Saturday, January 3rd 2009
Zii Not an Audio Processor, Something Much Bigger
Late December last year, Creative started a teaser website for the company's "new direction", the Zii. Back then it was courteous enough to give us a clue about what it was about and how big a deal it was, with its rather bold tag-line "Everything you know is about to change". Today Creative dispatched emails to all those who registered for updates on the website, revealing a lot more about Zii, and we can tell from what's given, that Creative has embarked upon something big, which makes its digital audio product lineup look irrelevant to the matter.
The Zii, according to Creative, is inspired from nature's building block of life, the stem cell. A stem cell is a basic cellular unit found in multi-cellular organisms that holds the potential to divide and differentiate into the many different kinds of cells an life-forms have. Here's a revelation: Creative claims to have devised a stem cell-like silicon that can "grow and multiply into different solutions and eco-systems", it can be seen as something parallel to the process in which life functions, only that it's going to be silicon doing it. Creative goes on to add "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." Given the state the world economy is in, Creative states that the technology is recession-friendly and will in-turn unlock countless business opportunities based around the technology and its expansion. Creative will be throwing a lot more things out of the box at the upcoming CES event. The Matrix era of artificial life is beginning not to sound too much of an imagination.
The Zii, according to Creative, is inspired from nature's building block of life, the stem cell. A stem cell is a basic cellular unit found in multi-cellular organisms that holds the potential to divide and differentiate into the many different kinds of cells an life-forms have. Here's a revelation: Creative claims to have devised a stem cell-like silicon that can "grow and multiply into different solutions and eco-systems", it can be seen as something parallel to the process in which life functions, only that it's going to be silicon doing it. Creative goes on to add "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." Given the state the world economy is in, Creative states that the technology is recession-friendly and will in-turn unlock countless business opportunities based around the technology and its expansion. Creative will be throwing a lot more things out of the box at the upcoming CES event. The Matrix era of artificial life is beginning not to sound too much of an imagination.
37 Comments on Zii Not an Audio Processor, Something Much Bigger
I bet two E-cookies that when zii is revelaed, BTA cries over how lame it is compared to his imagination.
Because if the are getting rid of drivers (I dont belive that) then they still need the firmware. "Adaptive" is essentially equivalent to General Purpose Shaders. Completely useless without firmware/drivers to control/direct them.
If the audio fuctions arent built in, but based on kernel microcode, then we will now see their poor driver quality WITHIN the firmware. FAIL. QED.
I thought that was pretty obvious.
It's a silicon technology Creative wishes to "give" (license, sell, patent) to other companies. Programmable shaders was conceptualised by Microsoft, Silicon Graphics, et al, while its implimentation part was care of companies such as AMD(ATI), NVIDIA, etc. You wouldn't blame Microsoft (and the people who conceptualised programmable shaders, if a company who holds the rights to build on the technology fails to implement it properly. Creative is planning to play the concept-mongers, a theory which gains ground with this statement from its email:
That would actually be the smarter choice because it sounds better. Just look at the Essence STX, Nichigon quality caps, shielded out put stage, a sweet DAC, and high performance op-amps what more does a modern man need in a sound card :)
Basically if you can live without, X-Fi, Creative drivers, EAX generation 99321321, and other insanely retard rebranded features such as the crystalizer which is only a stupid name for loudness (U-shaped EQ, because that simply cannot be recreated on any other sound card, hah!).
Who knows, maybe this will evolve to play host to HP's A.I project.
Lets not forget that Moore lawed himself.
Infra-red @ your head, like your name was Sarah Conner.
a) Is something that huge really likely to come from a company likeCreative vs. rather than one like Intel, Microsoft, IBM etc.
b) What's the likelyhood of something so big being kept so tightly under wraps all this time (as it should obviously have taken a a while to develop)
c) If it's on the grander side of things then it should be like btarunr said, something to license or sell to other companies... so why keep it under such tight wraps to announce it at the consumer electronic show? I mean, I've never been to one and I'm sure that there is a hell of a lot of pure tech stuff that's more useful to companies than consumers but if this truely relates back to how stemcells work wouldn't that make it a fairly significant scientific/enegineering breakthrough? So would the CES really be the most appropriate place to announce/showcase it?