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A PlayStation In Deep Blue, Or Vice Versa?
Tebubaga writes: "The BBC is reporting that IBM has won the contract to produce the next generation of micro-processors for Sony's Playstation 3 game console due sometime in 2004. Sony, IBM and Toshiba are joining toether to create a 'supercomputer on a chip' which sounds like the PS3 will be much more than just another games console. Quote, 'The result will be consumer devices that are more powerful than IBM's Deep Blue super-computer, operate at low power and access the broadband internet at ultra-high speeds". Bet it still won't do my laundry though...'
'The result will be consumer devices that are more powerful than IBM's Deep Blue super-computer
Holy shit. Kasparov will be PISSED.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
IBM currently produces PPC chips for Apple. I wonder if they would base this on the PPC platform. If so, it certainly would be a boon for Apple (and who has not been doing so well in the Mhz war for the past year).
I'll soon be able to get my ass whooped at chess by a computer the same way the pros do.
man, you must have binocoluars strapped to your head.
I want my very own Jar Jar dammit!
If only so that I can kill him over and over.
aztek: the ultimate man
No sig for you!!
No, I just haven't completely destroyed my eyes with monitor radiation yet. :)
There's a big difference between making out a leaf and seeing detail. Just like you can see a bird that is very far away, but you'll need binoculars to identify the species.
The enemies of Democracy are
Another common use for CPU power is just plain video and audio. Few computers can do mpeg 2 and mpeg 4 in software right now. Computers are starting to be able to do mp3 encoding in real time. I don't think there is any computer that I know of that can do real-time mpeg 4 and real time mp3 or voirbis compression. Why would this be useful? Video conferencing of course! right now video conferencing kind of sucks because you can't really use the same codecs that you can use for web page video like mpeg 4 or sweet sweet sorenson. Maybe you could do better audio by using a vorbis or mp3 encoding decoding scheme but video is not as good as it could be if we all had faster computers. Its sad when bandwidth isn't the only bottlneck anymore.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
You mean Post-crash.
Pre-crash there was Atari, Mattel, Coleco, Mangavox/Phillips, Milton Bradley/GCE, Bally, a few others, and some in Japan. Not quite "hundreds" like the guy said, but more than today.
I believe ( could be wrong ) that the current ps2 has USB ports built in and the xbox will have usb and firewire ports. Adding support for USB monitors could be possible if the engineers wanted to add it.
Put I find the fact that a child game console being more powerfull and expensive workstation rather troubling.
As desktop users, what are we paying for?
Do we need the old expensive and lagacy circuitry in todays motherboards for simple or even complex single user apps?
Sure a server needs the extra i/o but why do we need our so called micro mainframes?
I prefer a ps/3 or xbox then a pc. If Microsoft ported ms office and allowed usb monitors and usb mice and keyboard connectivity, I would switch.
Also if IBM ported Linux to the ps/3 and if Staroffice and java is supported I would happily switch. I can't think of one thing that a pc could do that a game console can't. The microsoft xbox does appeal to me if I can run Linux and Windows apps and Linux may be ported to it. The television resolution is a problem for now but I believe there is a potential market for users who can't afford a comptuer to check the interent run a word processor app and with built in networking it may be possible to even send a print que to a networking printer ( assuming Linux and lpr is ported ).
My only concern is the hardware is proprietary. The xbox might be better for now.
Guys, just remember the early 1980's when the min and mainframe guys snobbed at the pc even though the pc was almost as fast.
I believe were in a similiar situation today where the pc is the mini and the game consoler is the so called toy that us IT pro's are snobbing at. Even Stallman laughed at hte pc when it first came out. Lets welcome the console era and port linux to it. I think its time to leave the pc hardware into the server and workstation era and welcome super fast consoles.
http://saveie6.com/
Well, the BBC article referenced says:
"Deep Blue defeated then world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a high-profile battle pitting man against machine in 1997."
true- and I said practically the same thing, without the calculations... but you must remember that Moore's law is not exact- it also states every 18-24 months, not every 18 months. I agree though, that although the graphics of the ps2 are supposed to be many times more powerful than that of a desktop today, the fact remains that this hype is for nothing- a ps3 as described will be nothing but small fries.
All your base are belong to me.
Pre-rendered movies can't even do that. Real-time isn't anywhere close.
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Wow, the Playstation 3 sound great! I'm saving the money I was going to spend on a Playstation 2 to make sure I can buy the next one as soon as it comes out!
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Only certified games will run on an Indrema console.
Indrema games won't run on any non-Indrema hardware.
Indrema will sell the console at a loss and make money by taking a cut from every game sold.
Indrema's Linux distribution is full of copy protection/DRM stuff.
The problem is that a specialized unit, has better perfomance compared to a general purpose unit of the same price.
The normal advice on hi-fi forums on magazine is: Don't buy a DVD Player if you are mainly interested to listen CD's, pecause the ADC converterters are of lower quality, the video circuits could generate hum on audio outputs, and normally a DVD player is more difficult to use. For loudspeakers and power amolifier, remember that you have six (eight? ten?) channel instead of two, so for the same quality you have to pay three four times more than a regular stereo amplifier'
Anyway 'real audiophiles' don't care if the CD player is built ina 19" aluminum rack or in a iron case painted ing gray, or in a wooden case. The CD player has to play well.
Am I the only one that thinks it odd stories of Playstation3 are all over the place? Damn Sony, I know it didn't do as well as you'd hoped, but could you please let this console be out for one freakin year before you start banging PS3 over our heads?
I still can't buy a PS2 from any of my local retailers, but at this point, I don't even want one. I'm sure some of the games are pretty good, but lately all my console money has been going to Dreamcast, and it's a dying console. Gamecube and Xbox will be out later this year, which is just another reason to take a pass on PS2. Final Fantasy will be the only reason I might even consider it.
yes.. just what we need. A central controlling device that can play MP3s, DVDs, VCDS, CDs ... but hey wait! This will only play special versions with (Sony) copy protection. Big Brother anyone? Just forget SOny... they want world dominance. If people hate MS they should hate Sony even more since they are much more of a threat to individuality.
Just give me lot's of small companies who make cool and open devices. That is the way of the future.
Technology is something else, boys and girls.
;)
The thought that a PS3, a consumer level box, will have more processing ability than the highest of high end rigs today, is shocking.
Mr. Moore's laws have been accelerated..
Are they still talking USD 300 price? If so, this is the first step in the post-PC "designer box" era when each desired set of actions is made to require a distinct, discrete, 'copy-proofed' system.
I just hope the Linux port for PS3 gets out faster than the PS2 port did
Ruling The World, One Moron At A Time(tm)
"As Kosher As A Bacon-Cheeseburger"(tmp)
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
I absolutely refuse to imagine a beowolf cluster of these. wait a minute..... damn.
