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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
I'll soon be able to get my ass whooped at chess by a computer the same way the pros do.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When can we have linux on this?
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?
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
.--bagel--.---------------.
| aim: | bagel is back |
| icq: | 158450 |
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
when he can't beat the PS3 in the CompUSA display case...
Don't Panic...
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]
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
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
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?
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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))"
(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!
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.
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?
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
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
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.
--
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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