In-person demos of Creative Labs new Zii

Borrowing a marketing idea from Nintendo, the Zii platform – pronounced like zee – is system-on-a-chip processor technology that essentially hands the intelligence of the CPU over to software. Creative calls this concept “stemcell computing” which is a name that’s sure to remind people of the debate over stemcell research. Yet, the idea is sound and makes sense for a company that has struggled to keep up with Apple in terms of entertainment devices. In fact, ZiiLabs is a new company created with 3DLabs to promote scalability in hardware design. A new processor could be smaller than your fingernail, run at 10 gigaflops, yet uses less power than modern processors. At the Creative booth, we witnessed several demostrations including a cool 3D virtualization environment that looked like something that would run on a PlayStation 3.

The "more power, less power" paradigm is interesting because there is a definite trend for smaller devices, such as a pocket video player that lasts all week or a music player that can handle uncompressed audio with ease. The stemcell concept borrows from the idea in the human body that there are a multitude of tiny “programmable” cells that think intelligently. Hardware developers have partnered with ZiiLabs to develop new products in 2009, including MicroStar International, Perception digital, F&S Electronic, MediaNet, ASTAK, PowerLinux and Grandeye.