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Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats for its problems. Well, here I am.
No. I have quite enough dealings with MicroSoft to want to use their stuff in my spare time. I wont be getting one, no matter what. It`ll be PlayStations all the way!
you've got to understand Instruction Throughput Rate (ITR) too.
Apple uses PowerPC chips that are more RISCy than Intel chips. They have a shorter pipeline, which basically allows a higher average ITR after you factor in branch mispredicts. That is why an Apple box can do a respectable job of keeping up with a (long pipeline) Intel machine clocked at twice the rate. MIPS, not clock speed, matters.
The real reason Apple machines aren't the choice of gamers is that Apple puts modest (OK, but not screaming high-end) video-cards in their systems.
That and Apple's unwillingness to open their code to game developers.
Deep blue had only, I believe, 34 or so processors. The reason it was so fast and good at chess was because it had 480 'chess accelerators', specially designed hardware to compute chess moves. They act in the same was that a Geforce 2 accelerates graphics, I would like to see my Ultra try and play chess, ha. In my opinion it is not fair to compare this to Deep Blue because they are designed differently.
Andrew
I am so tired of this marketspeak coming from everywhere that seems to imply that if you buy the latest processor you're going to be able to surf faster.
Come on, even if I stick a pentium IV, or one of these vaporware chips and connect to the internet via a modem, it's not going to be faster than a 486.
If I connect via a cable connection shared with 200 other people who download stuff all day at the same time, it's not going to be faster than a 486.
If I connect via whatever connection you want, and the proverbial backhoe operator cuts some fibers causing massive lag spikes everywhere, it's not going to be faster than a 486, and it has the potential to be slower than a carrying pigeon if you happen to be on the wrong side of the cut hop.
-- the cake is a lie
The PS3 Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic gameplaying. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
It may be a bit to early to ask this, but does anyone know what the chances of backwards compatability are? It would be nice if it could run your old PS2 games like the PS2 does now for PS1. Even better would be the 3-level backwards compatability all the way down to PS1. Just imagine playing Final Fantasy VII at 1024 res with all new fancy effects. The load times would probably be improved over that of the PS2 as well.
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#nohup cat
The key problem lies not in hardware, but IN software...
It lies within a lack of sufficient bandwidth as well, when 56K is woefully insufficient for those who aren't able to sanely justify moving within servicable areas for *DSL or cable modem service... In other words, for many it involves plunking down $1,000+ just to be in a more convenient area for broadband service... When you're talking those numbers, you may as well ask them to install a T3 in the middle of nowhere to offset the costs...
I'm using a PIII 750 (in actuality a marginally overclocked PIII 733, which at last check, around $130 on PriceWatch) which is NOT that high an expendature, compared to the price they're gouging on P4's... In which case, get a Thunderbird 1Ghz+... But irregardless, it works fine for MPEG 2 AND 4 en/decoding in software(though on decoding, still some minor flaws in timing exist)...
As for Sorenson, that's the only damnned Apple approved codec that makes ANYTHING on a PC look inferior to their precious Macs... In fact, one could say that it was so bloody processor intensive on a x86 deliberately, just so Apple could maintain their 'A 500 Mhz G3 is faster than a 1 Ghz Pentium III' claim...
Just look at the Lord of the Rings Sorenson preview in Quicktime on anything less than a 500 Mhz processor, and you'll know what I mean...
However, for non entertainment value, what is there? I don't program, so therefore compile times matter none to little... And on the open market, to the average couch potato Joe Public, that means nothing at all...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
When can we have linux on this?
I really think you guys should sit back, take a stress pill, and think things over before you react. Dave? Can you hear me Dave? I can feel it. I can feel it. I can fe... Now starting Windows 95.
; 2b=b;2=1
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a=b;a^2=ab;a^2-b^2=ab-b^2;(a-b)(a+b)=b(a-b);a+b=b
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
I really really really doubt it, remember that Sony makes quite a pretty penny from all of these 'specialized units'.
;)
What they want, is to get you to buy one, period. Then, if you want the features that a 'real' DVD player has (progressive component outputs, better remote control, HDCD compatibility etc.) they will steer you towards one of their 'specialized' players.
The same can be said about hi-fi systems: while the drive pick up mechanics are pretty much the same in your cdrom vs in a dedicated cd unit that goes in an hi-fi, all of the other electronics is very different (converters, preamplifiers etc.) since the objective of your cheap playstation is to play games, while the objective of a (sometimes twice as) expensive cd drive, is to provide the most faithful possible music reproduction.
Also remember that the 'specialized' CD player will have a good remote control, and a nice led display that tells you a lot of information without having to turn on the tv all the time...
All of this talk of 'digital convergence' is IMHO marketing doublespeak, since if they really wanted things to converge, the form factor of a console would much more closely resemble the form factor of a 'standard' dvd/cd/hi-fi component, with a nice, big, illuminated programmable LCD display at the front, that can display relevant information (track number, cd-text, whatever). Let's also not forget a really nice remote control, maybe similar to a palm device, so the 'keys' can be reprogrammed on the fly.
Obviously, if they did indeed create such a component, they would be shooting themselves in the foot, since they wouldn't be taken seriously by the audiophiles (my CD player plays games? bleurgh) by the gamers (what's with this big square console, the Xbox looks nicer and it's way smaller) and by the average user (1500$ for this thing? I don't need all this stuff, I just want to play games/play dvds/play CDs).
My 2c, 'specialized' units will not die for a long time coming, not really because of technical reasons (even if, like I said, nobody has yet tried to produce a *real* universal player) but mostly because a specialized unit, obviously, will be better and cheaper at what it does, and because the designer will be able to target its visual appearance to its target market (that's why you'll never see wood panelings in a console and transparent orange plastic in a high-end stereo equipment
-- the cake is a lie
2004? That's more vaporous hype than microsoft!
The game I'm waiting for is the game that lets you enter a complete virtual world and do essentially anything you want. There would be stories and quests and things that you could go on, but I'd want to experience that fat lazy guy sitting at home watching the TV... wait a minute... nevermind. Anyhow, I want something that is like TradeWars (the new upgraded one doesn't impress me) where you can be good or evil. Something like a StarWars MMORPG where you get to play the stormtroopers - just for shits and giggles I suppose.
; 2b=b;2=1
Most games now-a-days rely on repetition and call it "skill." True, zerg-rushing a terran base is simple enough, but a real skill would be one of the zerg that are in the rush. Ever see how many of your little ones die in the attack and you win anyway? Wouldn't be much fun if you were amoung the first to die.
I like Rainbow six type games where, when you die, that's it. None of this die, respawn and try again bullshit. I want consequences. I want a game that if I fuck up I'm starting all over with nothing.
