Was gonna blog about Creative’s new Zii chip that was launched at the CES gizmo show yesterday, but realised its site is actually down. Another PR snafu?
The company has smartly hyped up the Zii as something to do with “stem-cell computing”, driving up hits at techie sites by making them guess what Zii actually was.
Unfortunately, a problematic site is surely not the best way to launch such an important chip that is aimed at turning around Creative’s flagging fortunes of late.
What exactly is Zii? We have no real idea. But Creative calls it stem-cell computing. So at first we thought – WOW maybe Creative is moving to the life sciences industry and scored some deal with some big pharmas. But it’s not.
The new system-on-chip, so-called because you can run nice embedded software on it, is expected to be massively scalable, green in terms of power consumption and most importantly, powerful enough for playing rich media.
Called ZMS-05, it appears to be aimed at devices of the future – be it a netbook, cellphone or portable media player – that will handle all the rich media that will come our way.
Creative claims it can scale up from 10Gigaflops to Petaflops (floating point operation per second) in terms of processing power.
Early partners include MSI, of MSI Wind Netbook fame, and as reported by VR-Zone, Creative itself.
Does Sim Wong Hoo have another winner on his hands to turn Creative around once more, as he has done with his accurate bet on MP3 players in the past?
It remains to be seen, of course. But it’s good to see the company going back to R&D to create a niche for itself, after that costly marketing battle with Apple over the by-now commoditised MP3 player market.
At least this effort, out from the geeky corridors of 3DLabs, that expensive graphics chip firm that Creative bought, appears to be some real core IP that the company can use.
But is it another SoundBlaster chip on the cards? Sim will certainly hope so.
the demand for embedded software these days are getting higher and higher.:”.
Hello Mr Siew,
bet you are looking forward to reviewing the new Creative products like Zii Sports and Zii Fit.
I won’t say that these proposed products are Zii-mote prospects, but I’ll like to take a swing at them too sometime in future.
And for all those cynics, do remember that Zii Best Is Yet To Be.
Hi, the site is up now. But it’s poorly designed. I’m forced to sit through a long-winded video intro clip which doesn’t tell me anything.
I think “stemcell computing” is a poor choice for the new chip because it’s a controversial subject in many countries. It will unnecessarily distract consumers from the product, no matter how wonderful it is.
Creative’s marketing department cocks up again.
I beg to differ, Creative’s bet on mp3 players was a poor one. It may be the world’s 2nd largest maker, but margins are poor.
It made its fame on the Soundblaster and haven’t had a bona fide hit since then.