If, despite our
warning, you were still hoping that the
Zii was some sort of new form factor media player or maybe even a futuristic computer that could morph and change shape as needed, prepare to be a bit disappointed. Creative has revealed all, and while everything we know has indeed not changed (contrary to
earlier promises) we can now confidently tell you that Zii is a system-on-a-chip architecture for high-demand media applications, featuring numerous discrete processing elements that, to our untrained ears, sounds at its core a bit like Sony and IBM's
Cell. It's said to offer performance to rival a supercomputer, easy scalability to provide limitless growth (from gigaflops to petaflops), and some sort of integrated throttling to enable higher efficiency by shutting down disused aspects of the system. The first piece of hardware from this platform is called the ZMS-05 Media-Rich System-On-Chip, and companies like
MSI and PowerLinux have pledged their support, the latter of the two planning to use the processor for its embedded Linux video conferencing systems. We're definitely eager to see what sort of innovative uses come out of this new architecture, but for some reason we don't quite feel like the hype was warranted.
Update: Philip wrote in to let us know that the ZMS-05 is effectively just an updated and expanded version of 3DLABS's older
DMS-02 chip, which, while also impressive, didn't change everything we know either.
Update 2: Video added after the break.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
posted Jan 8th 2009 at 10:24AM
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Fred @ Jan 8th 2009 10:29AM
If only I could post the little "Price is Right" fail jingle. "Bum, Bum, bumbum, WAAAAAAaaaaaa....."
Eric @ Jan 8th 2009 10:39AM
LOL...exactly.
000000 @ Jan 8th 2009 1:14PM
Well, never believe a word of anything that comes out of Creative again...
Testies, Testies, 1, 2... 3? @ Jan 8th 2009 6:23PM
And only $1 Billion invested
goodness @ Jan 8th 2009 7:22PM
This actually is impressive. Engadget "journalists", and some readers, don't appear to understand the technology or associated implications.
Officious geeks.
216 @ Jan 8th 2009 10:31AM
Unless we're gonna see this in a Notebook or Netbook booooo Creative (even tho I love their mp3 players)
216 @ Jan 8th 2009 10:31AM
Or a Telephone
Boarderwoot @ Jan 8th 2009 10:35AM
For some reason I feel as though everything i know has not changed.
Blastar @ Jan 8th 2009 5:26PM
This is like how the human Brain works..
At first when you try to do a task for the first time you do it slowly and as long you repeat a task your brain it makes sorter and direct connections between the Brain receptors that are needed for this specific task in order to it faster with lower though!!
What the chip does is to do what your human brain does which is specie areas to do specific tasks faster with less processing !!
But even more you have Huge amount of processing power to do even more and more and even faster "accelerated tasks".
PEOPLE THIS IS INNOVATIVE AND IT WORKS THE SAME WAY YOUR BRAIN DOES !!.
lnx @ Jan 8th 2009 10:35AM
After watching the video on their site about what it's all about, it's actually pretty exciting.
Homeboy @ Jan 8th 2009 11:00AM
I second that! So Engadget better cut Creative some slack here, they are on to something.
Toss that Zii CPU under the skin of Sony Vaio P-series, add android and voila! The dream computer that can be used on the go and docked at home for some hardcore gaming.
ZSX @ Jan 8th 2009 11:37AM
It certainly sounds quite exciting: who doesn't want a scalable, low power, adaptible chip?
This is most definitely a competitor to nVidia'sTegra (which is using the newer ARM Cortex architecture) but with the added advantage of scalability. If true, this would have major implications for all the kinds of gadgetry which Engadget (and I) love: mp3 players, mobile phones, cameras, GPS units, MIDS and netbooks.
It all depends on the excecution which, sadly, is where Creative may stumble.
lnx @ Jan 8th 2009 11:40AM
@ZSX ,
I can only hope that more chip designers take this sort of idea on board and execute it properly if Creative can't.
The whole idea is really exciting, despite what Engadget seems to think.
james @ Jan 8th 2009 7:12PM
i think this chip will succeed, but engadget should stop saying FAIL if it is not an apple product. the videos ae really interesting, engadget should tell people to watch themor put it in the read link
Jason @ Jan 8th 2009 10:39AM
If only they shifted some of the funds wasted on this to their driver development team.