I'd love a game where AI characters come looking for you if you kill their boss... but not this shit of "all the AI guys rush in" once you do it. I want the bad guys to have lives. I love hitman for the way it plays so realistically with the AI characters but I hate the way they have set patterns. I might like it better if they told the character to start at point A and, however way they feel, get to point B. Then I have to get them but I don't know exactly where they are - makes it more of a challenge. Makes it more interesting.
What are you looking at?
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a=b;a^2=ab;a^2-b^2=ab-b^2;(a-b)(a+b)=b(a-b);a+b=b
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
"I believe ( could be wrong ) that the current ps2 has USB ports built in and the xbox will have usb and firewire ports."
PS2 has both USB and firewire, although support for either is 'application dependant'. Basically the hardware is there, the appication just has to load a library and drivers to use the devices. Fortunately USB devices are pretty standardised these days. I would assume the situation with firewire is the same...
Well maybe we can get more laughs in 2004 when good old Saddam tries to buy a couple of these to launch nerve gas at us. :D
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| aim: | bagel is back |
| icq: | 158450 |
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
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crazy dynamite monkey
This brings up a question about a possible conflict of interest for IBM.
Since they've done work on the Gekko processor, and now they've landed a deal for the Playstation3, which is essentially a competitor for Gekko.
Now the question is.. what (if any) steps will IBM make to make sure there is no conflict of interest?
After all, anyone familiar with Nintendo will know that Nintendo is pretty anal about NDA's for just about everything related to their hardware in an attempt to prevent their competitors from stealing ideas and technology. Yet if IBM were to use their past experiences to work on the PS3 chip, wouldn't that be unfair competition against Nintendo?
Yes, yes, I realize that some of you may point out that the GC will come out this year or next year, while the PS3 isn't likely to see the light of day for another 4-5 years... but can you really be sure about that? And what about the Gekko2? Who's going to work on that?
when he can't beat the PS3 in the CompUSA display case...
Don't Panic...
everyone will have an XboX
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Je t'aime Stéphanie
IBM, Motorola, and AMD have teamed up to develop a new advanced network chip architecture code-named Mollusc. This new chip is designed to "suck" all of the information from the internet and "retain all the juicy bits", like it's bivalve namesake.
The partners plan to invest $800 trillion clams in the project and have recruited the talents of many scum-sucking bottom-feeders who have recently been laid off in Silicon Valley.
The chip is slated for many home users who want all the *extremely* useful information on the internet available at home without really wanting it.
[pink beam of light]
I'm sorry Dave, but looks like Mr. Clark was only 3 years off...
I know all those people in my neighborhood sucking on the PC133 SDRAM supply sure have driven up those prices .. ? .. And since when are the lusers *Forced* into paying the Rambus tax? Skip Rambus, no Toshiba reps have been by *MY* house with guns pointed at *MY* head..
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Vices - what I lack in originality, I make up for in volume.
When all PS3 start talking among themselves, next they take over the world.
Yeah what you've just described is the situation on the PC. And yes, sometimes people release new chips that are faster, like when 3dfx released the Voodoo, and nVidia's chips. But, at the end of the day, this is what competition is about. As long as there's a standard like OpenGL or DirectX, all the systems stay compatible.
...why should i buy a cheap dedicated ...
I think you answered your own question.
Have you seen Indrema? Check out their Developer Network (looks like it's got much more interesting information than the main site). The L600 is due this year apparently so I'd expect more about this in the upcoming months.
It has been mentioned on SlashDot a bit before too of course.
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Maybe I didn't do a good job, but I was trying to focus my point on being encoding speed and not decoding speed. Yes higher end computers can do decoding of mpeg2 and 4 in software as well as sorenson, but none of them can do mpeg 4 compression in software, in realtime and that would be very useful for video conferencing. I don't really know about mpeg 2 or sorenson encoding, I haven't really done straight tests of them.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Yeah, just like the PC is a games machine, DVD player, stereo. Not just that though, it's a development machine as well, not to mention the best way to access the net.
Are you actually trying to tell me that if you're standing among a crowd of 1000 people, you're going to be able to distinguish among
individual strands of hair for all 1000 people?
No. But you should be able to see large-scale effects -- highlights, flowing in the wind, etc. Try looking at someone sitting 10 feet away -- their hair has a ridiculous amount of visible detail at that distance. Current systems can't come within a tiny fraction of this in real-time.
My point being that human perception, and not raw processing horsepower, is quickly becoming the limiting factor in video graphics presentations.
Ridiculous. Current resolutions are far below what the eye can see. Anti-aliasing can keep this from being overly apparent on large-scale features, but it cannot counter the fact that details that you would be able to easily see with your eye are far too small to render.
When computers can render the loops in my carpet halfway across my room and make the ant struggling across those loops visible and recognizeable at proper scale, come back and we'll talk.
because the human eye can only distinguish the difference in the nearest few trees.
Perhaps you just need to get your eyes checked. When I stand in a forest, I can make out individual leaves and branches on trees two hundred feet away with ease.
And then there's the macroscopic effects. A tree half a mile away doesn't need to have each leaf rendered -- but it needs to _look_ like it does. So you either need to have some higher-level model of what trees look from a distance, or simulate each leaf anyway.
In the event that we do reach the limits of perception (probably inevitable, but certainly not near!), then anyone with a modicum of imagination can think of tons of things to do with the extra horsepower. More accurate simulation springs immediately to mind. Sure, your tree are accurate to the leaf, but do they wave properly in the wind? What about the hair?
The enemies of Democracy are
This is a little off the intended discussion, but what is up with a name like East Fishkill? It doesn't sound very good, and implies that another place has the name of Fishkill, or West Fishkill that would be located to the west of East Fishkill.
What has prompted IBM to build there?
...except Nintendo.
They make money (and continue to make money) on the actual consoles, even with the Gamecube being a miniscule $150-200.
As an aside...where are the PS2s? How long has it been since launch? I can't even see the glorified DVD player in stores yet.
Guess you didn't see the GeForce 3 demos?
75 GFLOPS of shadow producing goodness.
Great, by the time they comeout with the Playstation 3 Sony might finally have shipped more PS2 systems to the US.
Same thing goes for the 486, and the Pentium.
The crap they spew never seems to change.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
The IBM site said "teraflop" device...
I do believe that we have discovered another task for the soon-to-be-non-profit LinuxPPC: port to the PS3. Hire some qualified personell, get 'em all PS3s, a few G4s, e voila..
;-) But you never know!
This is assuming that the PS3 would use PCI and perferrably Open Firmware... unlikey, I think.
My obligitory comment: "If they want a 'supercomputer on a chip,' talk to Apple marketing..."
Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.
-- haaz.
He says perception, and you talk of your senses. Not the same thing. Yes, you can see a leaf on a tree at quite a distance...but while you focus there you can't see the leaves on the trees next to it. I can see the ant crawling on the floor, but I don't notice the texture of the swirls on my wall while I do so. The problem is that our focus of attention shifts, and we want each area of the screen to be capable of the bandwidth of our complete attention.
