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Sony, IBM Announce Cell Workstation For PS3 Dev
Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for its article discussing the little-heralded Sony announcement of a Sony and IBM co-developed, Cell-based workstation for PlayStation 3 (and other) content creation. The article explains: "The workstation, which will ship before the end of the year, will feature an architecture based on the parallel processing Cell chip [also to be used in the PlayStation 3], and will be designed to power digital content creation for movies, television and videogames." GI.Biz also quotes an un-named industry figure as suggesting: "Microsoft should be really worried by this... They've been touting Xbox 2 to their partners and talking about the kind of content they want to see created on the platform - more polygons, higher resolutions, more effects - and our response has been that the tools to create this stuff for games don't really exist yet. Now Sony has effectively created those tools."
Better technology does not always translate to better video games. I'm sure what ever Nintendo or Microsoft use for their next gen architecture will be comparable to the PS3. As for home media centers, I bet Sony will eventually wipe the floor with Microsoft.
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Wow. I have to say I am so amazed. Get this: Sony has released DEV KITS for their new console. I've never heard of this before! This must be that new-fangled, next generation game development stuff here. Personally, I found it MUCH more interesting when M$ started sending out G5's as Dev Kits. I tried to tell them I'm writing up a great Xbox 2 game, but alas, no Dev Kit to my door.
Don't buy WoW Gold! Make it yourself!
this seems to me just to be the dev station like SONY gave out for the PS2
(they call it something like PS2Tool)
big deal or not ?
o BIG deal at least the hardware is sort of final (can be changed but not likely) that means they taped out and just need to do mass production
o NOT does not say anything about the device or that it includes silicon from the PS3 or just running an emulator
o lets face it you can use all of the tools to do graphics like they do in the movies and games at the moment Maya, 3DS Max and games engines are pretty good about seperating out the display from the AI, sound, physics
now can someone actually give details like a block diagram of the chip ?
regards
John Jones
They're announcing the dev kits that should ship 'sometime' before the end of the year.
Personally I see it as the Sony PR FUD machien is running again: "no no, our machine will be much more powerful than theirs".
It worked the last time they were going to show up a year late to the next hardware generation. Why not go back to the well?
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Cell is a generic grid-computing processor. It means, the same hardware block can be used in this workstation, PS3, rack-mount server, home appliance, and other devices from Sony and IBM. The difference between those various hardwares is only the quantity of Cells equiped in them, so this workstation is not specialized hardware bound to a specific market. When PS3 ships, the scale merit of Cell production will soar dramatically, which is what SGI couldn't do.