Slashdot Mirror
IBM To Design Technology For XBox 2 CPU
An anonymous reader writes "According to Biz Ink, 'Microsoft has licensed leading-edge semiconductor processor technology from
IBM for use in future Xbox products and services to be announced at a later
date..' IBM are already working on the PlayStation 3 CPU alongside Toshiba, and have a relationship with Nintendo after making the GameCube CPU, though there's been no official announcement on GameCube 2's hardware. Is the next-gen hardware war heating up?"
All your console are belong to IBM.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Is Microsoft abandoning its "Intel compatibility" policy? I remember the original reason was to make it easy to port between PC and X-box, to attract developers
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
I would much rather see the XBox whither away and die than see Nintendo go the way of Sega.
Under the agreement, Microsoft has licensed leading-edge semiconductor processor technology from IBM for use in future Xbox(R) products and services to be announced at a later date.
That's all the detail that the article really gives. The rest is typical corporate marketing. No where did I see anything that says that IBM is designing the central processing unit for the XBox 2.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
So they're developing a new xbox platform already? I thought one of the nice things about consoles was that they didn't become obsolete technology as quickly as PCs. If they release a new xbox soon, 1)They're going to lose sales of their current xbox (oh wait, they already are). But more importantly, 2) if consoles are going to start becoming obsolete in just a few years, it seems to me that it's just going to cause a huge market fragmentation if new consoles come out too soon.
I'd would rather see Xbox prosper and grow and see Nintendo do likewise.
But then I'm a nice person and don`t really see why the Xbox should whither just to stop Nintendo from becoming a games producer.
Especially given that there are 6 billion people in the world, That's probably enough for 3 consoles.
CJC
But if you're a gambling man, I'll take that bet.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
So is IBM "Designing and building" the x-box 2 CPU, or is Microsoft "licensing technology" from them? That's a pretty big friggin difference. And it looks like it's the latter.
Seeing as IBM does so much research these days, it seems that "licensing technology" could possibly mean something really minor. Well, it could mean almost anything.
Personally, I predict that the GC2 will be the first Nintendo console to feature backward compatibility, and will also feature an IBM chip. Which would make it really wierd if IBM made the x-box chip as well. But what do I know..
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Why doesn't IBM just cut out the middle-man and get into the console business for themselves?
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Too bad this gaming site can't stay focused on games.
Is the next-gen hardware war heating up?
Sounds like it's cooling down, for IBM at least...
Why should Xbox2 use x86? The x86 32 bit family will still be around, or a 64 bit decendent anyway, but I think the experience with the Xbox is that building a games system based on commodity PC hardware actually works against you in the long run as it doesn't get cheaper over time in the same way that the more custom designs such as PS2 and GCN have. Besides which, the next Xbox will likely not be a 32 bit chip so it is sensible to move to another platform and use x86 emulation (eg virtual PC/Xbox) to allow the playing of old games. A move to something based on Power5 would likely give the necessary increase in processing grunt to take on the PS3 and that is going to be something MS will really want to do. The only reason the Xbox was slightly more powerful than the PS2 was it was so late.
Of course, it is still debatable that MS should even bother to do an Xbox2. The move into media PCs, along with a standardisation on games that can run directly from a DVD-ROM rather than installing on the HD would negate the need for the expense of selling an Xbox system. Get a standard PC into the living room and make it play games as well as a console and you would have a winner........
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Yeah, that would never happen even if they used the EXACT SAME chip. Ignoring the fact that console games are written to run on the EXACT hardware that the console has (including I/O, sound, etc - a lot more than just the main processor), there's the fact that there's going to be protection on the CDs - if they won't let us play a Japanese game on an American PS2, what makes you think they'll have games that can be played on an entirely different console?
Why is the parent modded as Insightful?
Are we on crack now?
1) XBox and PS2 fans: "Nintendo Sucks!"
:)
2) XBox and Nintendo fans: "PS2 Sucks!"
3) PS2 and Nintendo fans "XBox Sucks!"
It's great that I'm a IBM fan and can afford all three consoles
Good night!
When are you going to stop being an idiot?
The majority of people who buy consoles don't give a crap about picking their own hardware and building an "l337" gaming rig. Most of them don't give a rat's ass about open source non profit emulators either. One of the big draws of having a console is that sometimes people just like to sit down and play a game without having to worry about getting the latest video drivers, or having 3 Gigs of RAM, or a Radeon 9800 just to play a frickin' game. When I turn on my PS2, I don't have to worry about any of that bullsh*t. I guaran-damn-tee that no matter what the latest and greatest hardware you stick in your "l337" gaming rig, it'll be old hat in less than 6 months because something better/faster has come out.
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" -- Homer Simpson
I'm not a moron. I know how to pick my hardware and build a 1337 gaming rig without having some company pick it for me.