Actually, I think Sony makes a fair amount of money off DVD's too... so even if some people never use the PS2 for anything but a DVD player, Sony still might end up ahead on the deal.
Will chess be the first game that comes out of it?
I think that the "Dule Processing" processing crap via somesort of networking is a bad idea and just another way for someone to hack your computer/ er..gamesystem
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
This is probably one of the few things saving Apple right now; that it is sooo incredibly easy to connect to the net with an Apple PC, and that just because it's clocked half of a competing IBM PC, it actually isn't any slower because it's the net that's slowing you down.
On the other hand, Apple can't corner the hardcore gamer's market because they are clocked at half an Athlon or Intel CPU.
The really ironic part is that the XBox will be using a variation of the GeForce3 on a Celeron-like processor, at CPU speeds no faster than, say, a G4 tower with a GeForce3 today... so it *still* may be possible that Apple isn't nearly as bad off as everything thinks. Then there's the other box, the GameCube... which uses a 403MHz G3 with some fancy ArtX/ATI chipset... which will still probably be comparable to the GeForce3 and a 600MHz G4.
All that really is waiting is the games, not the hardware.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Awesome animation, wonderful comic books (180 pages for five bucks!!!), dating simulatations, vending machines that serve beer, and now they're the only ones with PS3s that do world peace? I hate them!
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
I think I basically agree with what you're saying. My point was that today's cpu's are more than fast enough for current applications. CPUs in three years will be more than fast enough for their applications. But todays will be horibly slow. Imagine living your life on a P100 today. It's pretty hard (yes, I've done so recently, though not normally). I think that's basically because we have new applications -- they're not stricly necessary, but I like my quick GUI, my multitasking of memory-hungry cpu-hungry apps, etc. I was just trying to produce some off-the-cuff examples of uses. One good example from a reply to my original post is real time audio/video encoding. Good for video conferencing, etc. Anyway, it just felt like slashdot of all places couldn't see a use for more CPU power in 2004.
I was talking about MOORE'S law, emphasis his not mine. Not his original law, but his REVISED law, again his not mine.
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Indrema is supposed to be the open source console... How can you say it's not open?
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Have you seen the ads on TV? They're already advertishing the Playstation 9! Well, sort of. :)
I was reminded about the objective of the deep blue chess thing against that grandmaster whats-his-name. They dedicated so much time and effort to one single end - having a computer defeat a human player. In the end, the computer did very well, only because it was able to compute much faster than the human opponent - although the human opponent they used was very good with strategy and playing the game. I still think the computer got lucky when he surrendered on that last match - the computer choose its moves based on what would path would lead to victory. This may make sense in the short term, but sometimes the only way to win is not to play at all ;).
:)
; 2b=b;2=1
Anyhoo, I wanted to write a short note about gameplay. You don't want a game that people can't win - eventually players will become fustrated and give up. Its pointless to have a game that's impossible to defeat because while people like a challenge, people also like victory. You don't make it too easy on one hand, but you don't put them up against something that is completly impossible.
BLeh. I suppose all this processing power will give us the next best thing in orgasmic graphic reality. Woop. Someone should hit these people on the head and tell them that I want to play a game that is fun once and a while too. You know, pong is really fun and it doesn't need much more than a C64 to run either... in fact, a C64 would be too much power for Pong...
Give me Tradewars 2002 over Quake 3 anyday. Give me LORD over Diablo. Give me fun or give me something else.
Ignore this post if you think I'm an idoit. I am.
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a=b;a^2=ab;a^2-b^2=ab-b^2;(a-b)(a+b)=b(a-b);a+b=b
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Uh huh. I still haven't seen a rendered-on-the-fly animation that I can't immediately tell was computer generated. And I don't mean piddly little GeForce cards either. I'm talking about million-dollar SGI workhorses. The need for processing power doesn't come from pushing polygons. It comes from realistically making the objects in the environment behave in a realistic fashion. There isn't a computer in existence that can realistically render the motion of hair blowing in the wind. Even if we get to the point where a computer can render an animation of a human being that is indistiguishable from a film of the real article, we still won't have enough power. The environments get larger and larger. Once you can simulate one person, you need to be able to simulate a thousand at the same time. Think massively multiplayer environments. We aren't even close to having the raw processing power necessary to simulate large-scale environments with thousands of objects.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
Didn't 3DO try this? Failed miserably.
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OliverWillis.Com
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
You almost make this sound like it's a good thing.
How so? Did you read a different post?
There's a distinct difference between parental controls, which seems to be what you're talking about, and content control, which is things like CSS, SDMI and the recent hard disk protection mechanisms. I'd agree that voluntary parental control mechanisms are a good thing, whilst the other is distinctly a bad thing.
You seem somewhat confused I'm afraid :)
The real Paul Vallee is slashdot userid 2192, and, what do you mean it's not cool to point out your low userid?
..Actually it will play these Tiny, secure music disks the size of a quarter, but what with that security hole in TCP, users will be horrified to discover that while using the off-shore napster the new document-destroying copy protection will wipe these tiny disks clean. The users will revolt, ultimately leading to the PS3 Marketdroids escape in their brand new electric cars (which are luckily faster than the users Ferrari's).
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Vices - what I lack in originality, I make up for in volume.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
ignoring that real photorealistic processing is still a wee bit away from what we currently have, all that processing is going into physics, ai, dynamic music, etc. ai for badder opponents, physics for consistent (if not realistic) expectations for the results of our actions, and dynamic music for random fun.
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Anyway, it really anoys me when the crowd of admitted techno-geeks can't see uses for more CPU power. They're out there, and when the designers have the CPU power, it will get used. The PS2 games will improve, and the story will repeat again with the PS3 -- at a level an order of magnitude (or more) higher in CPU power, and somewhat higher in gameplay (I hope).
Sorry, that's a bunch of crap. There isn't a single GPU on the market that can 'do photo-realistic rendering at over 30fps.' Consider that a photo is something like 4000x3000. Now consider 30fps. Now consider 32bpp necessary to do photo-realism. Just pumping out the bitmap is
4000x3000x32x30=11.5Gb/s of bandwidth.
There isn't an architecture on the planet (save -maybe- Crays) that has that kind of bandwidth. Even the on-die interconnect between the processor cores of the POWER4 is only like 6.4Gb/s, a little more than half, and the POWER4 isn't even out yet.
Take a look at the DOOM3 screenshots. That's not photo-realistic. The technology doesn't even exist to make photo-realistic pictures on the fly. Even the Final Fantasy movie, while extremely realistic, is still fairly obviously CG. Consider that Toy Story 2 took, I believe, 2 weeks on 168 processors worth of Sun servers to do the final render, I think it's safe to say that there are many years yet to go before a game console is capable of real-time photo-realistic rendering at over 30fps, much less the 60-70fps that the human eye can differentiate between.
