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Sony Switches To Its Own Processor For Handhelds
Pointing to this Associated Press story carried by the Miami Herald, Jorkapp writes "Sony has announced that they will be using Processors manufactured by themselves in their next generation of CLIE handhelds, which are due to ship this Semptember. This is only the first step though, as Sony is planning to use its own line of processors for the next generation of Playstation systems. This new processor will give users 16 hours of battery life (impressive!) and the ability to play video at a smooth 30fps."
And jake writes with a link to a story at mobilemag.com which also describes the new handhelds (the UX50 was mentioned the other day), and says "both the CLIE UX50 and UX40 handhelds will be available through American retailers in September for about $700 and $600, respectively, but can be pre-ordered now through Sony's website."
I was thinking about watching movies on a long train trip. Aren't all electronic devices forbidden on most airlines?
I've been trying to get Intel to increase their cache in response to the pressures from the kind of algorithms people want to run on portables, but even though they'll sacrafice battery life on the altar of huge, bright, color LCDs in their reference designs, they won't even double their cache.
And among other this this processor will probably embbed some Sony(TM) internal DRM technology preventing you from putting the device to any good and proper use (OGG baby!). Other that that I would think that some of the more established CPU manufactureres (i.e. Motorola or Transmeta) would probably come with equaly impressive CPU solution of their own if it would be as simple as that. This is not to say that Sony doesn't have the know-how needed to produce one, but it also means that any serious attempt at this market will probably be the result of years of development and refinement. Unless they are developing the CPU on the basis of some already established architecture (ARM?) they are in for tough time if they are to produce The CPU to power their next-gen toys.
My $0.02
"This new processor will give users 16 hours of battery life..."
Hmm... where have I heard this before? Oh yeah... Transmeta.
It will be great if the handheld lives up to its hype... but I'll be waiting for benchmarks of a released product before I believe it.
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probably not ripped ones, a custom chip means instant DRM!
Proprietary processor though... Hmmm... that might be a red flag.
Well, the weird part isn't the ARM core, it's the undocumented and proprietary audio I/O, DSP, memory architecture and other devices that Sony puts into these devices. You can't even access those through the proprietary OS that runs on these machines.
However, this thing has a bigger screen, and it sounds like the sony may have much better battery life.
The Sharp actually seems like a nicer handheld and the Sharp screen has double the number of pixels. However, the better battery life and built-in BT and WiFi make the Sony a winner.
Also, the PDA software on the Sharp just isn't competitive: the Palm PDA apps are far better than the Sharp, and Bluetooth configuration on the Sharp is a nightmare. Furthermore, in a twist of irony, you can develop commercial apps for the Sony for free, using all free tools, while you need to pay a lot of money to develop commercial Qt/Embedded apps.
I remember when I was in university, my roommate got a Sony VAIO. I think that telling its story could provide some information about how proprietary hardware could cause you headaches, especially with manufacturers such as Sony:
At first we were amazed at its design and size. But in the following months, he had to buy stuff and accessories from Sony (Sony's stuff is not often compatible with other manufacturers hardware) which were about twice more expensive than their counterparts from other manufacturers. That is even more true with PDAs upgrades which are extremely expensive compared to the original price of the device.
When he wanted to install a BSD, there was no support for his laptop for some months because Sony did not release at this time specs of the hardware used. Not to mention the integrated Wincam which was unusable outside of Windows
When XP was available, he discovered that he could not install it because of the proprietary hardware and there was no drivers available for windows XP on the Sony website. Furthermore Sony does not deliver Windows install CDs, but restore disks. When he contacted Sony, the last tech he talked to said they (Sony) don't support XP Pro since it wasn't the original software installed. Sorry, but his little sticker said "designed for Windows XP".
Not to mention some poor design about heat/small size, after a hour or more of an operation which uses alot of CPU (compiling, playing some video, picture editing), the back part of the laptop was so hot that he burned himself one time in closing it.
You just have to search some reviews from users on google Google, to see that many users had complaints about their proprietary hardware. So knowing that Sony will use a proprietary processor in their PDA kinda scares me and I hope that future users of this device will not encounter as much problems as he did.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
I know I probably gonna get whacked for "dissident option" but I think it's way better to have proprietary SPECIALIZED things.
;)
Yes, you can create open generic CPU, and everybody would be able to build an alarm clock or server out of it. Yet if you have a chip for alarm clock that is proprietary, but suits just fine alarm clock builders, 10 times smaller, 5 times cheaper, consumes 13 times less energy, what would you choose?
I don't need generic thing that works 3 hours on one charge. I would go with PDA that is less flexible, can't run linux (gasp!), but works longer from the battery. When I figure out something else to do with PDA I will buy myself a bigger one, or a laptop
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I hope so, but I haven't heard of anything free in practice lately other than MIPS minus unaligned load/store patented instructions. Intel has ratcheted down the license fee for ARM ISA to literally next to nothing because they are competing against those free MIPS subsets.
The ISA is insignificant in comparison to cache architecture in all the heavy-duty applications I care about. A/V codecs, which lend themselves directly to hardware a lot better than huristic search does, as far as I'm concerned, are only good for the, erm, health benefits.
Can't wait for Red Star, though, I want solar powered speech toys.
The first thing I thought of, as an Assembly Language person, was 'where do I download the documents for the instruction set for this processor?'
Somebody better be able to download them, because otherwise there's NOT going to be a GCC for the part.