The Zii stemcell computing mystery solved

After the specultions and hype campaigns Creative Technology Ltd. today revealed the mysterious- the so called "Stemcell computing" platform. It turns out to be an architecture for a new kind of multimedia SOCs(System-on-chip). There are two processors the ZMZ05 and DMS05. The name stemcell is used to represent the flexibility of the architecture to progammability. Stem cells are the embryonic cells which turnes in to all other kind of cells in a organism later. The device is based on programmable arrays called Processing Elements. These are said to be flexible and completely programmable and can be used to develop many type of applications with minimal additional hardware like stem cells.

- Flexibile Media-Rich SoC - Software Defined Silicon acceleration
- Complete Platform Solutions - Ready-for-Market Platform Solutions and Development Kits
- Advance Middleware - A rich-suite of development tools and middleware
- Incredible Scalability - from 10 Gigaflops to Peta FLOPS
- Energy Efficient - High density processing architecture for reduced power consumption

For detailed specifications refer the link: ZMS05


After many speculations about the Stemcell computing, the hype is settled now. According to Creative:

"With an investment that spans over 10 years, over a billion dollars and over 10,000 man-years, the world is poised to experience a breakthrough that will better lives beyond our imagination."

The multimedia processor may be targetting from handheld devices to highend gaming consoles and boshes teraflops of scalable performance. Something that can be comaprable to supercomputers. We can expect some great stuff like the Nintendo Wii or Apple iphone like gadgets or like Sony playstation like consoles. Array of Playstation 3 processors already claimed of attaining supercomputing performance(story).

Some application areas mentioned in the Zii website are

- PMP, PND and MID
- NetBook
- Video Conferencing
- Video Surveillance
- Smartphone and PDA
- IP Media
- Medical
- Embedded Systems

Let us wait and see what wonders the Zii will do to the world of computing.