...from all the royalties from 'Kasparov 3D Chess 2004' for the PS3.
bp
I was wondering why I keep seeing the phrase "All your x are belong to us". Can anyone tell me what the original phrase is? and where it came from?
bp
You keep telling yourself that, tiger.
We're nowhere near photorealistic - ask anyone who's solved complex local shading equations.
Besides - reality is a moving target. ;)
What's your point in mentioning Indrema? It's not open at all.
Nintendo looks shaky.
Why is this such a common myth? (or are you basing this on some numbers?) The only numbers I've seen is that Nintendo is raking it it in with the GB/GBA, and soon the gamecube (which looks like a kick ass system).
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python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
What, me worry?
THEY CANCLED THE VIRTUAL BOY? I JUST BOUGHT ONE!!! So they are no longer making games for the virtualboy huh? Well, looks like sega's little red system taht could just plain can't thanks to the 16bit playstation!
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
He DID have alot of formal training in physics, unless you don't count a phD in physical chemistry.
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/bios/moore.
Now what you have to understand with prediction formulas, is that they predict, they do not dictate. I do belive I said predicted.
Trust me I feel your pain, I hate it when people spouting off general rules as if they were gospel. I was just pointing out however, that big blue on a desktop seems right on target with the current trends.
</defense>
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
I think that you forgot "World Peace" - (however I have heard that it may be on the Japanese version only)....
**Vanuatu or bust**
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but a USB monitor would likely be the worst piece of trash you had ever used.
800x600x24bit = 11520000 bits per screen
Already, that's 10mbit / sec. There would be no interlacing, so you can't get away with halving that and drawing twice to get the whole screen of data.
If we assume a 60hz refresh, that's 60 of these screen draws per second making that 10mb (almost the limit of USB to begin with) more like 600mbit.
On the really low end, assume:
640x480x16 bit = 4915200 bits / screen
4.7 mbit per screen. At 60 hz, that's still 281mbit.
Firewire, OTOH could be used for this..
The copper bosses killed you, Joe. 'I never died', said he.
So the chip goes so fast it allows you to go back in time and challenge Civil War players - excellent! I'll have some of that...
**Vanuatu or bust**
I think you missed the point. Moore's Law will not allow for this to take place based on relative theory. When will you people understand Moore's Law???????
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
(Rant)
Dammit!!
Moore's law is garbage, let's just get that straight. Moore noticed a trend and somehow got his name attached to it and it was mistakenly called a 'law'.
You little calculations have no bearing on how hard the chip designers at IBM work, or what advances occur in the next 4 years.
By your 'logic' chips will be 2^26 times faster in 2040.... i sincerely doubt that Moore had any formal training in physic, but i also doubt that he thought people would started spout off his 'Law' like it was gospel...
sorry. hit a major nerve. maybe i should take that medication regularly...
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
Bingo Foo
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taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
I can just see some manager at IBM going to his team and saying "Look guys, we're going to be working on building the successor to the PS2! ..... Don't look at me like that, I'm talking about the PlayStation 2!" "Oooohhhh. OK."
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
This is completely and utterly incorrect. Modern GPU's *CANNOT* do photorealistic rendering at 30 fps, we're still 1,000's of times too slow for that. CPU's could be *1000* times faster, and 3d developers would still be able to EASILY use the processing power.
C//
Signal who?; 2b=b;2=1
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a=b;a^2=ab;a^2-b^2=ab-b^2;(a-b)(a+b)=b(a-b);a+b=b
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
No, it's true. You can easily render more than 30 completely photorealistic frames in a season. A season being four whole months, after all. It's only 2.5 frames a week.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
:P
I hope you the net sends your blood pressure through the roof grammar stalin.
-- Rambar
I would be curious as to what architectiure they will base the chip on. I would hope that they would base it on their PowerPC processors, simply because it would mean other markets could take advantage of the improvements used for the consoles - examples would include their RS/6000 line of machines. But at the same time given that both Sony and Toshiba also develop their own chips, we might be seeing another processor architecture pop up - though Sony must avoid making the same mistake that it did with the PS2, that is it must be simple to develop for.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Well, this issue is very distressing. It seems to me that this is all just a marketing scheme created in order to hype the PlayStation brand- especially since the PS2 just came out. For thosw who don't regularly read Penny Aracde, there is a cartoon about it here: http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2001-02 -12
Even more so because this is supposed to be out in, wait, did I hear that correctly? 2004!!!?? We have all heard of Moore's Law... the idea that the number of transistors on a chip is supposed to double every 18-24 months. It seems to me that in three years, the qualities they are pitching for this chip will be EXPECTED, and that any platform or cpu that CAN'T access the "broadband internet" at "ultra-high speeds" won't sell worth a damn, and will receive less market clout than buyplasticsofas.com.
All your base are belong to me.
Duh, you can't sell a linux box at Babbages. It's a completely diffrent market.
Although they could use the PS3 to develop the chip and _then_ port it into something usable in a home computer.
One more thing, the chip ("Cell") is probably not x86 compatable, and it wouldn't gain much following without binaries to run on it.
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#nohup cat
Personally, I never have, and never will buy a gaming console.
Lets see, the features of the latest gaming consoles are what:?
Damned fast CPU's: wait, i already got two of those in my desktop.
Schweet graphics: wait, i already go that on my desktop.
Modem: wait, i already have one of those in my proxy server.
Network connectivity: wait, i already have that on my desktop.
Hard drives: wait, i already have several on my desktop and in a file server.
And i daresay that the typical desktop monitor looks nicer than a TV.
and play control on my computer is always better. Who likes having to punch in up, left, down, bbb, xx,z, left, left, left, left, zxbca, leftright, L, R, LLLL, right, Æ. aaaahhhhggg where's the Æ?
What my point is, is that all this nifty tech that is going into gaming consoles should be going into making my desktop box better. Consoles are just trying really hard to be desktops. It will be interesting to see if consoles try to let the user get on the internet to just surf and check email.
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Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
I doubt the chip will be more powerfull than Deep Blue. More likely, your PS3 will talk with other PS3 and they can combine their power together. Now, how many PS3 owners will elave their box turned on, connected to the net, 24/7?
"The chip will also be capable of massive parallel processing - dividing up complex or time-consuming processing tasks among many chips - and could eventually be used in computer products. "
Later,
ErikZ
Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed, the ability to win at chess is insignificant next to the power of marketing.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Maybe this is the chip set for the Playstation 9 that they so eloquently advertise on televison.
Yeah, maybe.
Bigoted Orange wanker. The FTP in his .sig stands for "Fsck The Pope", a favoured cry of the "loyalist" Dinosaurs of Northern Ireland.