If only....
ilh @ Jan 8th 2009 10:42AM
"The scalability of the ZMS architecture is highlighted in the first Teraflop Accelerator with the footprint of an A4-sized sheet of paper, consuming less power than a desktop PC. By utilizing the virtually unlimited chaining capability of the ZMS chips, a state-of-the- art ‘hypercomputer' with many Petaflops of processing power can be realized, which can be 100 times smaller, 100 times greener and 100 times lower cost than conventional super computers."
Not bad I say. Stop beating them up over it.
AnyKey @ Jan 8th 2009 12:39PM
Engadget is really just beating them up over the ridiculous marketing that came with it.
Seriously, any hype that says a product will "change the world as we know it" is just asking for it!
Is it cool? Hell yeah.
Is it *that* revolutionary? Debatable.
Tony C @ Jan 8th 2009 10:43AM
All that noise and Creative only brings a prototype to the party? I see a rather small LCD, about a dozen ports and interfaces, but no main "Zii" processor anywhere.
rektide @ Jan 8th 2009 10:57AM
The credit card sized thing in the dead center is the system on chip & support peripherals. Its mounted on top of a "breakout board" whose only purpose is to provide physical interfaces.
SoC's are pretty big deals; the iphone wouldnt have happened had Samsung not come out with an ARM chip with integrated OpenGL acceleration. If this ends up being in a portable form factor, capable of supporting 3d on dual high res displays, there will be huge ripple: it will be a game changer.
Sheldon @ Jan 8th 2009 10:49AM
"ZMS-05 is effectively just an updated and expanded version of 3DLABS's older DMS-02 chip...didn't change everything we know either"
Depends on how much of an update it is surely?
The DMS-02 was marked as ~4.8GFlops but the press release for the ZMS-05 is for 10GFlops & upwards.
As demonstrated by the likes of nVidia, some of the new ARM cores can provide an impressive show, so it's good to hear that Creative is also going down this route. Maybe nVidia will do more with their (now old) demo?
Viktor @ Jan 8th 2009 10:51AM
For the architecture specs, you can all go to:
http://www.ziilabs.com/products/index.asp
It's a dual-core with two ARM-processors. Plus it supports these small processing elements, powerful to calculate stuff required by todays media-applications (would probably be a replacement for video-/soundcard). Those small elements can be used like SPUs on IBM/Sony's Playstation 3, and are probably quite good at floating point operations. ;)
giuliop @ Jan 8th 2009 10:51AM
So, first you were disappointed at the idea that it could be a PMP (http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/05/creative-zen-zii-screenshots-unearthed-possibly-faked/), and now you're disappointed that it isn't.
Not only that, but, as tech journalists, you seem to care very little about "performance to rival a supercomputer, easy scalability to provide limitless growth (from gigaflops to petaflops), and some sort of integrated throttling to enable higher efficiency by shutting down disused aspects of the system", and, despite it has no applications yet, "for some reason we don't quite feel like the hype was warranted": a totally rational opinion.
Ah, but if it only had a shiny screen...
Akshay @ Jan 8th 2009 3:23PM
If only I could digg you up a million for this. The underhype engadget is trying to create for this is baffling. It does seem like a breakthrough, give it time, I'm already less excited because of your tone.
tomaskn @ Jan 8th 2009 10:55AM
http://www.epizenter.net/comment.php?comment.news.441
http://vr-zone.com/articles/creative-zii-mystery-unravels--nano-size-supercomputer/6408.html?doc=6408
Flexible Media Processing
High compute density SIMD architecture ideally suited for media processing tasks
Accelerate a wide range of current and emerging standards
Ideally suited to video, imaging, 2D/3D graphics, audio and signal processing
Offloads the CPU from intensive media tasks
Integer and IEEE 32-bit and 16-bit floats
Dual ARM processor cores
Dual ARM926 EJ-S
Scalable system performance
Optimal power management
High-Definition Video
High resolution 720p decode and encode
Wide range of video codecs, including;
- H.264, MPEG 1/2/4, WMV/VC-1 and others
Integrated HD 1080p analog TV encoder
High-Fidelity Audio
High quality audio encode and decode
Wide range of audio codecs including;
- MP3, AAC, WMA, AAC, Ogg Vobis and others
Special effects
High Quality Imaging Processing
Software Defined Imaging Pipeline
High quality imaging from low cost sensors
High Quality 2D/3D Graphics
2D graphics acceleration
Powerful floating-point 3D graphics
Supports OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0
Advanced UI features and experiences
Ultra-Low Power consumption
Low power archiecture
Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling
Multiple clock domains and clock gating
16 independent power down regions
Suspend to RAM for standby
High Level System Integration
USB 2.0 OTG controller
Analog HD TV encoder
Three independent video I/O ports (upto 24-bit)
Three SDIO/MMC controllers
I2C
I2S
UARTs
GPIOs
Hi-speed serial
SPDIF
General
- supporting NAND/NOR flash, IDE, Ethernet, PLLs and RTC
Memory Interfaces
Mobile SDR, DDR and DDR2
x32 and x64 data bus
166/266MHz
1Gbyte address space
Performance
MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 HD decode
- Main profile at 30 fps, 8mbps bitstream
3D Graphics (OpenGL ES)
- 42M textured pixels/sec, 21M vertices/sec
Compute
- 8GFLOPS, 32GOPS
Memory bandwidth
- 2.6 GBytes/sec
some stuff i found, looks like a tegra competitor
Randomness @ Jan 8th 2009 10:59AM
What happened to stem cell computing... I guess that was just marketing speak, and they aren't actually using stem cells... boring....