And you can do this for $99??
you're missing the point.
when you buy a ps2 game, you KNOW that it will work on your ps2. you won't have to upgrade parts of the hardware, install the latest drivers, worry about conflicting software/drivers/hardware.
and all software will be optimised and tested for the specific hardware, which is not the case with pc games.
you pop in the cd, and you can be 100% sure that it works.
and that's exactly what makes these consoles so popular.
Er, you have a choice now. There are tons and tons of games for the PC. What exactly is the problem here?
Things do not need to be open to be good. I think closed, fixed consoles make for better games in the long run. This is just an elitist attitude most likely born from being annoyed that console now get as many or more AAA titles than the PC. Well, a moderate console game success sells 750,000 - 1,000,000 units and a big PC hit sells 500,000 units. With those numbers why wouldn't devs turn to consoles? Also, it's not just access to the consoel dev tools you'd need, but also access to the source and art for each game. That ain't going to happen and rightly so.
Do you know how to take apart and rebuild your car? Your DVD player? Your fridge? Didn't think so. Then why do people like you insist that everyone that goes near a computer be able to compile their own kernel?
Imagine the implications of DirectX running on non-Intel CPUs.
For great justice.
The hardware can nowdays be emulated. Just mark the I/O area as protected and kick out to software emulation on all hardware accesses.
It is probable that these new CPUs will use a second supervisor mode to allow the games to run their own "OS" but keep the system hardware hidden behing an machine kept API. (This would allow upgradebility and better sandboxing).
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
What a scary, thought-provoking comment. What if the next version of XBox had two different hardware sets - one with ubergraphics, one cheaper? What if the PS3 is upgradable to a PS4? Or, in a tribute to Pokemon, what if you could combine a Nintendo GameSphere with a PS3 to create a SuperConsole? (Collect 'em all - better graphics, more games to combine)
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Will it run OSX? /g5 reference
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
You know the software will work, but the PS2 hardware, that's another story. I know many people who get the disc read error all the time. I wonder if Sony will continue their hardware design problems with the PS3? My old roommates PS1, which was part of the first production run, would only work when standing up on its side, like you can do with the PS2 stand. Coincidence, or Sony preparing for their hardwares eventual failure? ;)
The real question is, will IBM be left with a bad taste in it's mouth like Nvidia, and further reference being IBM's failed 'deal' to coop OS/2 with Microsoft.
The problem is exclusive licensing. That is to say, you DON'T have a choice: if you want to play $HOT_GAME, you have to fork out for $EXPENSIVE_CONSOLE, when you've already paid through the nose for a top-notch gaming PC which could easily run $HOT_GAME at twice the resolution with your controller of choice.
Your response is "so play some other game instead". That's a perfectly reasonable response. But it's not the one the poster you were replying to wanted.
How about you and the other script kiddiez continue obsessing over your "l33t gaming rigs", and I will play video games on a video game system and use my actual real normal computer to get actual real work done on.
Or even better, I'll keep playing PC games on my PC and console games on my console and refuse to buy PC-centric genres (FPS, RTS, etc) on my console until I've played them first and know that they actually redesigned the interface rather than shoe-horning it onto the box, and refuse to buy console-centric genres (platformers, Japanese RPGs) on my PC until I've tried it first (much less likely to actually happen) to make sure they didn't just hack it onto the console and expect everyone to plug in a PS2 controller with a USB adapter to play it.
Consoles work best for console games and PCs work best for PC games and we don't need to make it easier for people to move the games back and forth without considering the system at hand. There's nothing worse than an emulator without gamepad support, and that's essentially what a lot of ports end up feeling like.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
The result? The consoles will have to get an edge over each other in other areas - like having DVR capabilities, better 3d implementation and technologies, online play, and, of course, better games. We will be less likely to face a decision now of 'more good games/inferior technology' versus 'less good games/better technology.'
I would rather see more competition in the market as it is good for the consumers. When one company sits on a lead they don't innovate at all because there is no reason to.
There's a reason I don't buy them. I'm not a moron
Yes - it's much better to spend 5 times as much up front to have a system that will be games-functional for about half the time.
Whether or not a console is stupid depends on the type of games you prefer, the amount of money you have, and how much you play. For many people, buying a gaming-class computer would be retarded - even if they use it for other things.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Consoles provide a consistant platform for developers therefore gets more games and sales. A lot of time in PC devolopment goes into compatability testing for the various hardware configs' out there. For instance, a PS2 only needs to tested once to ensure a consistant product experience across all PS2s. This helps devs' a lot. You dont have to do a lot of tech support for a console, it is lot more trouble free.
PS2 has 4megs of local memory for the graphics processor. This is used for frame buffers, Z buffer and textures. DMA from the 32megs of system memory is pretty fast - it's rarely the limiting factor in game performance.
Gamecube has 3megs of local memory, just enough for 1 frame buffer, 1 Z buffer and whichever textures are being used to rasterise the current primitve. Textures are automatically DMAed from the 24megs of (extremely fast and low-latency) system memory as they are needed. There's 16megs of (PC100) audio memory and some games use that as a backing store for extra data - DMA to/from it is quite slow though.