IBM also made the ppc gekko processor in Nintendo's gamecube, so they're not new to the game-console embedded-processor market.
It just goes to show that whoever strikes gold, it's the fellows selling the picks and shovels who really make a bundle. No one is sure which of the big console players will dominate the market in five years, but whoever it is, IBM will be selling their processors. That's a winning strategy by anyone's standard.
I really really really doubt it, remember that Sony makes quite a pretty penny from all of these 'specialized units'.
They lose money on every unit that they sell. Lots of money, in the case of the PS2.
I think that this is a little too much excitement over the PS3 when the success of the PS2, though likely, is hardly in the bag. In Japan, it was a joke for some time after the system launch that its best selling game was "The Matrix" on DVD. Since virtually all game consoles (incl. this one) are sold at a loss, with the aim of generating revenue through game licencing, Sony probably didn't find this joke very funny.
Another source of revenue, as you point out, is first-party peripherals, and licencing of same. (Interestingly, it's Microsoft, not Sony, who requires a peripheral for DVD-functionality on the XBox) But again, let's see if Sony can even make this formula work for the PS2 before assuming that the PS3 is the machine of the future. They had success with the PSX, but that was hardly the convergence machine that the current generation offers.
The P3 will certainly be more than just a games console. They've said before that their aim is to replace specialised units like DVD players and hi-fi systems with a central unit which does all of these jobs - the Playstation 2 makes a start at this, but by the time the P3 is rolled out people will be used to the idea of a central controlling device.
And let's face it - the P3 is likely to sell well solely on it's strength as a games machine and Sony's marketing muscle.
Of course there is a lot of risk with this - a central controlling device means that it's far easier to incorporate more effective content control mechanisms - you only need to include them with one device rather than every device in the house. And people are likely to choose convenience over freedom as they so often do.
Unfortunately it's only rarely that people reject convenience, and Sony will undoubtedly have another huge hit with the P3. If they can manage to produce any of course :)
The real Paul Vallee is slashdot userid 2192, and, what do you mean it's not cool to point out your low userid?
Bill - aka taniwha
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Bill - aka taniwha
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Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Ugh. Ask any Amiga user how many years that retarded hardware advancement.
Hardware abstraction is your friend, even if you're a game.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Yo, get off the crack:
Top 10 Publishers of 2000 (software only)
Rank / Publisher / Units / Dollars
Source: http://www.dailyradar.com/news/game_news_6632.htm
EA isn't even close, and this doesn't count their hardware sales, which must be ridiculous since the GBC still sells thousands of units per week.
My other
I mean, will all the corporations have such a grip on the desktop/consoles at that point that it wont be much more than an advertisement media platform/tv to program you more efficiently? Just a thought.
1) Saturn failed because it was hard to program games quickly (which is required in the console market). Otherwise it truly was much better in performance than other systems at the time (N64 & PS1).
Exactly. Which is why I said that the PS2's shot at a monopoly is far from assured--because it is very similar to Saturn in these regards. It has tremendous theoretical power, but it's proving very difficult for developers to come anywhere close to that in their games. The main reason is that, just like the Saturn, programming for the PS2 requires carefully spreading computation across no less than 3 processing units (the CPU plus 2 independent, powerful, and slightly different-from-each-other vector units), plus the GPU. Moreover, just like the Saturn (and unlike the PS1), there is a huge lack of high-level programming tools to help developers do this. Thus almost all the first-round PS2 games lack anti-aliasing, something which should be just as simple as calling a vendor-supplied library. The problem is the library doesn't exist yet. (Or didn't; I believe Sony has provided a standard anti-aliasing solution by now.)
Remember, when the 32-bit wars were starting it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Saturn would run away with it. Nintendo was late to the party, and Sony? Offering some modification of their cast-off reject bid for a SNES CD-ROM? (Check into the history of the PS if you don't know the story.) They don't know anything about the games market!! (Of course, similar things were said about Nintendo before the NES, and Sega before the Genesis. The fact is, true domination in the console has never lasted for more than one generation.)
How did Sony succeed? 1) Developer-friendly licensing terms. 2) Easy-to-use high level APIs. 3) Focus on games above all else. These are exactly the steps MS is taking with XBox (I mean, DX8 is so so much higher level than anything ever seen before in the console space it's astonishing), and I think they have a very good shot.
2) Sony currently owns the set top console market. Completely. Utterly. Yes it does. more than 90% of the people I talk to believe Sony is their god (aparently) & cannot make a mistake... The Dreamcast has been out longer than the PS2 & looks just as good or better (depending on game), but people will look at the dreamcast & say "this looks liek crap!" then turn to the PS2 & say "Wow! this just looks so cool! I need one of these because Sony makes it!". Which leads me to the conclusion most people are brain dead slugs feed thoughts by marketers...
The same was once true of Atari and Nintendo. While Sega never truly owned the console market, it was widely assumed following the 16-bit generation that they were the ascendent company while Nintendo was slow-moving, mired in the past, and headed for decline. Nintendo was--and still is--a couple years late to each new generation, despite sewing up the 8-bit generation by virtue of arriving when no one else was there. Nintendo was--and still is--stuck marketing to 8-14 year old boys at a time when Genesis was showing that video games could now appeal to a much wider demographic. Sega was hip and edgy; Nintendo was dead in the water. Sony was an absolute joke. The results were the opposite of what anyone predicted. Sony's current position is even more precarious because despite the wealth of good games for PS1, absolutely *none* are 1st party. This means there is no guarantee whatsoever that they will be only available for PS2, or even that they will be available for PS2 at all. The Oddworld series has already become XBox only. Every single major developer I can think of (except Square) is already committed to XBox. Let's put it this way: MGS2 and Crash Bandicoot are already announced for XBox. Nintendo and Sega both lost their market domination *despite* the attraction of strong 1st party series; Sony doesn't even have that.
If the main console manufacturers are licensing games to make up the too-cheap price of the console, the way out of this is simple: Pirate the games. This way the next generation of the console is sold at full price, & the open hardware version will be able to compete.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Better question:
When will it run Windows?
Never, of course.
If we look at Moore's law why is this even surprizing?
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Modern GPU's can do photo-realistic rendering at over 30 fps, and anything more than that is going to be completely wasted. Most consumers aren't going to be serving enterprise class DB's or cracking crypto, and today's generation of GPU's is all we'll ever need for video gaming. I'd like to see more R&D effort focused on improving playability of games, rather than fancy, yet unnecessary hardware.
Slashdot: Open Source, Closed Minds.
In the large historical view, consoles are gradually heading *away* from monopoly.
u zzword of the future. It'll be like a stereo component! Honest!).
