Sony "gets" corporate synergy
I saw this snippet in an interview on Sony's 4k digital cinema initiative:
"we’re taking the Cell workstation, a hyperspeed engine developed for PlayStation 3, and targeting the deployment of that into the 4K DI process, so you have 4K rendering in real time. Right now, 4K rendering takes close to forever. We believe we can create functional 4K DI processes based on the Cell workstation that will speed things up considerably and therefore lower the cost of DI and encourage more 4K content."
see: For Muvico, a New 4K Projector Installation Goes Way Beyond Movies
"DI" stands for "Digital Intermediate" which is the now-standard process of dialing in color correction/timing and other effects to scanned 35mm film or digitally captured HD material.
Anyway, I found this statement to be pretty impressive. There's no reason for Sony to use their own PS3 Cell processor for this work unless that processor is really freakin' good. And, unless this guy is blowing smoke up our butts, it seems the Cell processor is indeed really freakin' good. They could use any super workstation mega-computer they want, but they think the Cell is their best bet. Interesting.
The Cell processor does have some unique features (e.g. its highly parallel architecture) and Sony's engineers would have a very high level of experience and expertise with it. The cynic in me still suspects though that this is marketing hype, that they're being forced to use the Cell processor by higher-ups who care more about pushing more Cell workstations out into the market than what's actually best for the application. There would be a high level of cache to being able to say: "4k cinema, brought to you by the Cell processor" and co-market that with the PS3.
Either way though, that's corporate synergy--even if it is being foisted upon one department's engineers in order to pump up a different division.
"we’re taking the Cell workstation, a hyperspeed engine developed for PlayStation 3, and targeting the deployment of that into the 4K DI process, so you have 4K rendering in real time. Right now, 4K rendering takes close to forever. We believe we can create functional 4K DI processes based on the Cell workstation that will speed things up considerably and therefore lower the cost of DI and encourage more 4K content."
see: For Muvico, a New 4K Projector Installation Goes Way Beyond Movies
"DI" stands for "Digital Intermediate" which is the now-standard process of dialing in color correction/timing and other effects to scanned 35mm film or digitally captured HD material.
Anyway, I found this statement to be pretty impressive. There's no reason for Sony to use their own PS3 Cell processor for this work unless that processor is really freakin' good. And, unless this guy is blowing smoke up our butts, it seems the Cell processor is indeed really freakin' good. They could use any super workstation mega-computer they want, but they think the Cell is their best bet. Interesting.
The Cell processor does have some unique features (e.g. its highly parallel architecture) and Sony's engineers would have a very high level of experience and expertise with it. The cynic in me still suspects though that this is marketing hype, that they're being forced to use the Cell processor by higher-ups who care more about pushing more Cell workstations out into the market than what's actually best for the application. There would be a high level of cache to being able to say: "4k cinema, brought to you by the Cell processor" and co-market that with the PS3.
Either way though, that's corporate synergy--even if it is being foisted upon one department's engineers in order to pump up a different division.
posted by banzai at 3:10 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home