You're right about Xbox's 64megs but it should be noted that the memory is divided by the crossbar memory controller into 4 16meg chunks and by carefully arranging what is in what chunk you get better performance because each chunk can be accessed at full speed (ie. as if the overall memory wasn't shared).
Game consoles really don't need a 64bit address space yet, but they do need a very wide data bus and wide CPU registers. Right now I'd say raw CPU performance and pixel fillrate are actually the two most limiting factors for games. More RAM would certainly be nice but throughput is a bigger concern, at least with the games I've worked on.
Graham
Ironically, I think standing on it's side is what's killing my PS2. It's now noticably slower than when I got it around a year ago, and it shows alot in games that load "on the fly" (IE: Vice City). I assume because the disc is slightly unballanced.. soon I will be saying goodbye (RIP PS2).
>IBM walks into Xbox Next meeting room.
ATI: "Big Blue!"
IBM: "ATI!"
>ATI exec pulls Gamecube out of briefcase.
IBM: "Together Again!"
*ATI merely bought the company that designed the GPU for Gamecube, hence the ATI sticker.
And I must inform you that, despite the smaller game library, you get the same effect with an Apple Macintosh. If you have a relatively recent Mac, and haven't modded it a bunch, all OSX software and a lot of earlier stuff (almost everything if you have a dual booter, a bit less if you are using Classic instead of OS9) will run. And guess what? Then you have your word processor, web terminal, the ability to run real games like Baldur's Gate (which, incidentally, is available only for Windows and Mac). That is why I, for one, do not use consoles; I have nothing against those who do; I am not looking in the console direction until most games can make use of a full-size keyboard for efficiency's sake.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
In other words, try reading this and then this.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
No sir, you're missing the point. I don't give a rat's ass about your ease of use. I want a choice, not a unilateral easy-to-use gaming machine that costs way too much money. You see, if they support the open source emu developers, I can have the best of both worlds for less cost even if it is more of a hassle to setup. Take your ease of use and get out of here. I don't want it.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Take your big companies and give the poor open source non profit emulator developers some official support.
PC console emulation has always traveled hand-in-hand with pirated console games. I understand the difference between the two, but I doubt that subtle distinctions will influence console makers to give official support to anything that could cut into licensing fees. Yes, sales to PC users could increase fee revenue, but the risk of losing traditional sales is too great to take that chance.
I'm not a moron. I know how to pick my hardware and build a 1337 gaming rig without having some company pick it for me.
I could build a 1337 rig too, but the video card alone will probably cost more than an entire console. Consoles give people who don't have a few grand to drop on a gaming machine a chance to play too.
- FIV
...as I also have a computer. And, like you, I get a lot of value out of it that I wouldn't get out of a console. However, I also know plenty of people for whom none of our bonuses would be a bonus.
Many people can have all their gaming desires met cheaper, simpler and better with a console. They're not illiterate or retarded - they just like different things.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Maybe..
If they did use VirtualPC I would bet it would be for XBox I games. XBoxII games would run in native PPC mode. What is interesting to me is will MicroSoft port XP to the PPC chip?
NT was supposed to be multi-platform and XP is built off the NT codebase. Could we see XP for the PPC?
An alternative could be a hardware translator that converts Intel to PPC. Sort of like the Transmeta chip.
Could be... Very interesting. The big question is will Microsoft let IBM do the same thing for the G6 chip? Apple could be a very happy company if so.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
So does this mean that we should expect...
- Xmas 2004: XBox2
- Xmas 2004: PSP
- "sometime in 2004": PSX
- Xmas 2005... if we're lucky: PS3
'cause if so then I'll need to make sure that I have $299 for the XBox2, $700 for the PSX, $200 for the PSP, and enough time to save up for the $299 PS3. And don't forget your $50 per game for each system. (yeah, I know the PSX will play the PS2 games, and the Xbox2/PS3 are supposed to be backwards compatible, but still, that's a lot of dough to be shelling out in one year for new electronics...)Show me one Open Source game that is as polished, complete and fun to play as the Top 10 on any of the current consoles.
How about no? When I make an investment of my time and money into a project why the hell would I want to give it away? I don't think I am speaking from naivete as I have been making games for over 6 years now.
Well, seeing that most consoles now cost less than a mid-range video card, let alone a whole PC, that's not really much of a point.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
And there's always the dreamcast, which emulates NES very well and SNES not so well, and I don't know about any of the rest (I haven't been using it since I hacked my Xbox) and sells for a song. Burn a copy of Dreamtendo 2000 - take off the roms you don't have if you're concerned about the legality or ethics of it - and you too can play classic games with button mapping on a game console. Dreamcasts are like fifty bucks with two controllers and a VMU these days. The Xbox is just nice because it has a hard disk which can be used to store games.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...as long as GTA3 is ported and i still get to star in donkey pr0n.
sincereley,
l3urr0
----
http://www.hellection.com