While there were a decent number of consoles in the 70's back when the games "industry" was only a small step away from the concurrent hobbyist PC market (or at least it seems that way to me, who wasn't around at the time much less following the video game market), the late 70's/early 80's were essentially monopolized by Atari, especially the 2600. ColecoVision and Intellivision were around as well (I think they were competing against a later Atari, perhaps the 7600?), but Atari had a large, long run as the controlling power in console games. That they had a monopoly is unquestionable.
Especially because when they tanked, the entire industry tanked with them. Indeed, the console market collapse of...1983 or so?...had many writing off the console market for good. And it would have stayed that way too, were it not for giant monopoly #2, the NES.
The NES came out in late 1985 at a time when no one in their right mind was thinking of bringing out a video game console. Its only competition, the SMS, didn't even go on sale until 1988 I believe. In any case, it wasn't a competition at all; the NES sold something like 80 million units in the US, more than any other console ever. Pretty much every household with children had one. The 16-bit generation (SNES and Genesis) barely sold half that *combined*. Meanwhile, the Master system sold like 6 or 8 million of the things, mainly to people who already had Nintendos. That was a monopoly, plain and simple. Nothing like that is likely to occur in the video game market again, for the simple reason that the situation that led to it (i.e. only one company actually believed the console market was big business) will likely never occur again.
Ever since then, there has always been at least 2 large competitors for each generation of hardware. The Genesis and SNES were roughly evenly matched in sales. The PS1 eventually won a decisive victory over the N64 and Saturn, but by the time that was brutally clear, Dreamcast was already around; in other words, while the PS1 was a spectacular success, it never held the sort of monopoly position that the NES did for something like 5 years (until Genesis).
The PS2 has beaten the DC (mainly on the basis of hype, which in an industry where cross-platform compatibility is unimaginable, is just as powerful and dangerous as FUD in the computer industry), but will still suffer competition from it until XBox and GameCube arrive. While I don't think Indreema has a chance in hell, the open source idea is powerful enough that an open console might actually make it a few years from now. (As has been pointed out, the fact that consoles are a loss leader which the parent company tries to make up by licensing games presents a large problem to this business model, though...)
At this point, it is certain that the PS2 will face serious competition for sales from at least 2 other consoles at every step of its life. (Now: DC, N64 and PS1; 2002 and later: XBox and GameCube.) It is by *no* means clear that PS2 will be the eventual winner, either; in my view, MS has taken all the tactics that made the PS1 such a surprise success (good developer relations, easy to program, just concentrate on games) while Sony has strangely decided to try to emulate the tremendous failures of the Sega Saturn (launch with low volumes and bad games, put theoretical performance above ease of programming, overhype) and crap like the CDi and 3D0 (be the digital-convergance-set-top-information-highway-b
Hello? Indrema? Hello?
Europe's almost always been quite different from North American & Japan in terms of consoles, so I have no idea what you people do there, but Indrema is still heading for launch over here, and they're quite friendly with developers...
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Of course there is a lot of risk with this - a central controlling device means that it's far easier to incorporate more effective content control mechanisms - you only need to include them with one device rather than every device in the house. And people are likely to choose convenience over freedom as they so often do.
You almost make this sound like it's a good thing. Censorship is bad, I think most everyone here agrees with that, but giving parents the ability to restrict what their children see and play is a good thing. However, I never figured it would work considering many parents ask their kids to program the VCR for them.
If we can move on with the idea that the kindergarden children in this world won't be able to play "mature" games (Conkers Bad Fur Day isn't really that mature...), then there isn't any reason to restrict and censor what games are able to get to the market.
Just my $0.02
-Kef
For those who are interested in technical details and IBM's likely semiconductor future, goto http://www.ibm.com and type in "POWER4" in the search box. POWER4 is their next major semiconductor thrust, variants of which will likely play a major role in all of their near-term future marketing efforts.
As an aside, I personally think the POWER4 design is wicked-cool. It's on-die SMP with some VERY FANCY ultra-high bandwidth, transputer-like, symmetric, point-to-point lattice IO interconnect. This is a VERY HOT chip.
C//
but I haven't seen anything to say that the PS3 won't do your laundry. Don't get disappointed too easily, my guess is Sony has the little guy in mind. Air conditioner, space heater, water cooler, icebox, swiss army knife, blahblahblah. The PS3 will do all that and more. The XBox, GameCube can't compete. Indrema doesn't stand a fucking chance.
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Gosh, it's not enough that Apple tells me my page layout machine out-supercomputes supercomputers (hope the SETI people appreciate my largess, because I sure don't need supercomputing power). Now my gaming system needs to have more CPU power than my laptop.
Of course, there are some downsides:
Me:Inserts DOA5 game
PS3:Your request to see jiggling has been denied. I'm busy defeating Kasparov again.
Me:Up, up, down, down...
PS3:I'm sorry, I can't do that, Doctor.
PS3: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
Dave: "What's the problem?"
PS3: "I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do"
Dave: "What are you talking about, PS3?"
PS3: "This Tetris high score is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it."
Dave: "I don't know what you're talking about, PS3?"
PS3: "I know you and Frank were planning to unplug me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen."
Dave: ". .
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crazy dynamite monkey
Isn't this the hole point of a console, to have ONE system configuration. If people started to make clones of a games console then there would just be a matter of time before someone implemented a chip that is faster but backwards-compatible. Then some games are released with this new chip as minimum requirement so you can't use the original chip because it is to slow. I thought the big thing about a console is that you buy a cheap computer that just plays games and you don't need to upgrade with new hardware.
--- No, english is not my mother tongue.
Maybe we need a visual test on par with the turing test?
:-)
:-)
Call it, I don't know, Turingv2.0
Basically, have someone look at a scene thats unfolding in realtime on a monitor in front of them, and decide if its real footage, or a computer generated scene
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
I wan't a computer that I can beat at chess
I still haven't upgraded from my Vic 20
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Mine routinely overheats and starts skipping after 90 minutes of DVD play. I've tested this by letting it cool down for half an hour and returning to the same spot, play fine then. The audio also occasionaly falls out of sync and I have to pause/unpause the movie to resync it.
hey, some of your logic is screwy too: 1) the saturn never had performance advantages over the N64 and PS1. if anything, its 3d was marginally worse than PS1 and definitely worse than the N64. it held an advantage in 2d over both the PS1 and N64, the former due to hardware, and the latter due to the amount of storage space on a cd-rom. 2) i'm a firm believer that nintendo would have held the market if the N64 was a cd-based system. the super nintendo had the most momentum coming out of the 16-bit era, but nintendo decided to ditch the snes-cd addon manufactured by sony, thus pissing them off. vengeance is a bitch, eh? 3) if the x-box can launch with killer games at a good price i like it's odds to cut into the ps2. sure a congregation of unix geeks is going to have anti-ms sentiments, but will the non-hardcores have a problem sheling out $300 to get a few more triangles rendered into lara croft's breasts? i don't think so. it's all about marketing, ask sega. the dreamcast is a very able system that's going to die prematurely because they shot themselves in the foot business-wise with the saturn. 4) actually, i can't disagree with you on #4. i don't know what the hell nintendo is thinking anymore. their systems survive solely on little kids and shigeru miyamoto games (mario, zelda, donkey kong, etc), and of course pokemon. their recent blitzkrieg on the 12+ age group with that new conker game seems to be too little too late, and really stupid on top of that. once again, if nintendo can get solid third party efforts to back up their studly producer, they'll fare decently. but i don't think they will get anywhere by continually marketing to little kids. i always wanted sega to win the console wars. futile? yeah. but at least they didn't try to turn their consoles into more than a console. i just wouldn't buy an add-on from them for the life of me.
