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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.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 -- Mathematics is the Language of Nature.
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.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
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".
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
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.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
That's IBM... supplying Microsoft... with PowerPC processors... for a gaming console...?
If anyone needs me, I'll be conferring with my local pastor as to whether or not Hell has frozen over.
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