Creative Zii, revolutionary supercomputer in a nano size

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Zii is announced like it's going to change everything. Creative was spend big amount of money know how and years of experience building this chip, but many people on CES were disappointed as they see that it was only system on a chip (SOC) innovation. But wait, as an idea and now an thousand produced chips already, “ZiiLABS ZMS-05 SoC”, which comes out of the acquisition of the company formerly known as 3DLabs really can change everything.


The processor is build with dual ARM cores and it is sized 15x15mm with all needed I/O controllers. “Steam cell” presentation was software possibility to organize and regroup processor power for the current task comparing with acceleration seen on super computers: 3D, video, music, web, games.. or with other words, is fully programmable, media-rich application processor capable of delivering high-performance application, graphics and multimedia capabilities within a low-power environment.

The conventional processors have already dedicated, fixed, non flexible silicon block prealocated for particular function: 3d, video, audio or other functions. The blocks are permanently fixed and cannot be change until entire processor redesign.

The advantage of Zii is power of flexibility, scalability and energy efficiency. Zii architecture has flexible, programmable Processing Elements (PE) that are reconfigured on fly for particular task, dynamically adjusted for different functions according to needed processor power and specialized acceleration functions required of today’s media rich devices. The scalability of the Zii 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 Zii 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. Intelligent power control means the speed and power consumption of the processor can be matched to the task in hand and unused features can be turned off completely, put in deep stand-by and reactivated instantly helping to lengthen battery life even further.

The Zii processor is capable for High-Definition Video, High-Fidelity Audio, High Quality Image Processing, High Quality 2D/3D Graphics and all with Ultra-Low power consumption. It can be used in computers, game consoles, portable media players, mobile phones and PDA, so in the near feature, we can watch high definition video from a mobile phone connected on TV when devices are coming to the market builded upon Zii platform.


The first production chip of Zii labs is “ZMS-05”, it has dual ARM flexible media cores to achieve fully balanced acceleration of CPU and media-intensive tasks. A broad range of I/Os and peripheral functions are integrated on-chip to ease system design and reduce BoM costs. Also option to scalability, it can be chained and it can achieve power compared to super computers (TERA flops or PETA flops).

MSI is already announced support for this chip, so we can expect the real demo in near feature.

For more information about Zii click here.

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