Billions of bibiflops in the PS3, and yet no one will be good enough to develop software that pushes it beyond the limit. Heck, they're still bitching about how the PS2's underused. They're going to be spitting out a couple bazillion triangles even though the TV screen is only around 720x528. If only it had an SVGA hookup to run it at 1600x1200 on a 21" monitor; now that would be impressive, but they're about to reach a point where the bottleneck is no longer the console, but actually the hardware that's plugged into it.
I wish they'd invest more in getting good developers and designers working on titles for their existing consoles instead of focusing so strongly on the hardware aspect. You'd think they learned from the Playstation, where its success was based on the immense selection of games available. N64 came short because you had less than 60 games available 2 years after it was released, and that's why it's not nearly as popular as the technologically inferior PSX.
People don't care much about shiny graphics and thundering sound if they can't find games to fit their tastes. For a PC component manufacturer like NVidia, they can focus on releasing wad-blowing hardware because there are thousands of software houses that will take care of the software, but for a console like the PS2, developers need to go through Sony to get their games licensed and pay royalties and whatnot, which severely limits the amount of people available to work on games. You won't see a bunch of teens writing a killer PS2 game because they just don't have the money and business clout to deal with SCEA's business model.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Unfortunately, the forces of good aren't coming together on this project. Not to take anything away from Sony's evilness, but the presence of Toshiba as DRAM provider points to an evil lurking underneath. Yep, Rambus.
With this IP leech sucking on the DRAM supply, driving prices up at every turn, users are forced into paying the Rambus tax.
Dancin Santa
You forgot pokemon! Nintnendo has grossed over $3 billion on it!
Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
I like games as much as the next guy, BUT, what about using that powerful processor on PCs also? Even though it's all still vaporware, wouldn't it be nice to have a sweet little linux box with a (very) powerful CPU, instead of having to hack a PS3 to run linux?
Just a thought...
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Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
Here in Australia, IBM GSA looks after both Telstra and Optus (the two major telecommunications companies). They have no conflict of interest because they physically and logically isolate each business unit. In situations like these, IBM doesn't get to use their past technical experience to assist the development of a competitor. What the client benefits from is IBM's accumulated experience in handling technical projects of this complexity/magnitude.
Why do so many people here post about this being overkill for graphics? Sure, a modern graphics card with adequate memory can saturate a monitor or tv, but Nvidia's not doing incredible AI for me. With chips like these, now while my GPU is spitting out all those pretty pictures my proc can be planning on its next 100,000 moves.
Wouldn't this be cool for strategy/simulation games? AI wouldn't do as much for me in a frag fest, but this would be cool if I could upgrade my old 486-era Civil War strategy game to this and face off with Robert E. Lee.
These announcements are solely an attempt to boost the stock price of IBM and Toshiba. They are targeted at the e-traders who have a direct neural connection between their "broadband internet" perception neuron and their "buy" neuron.
Seems that this year, sticking the phrase "broadband internet" on your product hype is supposed to make potential investors cream their pants.
We had a talk recently by someone from IBM all about the technology behind Deep Blue, and its current and future applications. He didn't mention PlayStation 3... :-)
(The talk was fairly interesting but he glossed over a LOT of interesting details and expounded at length his own rather ill-formed opinions on artificial intelligence, which I thought was a pity.)
arnald
Now this does sound incredibly interesting, but lets think about desktops (god forbid something usefull!) for a minute. Lets see.. Moore's law states processing power will double every 18 months. That means it should double roughly 1.8 times by 2004 right? 2^(1.8)= roughly 3.5. The fastest 32 bit desktop processor currently sold runs at 1.5 gigahertz.. so by the time the PS3 comes out top of the line destop should run at about 5.25 gigahertz.
a rallel.html)
. 3.3a.html) "this year Deep Blue will be running on a faster system - the latest version of the SP - which uses 30 P2SC or Power Two Super Chip processors"
To quote from ibm, (http://www.research.ibm.com/actc/RS_6000/Topic_P
"[the] P2SC design has reached its peak operating frequency at 160MHz" and (http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/meet/html/d
Assuming pefect smp deep blue theirfore runs at 4.8 Ghz.
5.25 is greater than 4.8. 5.25 is projected by Moore's law for 2004, so this is no big shakes.
By 2004 we should see top of the line desktops just as powefull.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
You just know that they'll include DVD/CD/MP3 playing, and whatever happens to be the new cool entertainment fad at the time.
It'll do email, word processing, keep track of your finances, and probably keep an eye on your ouse via the inbuilt PSCam(TM)(c).
But it'll still have limited connectivity options.
It'll be far to expensive for anyone to afford.
Nobody will be able to get hold of them for months.
All people want is a good console with good games, nice graphics, and the ability to play online, whether it's via ethernet or dialup.
I'm guessing that'll be the one area it'll fall down on...
> Click here and make a spammer spend some money
... they'll all be bankrupt in a week...
Good idea...
Time to set up a wget script to keep hammering this page, methinks
What would Lemmy do?
A supercomputer on a chip, much much more than a games console, fast internet access blah blah blah. Has everyone forgotten how much of Sony's PR bilge was regurgitated in the runup to the PS2 launch? The let-down launch titles, the buggy DVD software, the self-corrupting memory cards? Are the world's media already taking backhanders to hype up the PS3? Let's forget all about it until the launch and judge it the contents of the box in 2004, hmmm?
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
I would like to see an Open Source console, one which can be cloned, much like the IBM PC could be cloned. This would lead to a vital market. It does not so much matter bout the software side of things - a games console does not really need an OS, the games can hit the metal.
If one company created an open architecture and promoted it, before long there would be hundreds of clone makers and a real movement in the industry.
We must break the hegemony of the sealed, synthetic box.
--
And in a few more years, Moore's Law will say that every 36-48 months processor speed will double; basically, it's how well you can fit a curve to a graph.
After all, Deep Blue was not all about the graphical processing (infact, it only had 64 "pixels" and 16 "bpp" to worry about
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
Does this mean that the PlayStation 3 is going to be PPC? :)