as a Memory Extension Adapter connected via

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a high-speed standard used to connect hardware components inside computers. It is designed to replace older expansion bus standards such as Peripher ...

that can hold up to 8 GB. Another option for the single PCI express slot is a Video Display Board with a DVI-I output. Further, the Cell in the BCU-100 offers the full 8 SPUs that Cell is manufactured with, as opposed to the 6 SPUs available in the PlayStation 3, which has one SPU disabled to improve manufacturing yields and one reserved for the system. This gives the BCU-100 an extra 33% potential CPU-power (or 51.2

GFLOPS Floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance in computing, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate measu ...

more).

History

Sony presented its first ZEGO product, the BCU-100, to the public at

SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference centered around computer graphics organized by ACM, starting in 1974 in Boulder, CO. The main conference has always been held in North ...

2008 in mid-August. Sony plans to ship the BCU-100 by the end of 2008 and deliver it with the

Mental Ray Mental Ray (stylized as mental ray) is a production-quality Ray tracing (graphics), ray tracing application for 3D rendering. Its Berlin-based developer Mental Images (firm), Mental Images was acquired by Nvidia in 2007 and Mental Ray was discon ...

raytracer by Mental Images to speed up 3D rendering tasks and

Houdini Erik Weisz (March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926), known professionally as Harry Houdini ( ), was a Hungarian-American escapologist, illusionist, and stunt performer noted for his escape acts. Houdini first attracted notice in vaudeville in ...

Batch by Side Effects Software. The company claims to be in talk with other software makers in the DCC field to port and optimize their software for the ZEGO platform. ZEGO is similar to a workstation based on the

PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October, in Europe on 24 Novembe ...

architecture called the GScube, which was also shown at Siggraph in the year 2000, and which, although used for visualization in a few movie projects, ultimately failed in the market. However, while the GScube only targeted realtime visualization in

1080p 1080p (1920 × 1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the sc ...

HD, ZEGOs target markets are much broader, encompassing for example physics simulation, final 3D rendering and video processing as well as visualization. It remains to be seen if ZEGO actually manages what the GScube was unable to do. The massively parallel design of the GScube, being not much more than 16 Graphics Synthesizer chips with dedicated RAM,Wired article on GScube
/ref> inspired the design of the Cell processor itself with its 8 SPUs with dedicated RAM. As of August 2009 the device appears to have been discontinued. Searches on Sony.com and pro.sony.com for either Zego or BCU-100 return nothing but the year-old press release claiming the product would ship within a few months.

Technical specifications

BCU-100

* 1U rackmount unit * 3.2 GHz Cell/B.E. CPU * RSX (connected to Cell via a 20 GB/s up- and 15 GB/s downstream link) * SCC (connected to Cell via a 5 GB/s link) * 1 GB XDR RAM with ECC (Cell and RSX, 25.6 GB/s Bandwidth) * 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM (SCC) * 2x Gigabit Ethernet * 3x USB 2.0 * 1x PCI Express 4-lane (hosts either the Memory Extension Adapter or the Video Display Board) * 160 GB 3.5"

SATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard ...

harddrive * <330

Watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

s power consumption * optional BDCU-EX1 Memory Extension Adapter with 8 GB RAM * optional BKCU-VD1 Video Display Board with DVI-I (for using the BCU-100 as a Workstation)

References

External links

Sony Press release for the Siggraph 2008 presentation featuring a video

ZEGO page at Sony.com

Sony BCU-100 Brochure

Sony presents ZEGO at Siggraph 2008

Terra Soft solutions' page for ZEGO

Side Effects and Sony develop Cell-based solution
{{Cell microprocessor segments Cell BE architecture Server hardware Sony hardware Ultra-high-definition television