Zii Not an Audio Processor, Something Much Bigger

[btarunr]

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.

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"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."
They say all that, and they name it Zii.


Seriously though, it sounds like the next generation of FPGA microchips, and those things are bloody powerful is implemented properly. I really want to know what this is now.

[1Kurgan1]

Crazy, be cool to hear more as the news unravels on what this thing can actually do.

[The Witcher]

Whats the bottom line ?

Will this help the games and computer hardware industry ?

That's all I care about right now

[DBH]

I'm guessing it makes use of biological transistors. They has been tinkering with this kinda tech a few years ago. Maybe something useful has been made out of it then?!

[francis511]

How big can it be ?

[moto666]

"How big can it be ?" - Said "RED" from Hellboy!

[R_1]

Is this some kind of media-processor with multipurpose application like GPGPU?

[Nick89]

Cant wait to see what it can do.

[blaznee]

One thing is for sure.. If it's a Creative Labs product it won't be Vista compatible :-P..

[francis511]

Maybe it will become self-aware and start seeing humans as the enemy !

[MAXLD]

Zii? How original...
Zii, Wii, Zen, Zune,... Looks like this is the "i" and "z" decade...

"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."

"...will in-turn unlock countless business opportunities based around the technology and its expansion."

How about spending some of that money in competent engineers and proper drivers instead? Yeah, I guess that's something "beyond our imagination"...

But I guess this is a good idea... for Creative. Invent something new, patent it and then "show me the money". Creative's reputation of wasting potential doesn't really give the highest expectations, and that's why I don't think this Zii hype worths that much.

[NamesDontMatter]

Originally Posted by blaznee

One thing is for sure.. If it's a Creative Labs product it won't be Vista compatible :-P..

lol nice one!

Zii . . . Wii ? Could they have done better with the naming here?

[qwerty_lesh]

so... in a few years time we'll have speakers and cards that only work when they feel like it??

[3870x2]

Originally Posted by qwerty_lesh

so... in a few years time we'll have speakers and cards that only work when they feel like it??

possibly.
Your hardware will have good days and bad days now.
this is going to make benchmarking pretty interesting.

[oli_ramsay]

Originally Posted by NamesDontMatter

l
Zii . . . Wii ? Could they have done better with the naming here?

They were gonna go with Zlaystation Zree or Zbox Z60, but that would of been stupid

[apheX?]

Originally Posted by btarunr

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.

I'm scared.

EDIT: Just thought, they called the company creative and they finally are being creative but the namme? They get a 1 yr old kid to name it? Bet that kid was just saying Wii but got mistaken for Zii.
Baby: "I want a Wii"
Parent: "Whats that? A Zii?, Your a genius!"

[Sasqui]

Al Gore didn't invent it, so it can't be that great

[lemonadesoda]

It's either FPGA microchip type architecture, or larrabee type architecture, or indeed just one of those low powered cell processors like in the playstation.

Nothing new other than audio processing no longer requires descrete silicon and functionality can be modded via firmware update.

FAIL

Why fail? Because Creative will NEVER get their software properly debugged and they will NEVER increase features without the consumer paying TWICE. Just like that whole saga with the guy who made Audigy compatible on Vista. Remember?

All I can say is Creative are great at spin, and are great at shifting
products to "consumers" in retail channels. Good for them. But for me... there are better products with better service/support.

[LittleLizard]

if that info is correct, what is going to happen is the same that happens to the quarians with the geth in mass effect :S:S:S

[bassmasta]

can someone help me find the RMA forms for this thing in advance? I want to be ready for the disappointment before it comes out.

[Bundy]

Originally Posted by MAXLD

Zii? How original...
Zii, Wii, Zen, Zune,... Looks like this is the "i" and "z" decade...

The silver lining for these names is that maybe we have seen the end of "extreme".

[PCpraiser100]

Ok, is this a tease for ASUS to be scared of?

[Mussels]

its probably some multipurpose programmable APU.

we have programmable GPU's and network cards (the Killer NIC) so they're probably doing the same. look mah, EAX 7.0 with ZERO cpu usage! want more outputs? buy a new module, we'll do the work in 'software' oh look a new dolby standard is out, lets just give you all a softawre update (For $50 USD) that lets it work!

bah, they havent told us shit.

[btarunr]

No, it's silicon that can reproduce, and grow in a "nurtient medium", just like how cells do.