STINK @ Jan 8th 2009 11:04AM
It's like the Cell processor, but smaller.
Stem Cell, get it?
*Boom-boom-boom! WAAAaaaaaa...*
RIKARDO @ Apr 29th 2009 8:47PM
WHY CANT THEY GIVE US THE NEXT GENERATION OF A CREATIVE ZEN VISION W WITH X-FI WIRELESS LAN & FM RADIO WITH LIKE 180 GB's.
STINK @ Jan 8th 2009 11:13AM
I'd be happy with painless drag and drop transfers without shovelware.
Beastage @ Jan 8th 2009 11:11AM
At first people was certain it is only another media player or platform and booed, now that is indeed a real processing unit and quite a good one , people boo again! PEOPLE FAIL!
I'm pretty surprised that Creative actually delivered what seems to be a very good solution.
STINK @ Jan 8th 2009 11:15AM
That's what they get for naming their chip too similarly to the most popular gaming system ever.
Beastage @ Jan 8th 2009 11:21AM
Yea i agree, the Zii wasnt the best of names.
Tes @ Jan 8th 2009 11:34AM
@Stink
You know, they registered that name well before the Wii was even thought about.
STINK @ Jan 8th 2009 11:53AM
@Tes
Doesn't really matter. If I name my newly developed mp3 player a D-eSS-Lite and present a stylus with it, people are going assume certain things about it regardless.
I mean, I first saw the Zii hype and expected a gaming chip that uses very little power. Shame on me.
Dave @ Jan 8th 2009 5:58PM
Ya they had patents issued referring to "Zii" clear back in 2001.
Decoy @ Jan 8th 2009 7:45PM
Hell, Creative had a MP3 player called Zen Touch well beofre the iPod Touch. What's in a name?
Stupidiot @ Jan 9th 2009 1:23AM
@Decoy: Don't forget the Nano.
diggit @ Jan 8th 2009 11:14AM
I'm much more excited about NVIDIA's tegra which is based on the much newer ARM Cortex cpu's and a NVIDiA graphics core. The only thing that Zii seems to bring that the tegra doesn't is scalability.
Forrest @ Jan 8th 2009 12:55PM
The 'only thing'? I think maybe you underestimate the usefulness of scalability. The power requirements and the ability to reduce consumption are also awfully nice.
If it really does what they say it does, it could be pretty revolutionary. Just because the current tech demo isn't impressive doesn't mean it has no potential.
Of course it's easier to hate on something you don't understand than to look into it and make a real judgment. It also generates more page views I guess.
diggit @ Jan 8th 2009 2:04PM
Whoa, man... I wasn't hating, I was simply saying that I'm more excited about tegra. But if you want to start this then...
"The power requirements and the ability to reduce consumption are also awfully nice."
While I totally agree with this, I could not find one technical spec on power consumption for the zms-05 on the zii website. Just the incredibly propagandic video with some nice animated bar graphs bouncing around with a video playing in the background. If you want I can make a cartoon about my own chip and you can talk about how great that is. O yea, and a broken data sheet link. That helps.
"Of course it's easier to hate on something you don't understand "
I'm sorry, but I dont think it is possible for anyone to understand this device by visiting the zii website, as there is almost no REAL information there besides the tech specs of the SoC. Since I only have tech specs to judge this on, my original opinion still stands. I'm more excited about Tegra.
Arie @ Jan 8th 2009 12:00PM
what's with all those Eee, Zii, Mii, Wee, shii, Tii, Cii..???
in 2 years it will look so much more ridiculous that it is already..
