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More On IBM's Next-Gen Xbox Chipset Win
Pieroxy writes "EE Times reports further details on Microsoft's use of IBM chips in its next generation Xbox game and consumer electronics devices, dealing a blow to Intel and providing a much needed boost for IBM's lossmaking chip business." An analyst claims that "IBM is likely to modify its most advanced G5 PowerPC silicon, which is being used in Apple Computer's fastest Macintosh desktops, for the embedded market, reducing the cache and cutting power consumption", and further comments: "This is likely to heat things up at Intel, but it is competition that is healthy for the industry. It's ironic that IBM, with its roots in the computer industry, doesn't supply the processors for the main portion of the personal computer industry. Intel does." We covered IBM's initial announcement as a section-specific story earlier today.
Are they not going to have backward compatibility? That seems like a big mistake in the game console market to me.
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Forgive me if I'm being moronic about this, but if it's based off the G5, it has a completely different instruction set. Does this mean that the modified Windows 2000 kernel used with the current XBox will be upgraded and ported to G5, or that we might see a completely different and new kernel?
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Who thinks that IBM is going to turn around and sell these things to Aplle as the CPU for the G5 laptop?
This bodes VERY well for IBM, Apple, Microsoft, and anyone else interested in low-power-draw PowerPC systems. It sucks for Motorola, but they lost my favor years ago, and they really charge ludicrous prices for their wares.
Also, Could IBM be developing their G3+AltiVec chip for this? It seems to me that if the G3 series was dead IBM would stop working on it, but there are 750GX CPUs due soon (just a 750FX with 1MB on-die cache), and rumors of a G3 with SIMD coming down the pipe. It seems to me that if IBM bastardized some of the SIMD logic from the 970 and strapped it to the 750 they'd have a pretty decent low-power SIMD chip that Apple could market as a 'G3', 'G4' or a 'G5.'
Maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic, but the G3 was the CPU best-suited for what I do, and I hope it doesn't disappear. I have little use for SIMD, and I really appreciate running a CPU without a fan strapped to it, it's just so... elegant.
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It seems that it would be prudent for Microsoft to announce something about backwards compatibility if they're going to make such a dramatic platform change. That's one of the greatest things for early adopters of the PS2 - they could still play their PS1 games on 'em.
It would be interesting to know exactly why they have picked an IBM chip rather than Intel or AMD. I wouldn't think the IBM (PPC?) chip would be more cost effective than the Intel/AMD but you never know...
This is just pure ignorance. Apparently going to Best Buy and buying a hard drive is now "piracy".
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Yah, MS and IBM are stupid, you better call 'em and set them straight!
Some things to consider:
1) NT ran on PowerPC long ago, porting it wont be hard.
2) Wasn't IBM working on a new mega-chip that can run x86 and PowerPC codes side by side?
3) Perhaps making the Xbox so close to a PC blew up in MSFTs face, and they don't plan to do it again. You can turn your noses at "security through obscurity" all you want, but the Xbox, once initiall cracked, has been blown wide open - it's a no brainer to port PC emulators and apps to it. The GCN or PS2, however, have taken much longer, and are still an obfuscated mess to try and develop custom stuff for.
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as mentioned in Financial Times, Microsoft will likely be using their recently acquired Virtual PC software. This software is the way mac users run windows software on PPC chips. VPC technology will allow MS to provide backwards compatibility under Intel emulation.
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... that backwards compatibility isn't part of Microsoft's game here? I suppose they could do like the PS2 did and use the original Intel processor to act as a controller or something, but somehow I doubt that'd be cost effective enough.
Emulator? Eck I hope not. Well.. maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Maybe they could do a combination emulator and wrapper. The emulator would be for the processor instructions, and the wrapper would be to send the graphics commands to the new GPU. Presumably, the difference between the two GPUs wouldn't be big enough as to prevent that from working.
Eh I dunno. Personally, I'm hoping Microsoft does something a little more interesting than just throwing next-gen hardware into a box as an upgrade. Pushing polygons around is nice, but I really like how small and cheap my GameCube is. *Hint hint*
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That's IBM... supplying Microsoft... with PowerPC processors... for a gaming console...?
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Intel went after Xbox originally so that AMD wouldn't get the win, but Intel still took it in the shorts, or so it is claimed, by offering a nutrageously low price to outbid AMD. Probably even at a loss given the timeframe.
Intel doesn't give a crap about PPC, as it isn't even a remote threat, what at 4% of the market. Intel could have EASILY played the same power-play and had another design win, but at the cost of lower ASPs for a niche market (compared to its $20b a year market, xbox isn't worth it).
just my $0.02.
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Not long after the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer came out, we started designing the next-generation platform. The machine was to be PowerPC-based with true 3D rendering capabilities (triangle engine, MIP-mapping, perspective-correct textures, 32-bit rendering, etc.).
The CPU was supplied by IBM. What we ended up with was the PowerPC 602, which was essentially a 603 (?) with a smaller cache and single-precision floating point operations that executed in a single cycle, which were essential for 3D gaming. The part ran at 66MHz.
It was a really nice machine. Sadly, it essentially died on the vine, as Matsushita chose not to exploit its gaming potential, relegating it instead to "kiosk" activities.
IBM also manufactured the triangle engine. It was a five layer chip -- at that time, a rather sophisticated process -- occupying 144 square millimetres.
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Actually, the earliest instance of easy backward-compatibility I can recall was the Atari 7800. It could read 2600 and 7800 carts, all from the same cartridge slot. Of course, the 7800 was so heavily delayed that Nintendo stole their market...
Even though the z80 hardware was built in to the Megadrive / Genesis, you had to shell out for the Master System Converter.
This, plus the fact that the Master System didn't sell too well, made it a losing feature.
When you sell millions of PS1s, and you can get an optical drive cheap that reads your old CD media, and your new DVD media, then you've got backward-compatibility that's a selling point.
ATARI and Sega did it first. Nintendo and Sony were the first companies to do it right.
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Most embedded CPUs are not x86-based. They're not PowerPC or ARM based either. It's just that most people aren't familiar with what CPUs are out there, only what's available for PC boxes.
That said, consider that the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 use MIPS processors. The Sega Saturn used a Hitachi SH-2. The Dreamcast used an SH-4. The 3DO console was ARM based. The Nintendo 64 uses a MIPS. The GameCube uses a PowerPC. The Game Boy Color is Z80 based. The Game Boy Advance uses an ARM. The Nokia N-Gage also uses an ARM.
In short, non-x86 based game consoles are the norm, not the exception. You simply can't put a super hot P4 in an embedded environment. Intel knows this. That's not the market they're after with the P4. This is basic embedded systems design.
I wouldn't say there is a Gamecube "performance issue." It runs beautifully fast. 485 Mhz of PowerPPC goodness. It is right on par with the XBox CPU since the PowerPPC design is so much more efficient.
Don't be so sure. Don't be fooled by the clock speeds. The GCN is as powerful as the PS2, if not moreso, and is the superior of the two machines if actual output is a layman's comparison. Check out a comparison.