Zii’s “stemcell computing”: misleading name, good tech?
It is interesting that on the heels of IBM’s announcement that the Cell family is a dead-end, I get to learn of Zii’s offering — based on their allegedly violating the GPL.
It’s all the more interesting that it seems that the trend, lately, has been to focus more on GPUs:
since GPUs have evolved to provide such built-in power, why not reuse them for more than just graphics?
Zii, on the other hand, claim that their “stemcell computing” platform, unlike Cell or GPUs, is wholly general-purpose.
Wait. What GPL thing?
Well, Zii is currently marketing to developers a solution called the “Zii Egg”. It’s an iPhone-like device, based on their processors, that can run either Android or their own, Linux-based, Plaszma platform.
Turns out, they are currently withholding root information, thus not allowing developers to patch the OS, thus, it is claimed, violating the GPL.
With this out of the way…
Is Stemcell Computing(™) a revolution?
I will boldly say “NO”. But I’m not saying it’s not an interesting technical challenge either.
For starters, their platform doesn’t have much to do with stem cells. Sure, the name got my attention. But there is nothing biological about it. In fact, it’s quite the marketing stretch: take a non-specialized set of chips. Can we program them to do something? If so, then it’s just like stem cells! Er…right.
So, what is it?
If only their intro video wasn’t so “Ha-ha big computers are for nerds. They are BIG. Look! Shiny object!” I’m sure their nerd karma would explode.
But, no. Instead it’s marketing talk all the way. That could be fine, except they are marketing their product to developers, not the general public.
Also, from the specs I was able to gather, what we are talking about here is a couple ARM cores and processing elements on a die.
You know what immediately comes to mind? FPGAs.
It really sounds like a coarse-grained (node-based) FPGA.
Nowadays, you can buy FPGAs that come with their own processors, either built into the fabric on the side, or even meshed within the FPGA itself.
The only thing that still confuses me is how they can be, as they claim, “configured thousands of times a second”: typically, when reconfiguring an FPGA, you need to download the new code to SRAM. Of course, here we are likely talking about SOC (System On a Chip) reconfiguration: there is no external interface.
And this is where is gets hairy:
- Do you always reconfigure through a JTAG port? Or did Zii come up with a faster alternative?
- Do you reconfigure the whole FPGA or only regions?
- If so, do you place the FPGA in configuration mode then switch back to user mode? Or does the chip have only one mode?
- And if so, are write operations synchronous and reads asynchronous? How do you manage the software and electrical issues?
I hope that, in time, we will learn more about the technology behind “Stemcell computing”.
I may be way off base but it seems to me that, even though we are not talking about a revolution, it sure sounds like a very intriguing evolution.
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