Patriks7 @ Jan 8th 2009 11:52AM
Zii world Wiill be miNe once Zii Autobots roll out!
Arkenklo @ Jan 8th 2009 1:48PM
What?
digitallysick @ Jan 8th 2009 11:58AM
Creative, the same people that would not create a driver for vista properly to make full use of the sound card they make. So some guy took it upon himself to write a driver and asked for donations. Once creative found out he was making money (via donation) they tried to sue the guy and shut down the driver. Finally they fixed the driver
They cant even write a driver , how are they supposed to change anything for us in modern times ? Creative is no longer relevant
This is a last failed attempt
PowerTorsk @ Jan 11th 2009 4:06PM
@digitallysick
Creative bought another company to make this. Read the article and surf the web before you make yrself look stupid next time.
ericore @ Jan 8th 2009 12:03PM
We don't have enough information to evaluate if their claims are "reasonable".
In fact, they haven't answered their own question yet, "Everything you know is about to change"
Why, you say.
Because the answer to that question and to whether the product would be revolutionary depends only only on the following:
1. It must be able to find itself in everyday computing devices; desktops, laptops. It must be scalable lol your device isn't scalable if it
can't find its way into everyday computing, and if it cannot it is not stem cell computing as you Creative say it is. They have not
provided any information on whether it will make its way to notebooks or desktops.
2. It must be cheap. No price announcement.
3. It must be faster than a conventional CPU and or GPU if it is indeed superior or better than the former as Creative claims it is.
In fact, IBM's cell processor is very competitive with the Zii. Like IBM's cell, it is not suited for everyday computing thus despite creative's claims it is most likely not a true scalable processor as Creative claims it to be. Further it has a far inferior manufactoring process than Intel's fabs which doesn't say much about a OMG revolutionary product. Fools, don't hype a product than disappoint.
That's the negativity. On the other hand, despite that it is most likely not revolutionary for everyday computing it is probably revolutionary for everyday portable devices not including laptops but possibly including the Iphone and devices of the like. Mostly, in terms of power savings. You can expect devices to run much longer, even in digital cameras for instance, which is revolutionary in and of itself. But it doesn't change the world. It doesn't change everything. And as for there supercomputing claims, well IBM could do the same with there cell processors; nothing new there. Don't overstate yourself again creative, do not disappoint me and the consumer.
dboobis @ Jan 8th 2009 1:06PM
1. Whether or not this finds its way into laptops/desktops rather depends on software manufacturers. If Microsoft were to incorporate the supposed scalability of this architecture into a future Windows version, then no doubt the world would be changed - instead of having to code for a variety of chipsets and core speeds, programmers would only have to code for one, and the middleware would scale performance according to the hardware setup. Instead of seeing "Reccomended : Core2Duo 2.33ghz" etc on games or software, it would say "Reccomended : 2 x Zii architecture". Imagine being able to use the exact same software on your phone, laptop, desktop, PMP, TV, fridge, you name it. In addition, if motherboard manufacturers really get on board with this, then consumers would be able to buy a comp that is truly able to adapt to their needs. I could go into how utilising this SoC in consoles would revolutionise the gaming market, but I think I've made my point.
2. Not really worth complaining about, no price is no price.
3. Infinitely scalable to me says that in some form it will be faster and more powerful than a conventional setup. For all we know, Creative might not actually be fabricating the chipsets themselves, rather licensing the technology out to Intel or AMD. Imagine if the next generation of Intel chips are built around this architecture - no more dual core/quad core/i7 nonsense, if you need more than one core, buy it and slot it in.
Finally, don't even begin to say that the Cell is a competitor to this. A multicore processor is in no way comparable to a fully scalable system-on-a-chip. The only way to get scalability out of Cell processors is to daisy-chain them, which introduces bottlenecks in the connections. From what I can tell, this system allows for direct connection between processing units, thus eliminating the bottleneck.
Arkenklo @ Jan 8th 2009 1:50PM
Whoah, I'm not reading all that!
superhobo @ Jan 8th 2009 2:19PM
@dboobis:
That makes the most sense of this whole thing.
Wwhat @ Jan 8th 2009 12:34PM
I called it!
freakmarket @ Jan 8th 2009 12:47PM
This announcement is mute without a product ... i know as a consumer i'm sick of hearing about new break thrus in technology that never become reality .... announce something when you have something physical to show me.
When i have a new product in hand then i'll care ... this is as bad as the Apple hype machine.