Cell/B.E. technology for digital media

High-definition video has become more widely adopted and consumers are hungry for the high-def experience. As broadband adoption has increased, so have consumers' appetites for new ways to use that extra bandwidth. New video content sources proliferate – from traditional broadcast media to Web–based user–generated content – and the bandwidth required will be devoured at unprecedented levels. In addition, compute power is required to render images for digital animation and visual effects in games, movies, as well as a host of applications. In order to deliver on the promise of high definition and new digital media, an innovative infrastructure is required.

The solution to these challenges is Cell Broadband Engine™ (Cell/B.E.) multi-core technology. With the scalable Cell/B.E. computing platform, you can accelerate workloads critical to a variety of digital media applications, such as:

• Rendering farms used for creating digital animation and visual effects used in games, movies, and virtual world applications
• Physics-based simulation of natural phenomena
• Image processing for post-production work
• Video compression for network delivery to a variety of devices including handheld and PC

Demos

Interactive Ray Tracer (iRT) (4 MB) — iRT or ray tracing images using clusters of IBM BladeCenter QS22 you virtually explore inside a Boeing 777, the first airliner to be 100 percent digitally designed using 3D computer graphics.