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CNN On The $500 PS3
Chris Morris reports in CNN's Game Over column that analysts have pegged the price point for the PS3 at $500. Despite the high price, you're getting a lot of tech for your buck. From the article: "The strongest argument behind the $499 price point is the PS3's inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive. This bleeding edge technology will give Sony significant bragging rights, but it comes at a cost. Pioneer last week at the Consumer Electronics Show unveiled a standalone Blu-Ray player for $1,800. Obviously, Pioneer's earning some profit there - and Sony will almost certainly subsidize the cost of the drives, but you're still looking at an expensive bit of hardware. The PS3 will also feature other pricey items, such as a hard drive, the Cell processor and a new graphics chip from nVidia."
This probably means that the games will be ridiculously expensive to make up for the console profit loss.
$500!! What a bargain!! For a console that can not only play games on twin 1080p displays at 200fps, but can also be used to grill tasty steaks!
Knight37 - Once a Gamer, Always a Gamer
Bang for the buck, blah blah, but the mainstream target audience will never flock to this price point. What's worse is that the technology inside the PS3 ensures that the common competitive strategy of frequent price drops will be that much harder for Sony to stomach--are those Blu-Ray drives REALLY going to drop significantly enough to make MS's likely price cuts easy enough to match? Certainly, gaming hardware drops in price over time. That's a given. But this generation, Sony might not get to wait long enough before having its financial hand forced.
Aw, hell, pretty soon all I'll be able to afford for fun will be a stick and a metal hoop
The entire article is nothing but speculations about the price. The article even says they have no idea what the price will be and that it is all just guesswork; especially since Sony made no other comment than "...it's all just speculation".
Why is this considered front page news for Slashdot?
This just screams two questions: 1) How in the world will that price be competitive with the much cheaper HD-DVD format and 2) Just how much is Sony gonna be losing on each one of these babies? It's not like Sony as a company in general isn't in bad shape, and can afford to take these kind of dangerous losses.
$500 is the price of a basic deskop system. Its your average Dell machine, or the cheapest Lenovo machine.
For this money youre getting a CPU way better than most chips put into the Dells and Lenovos out there, and a graphics card to envy. Consoles have become more and more desktop-like, and the PS3 should be compared to high-end desktops. Give me a decent keyboard, mouse, possibly a PCI slot or ability to connect to most common networks, and an OS to work with and I'll call it a desktop.
The CPU however in itself is worth the pricetag. I'm considering getting the PS3, not for gaming at all, but to use as a linux desktop system running on 8 64-bit PPC cores, each of which runs at more than 2GHz. Go find that at $500.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Think about it. Even if Pioneer is just price gouging for the fun of it, 1800 is one hell of a gouge. I imagine that the controllers and most of the hardware is the same as a standard DVD player (well, more precise, perhaps). But a new kind of lens and obviously a way to produce a "blu-ray" to read with could be pretty pricey right now.
On the other hand, if Pioneer is making oh, $300 bucks on each, that's still a 1500 buck drive. Prices are not likely to drop much more than 30-40%, and Sony isn't likely to lose 500 bucks on the drive alone. Let's face it. Sony may have deep pockets, but even MS isn't stupid enough to gamble like that.
The way I see it, Pioneer better be super-gouging that price. (maybe it writes, I didn't catch anything about that). Sony and MS have both had major drive problems with exhisting tech, so this looks bad for the consumer. Real bad. And I've been drooling over the idea of a PS3 for a long time now.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
This new technology is 1) Extremely expensive to manufacture and 2) Very primitive in its current state.
I expect the PS3 to hit at 500-600, and cost nearly double to manufacture. PS3 will sell more units than the 360 (due to Japan) so they can take a larger loss-per-console. In the end the Blu-Ray will not be worth the extra price, and I guarantee the quality (and image quality in movies) of the first generation Blu-Ray drive will suck.
Suppose they're right about Blu-ray. It takes off, even though Blu-Ray players drop say, half the price from $1800 to $900. Now the PS3 looks like a steal, right? What happens when people start buying PS3s just for Blu-ray players? Sure Sony can say we have over X million consoles in homes... but if only half of those owners actually end up buying more than one or two games a year, I think game manufacturers will catch on pretty quick. Installation of PS3s isn't the only thing Sony and its developers want... the people have to want to buy games too...
Despite the high price, you're getting a lot of tech for your buck.
I dont want a lot of tech for $500, I just want something that plays games that is affordable. Of course I am getting a Revolution, but I also want something that will play Metal Gear Solid 4 and some other sony-exclusive titles -and that will have to be a PS3. Make a machine that plays games and leave all the media extender dual 1080p output bullshit to the people who want it.
NOT all consoles are sold at a loss.
I dunno about the rest of the world, but when the PS2 was release, HORDES OF MORONS that weren't even hardcore gamers (even saw parents when this was on the news - yes, on the evening news!) lined up to buy the 3,000 francs console. Let's divide by 6, bingo, about 500 bucks or euros, give or take a few.
You guys are either naïve or forgetful. I predict the PS3 will come out at whatever price Sony wants it to be, and it will sell like hotcakes because it appeals to the lowest common denomiator. Why would they fix a business model that isn't broken?
Anyway, enjoy your DRM.
The PS3 will also feature other pricey items, such as a hard drive
That's news to Sony, AFAIK...See here and here, although I admit that they haven't come out and said that "it won't have a hard drive built in" they certainly haven't said that it will either.
I always assumed that was the whole reason behind the Xbox 360 Core, so that people would go to the store and see a 360 Core for $299 and a PS3 for $499(good luck even getting that low!) with identical hardware(minus blu-ray*) and make the simple decision to get the Core+3 games for the same price as the PS3 with no games.
* - Who has blu-ray movies? When the PS2 came out DVD had been on the market for years and people already had DVD collections and the ability to rent them at the local video store, so it made sense to get a console that also played DVDs. I don't see the same happening for BluRay or HD-DVD. It will take years for the hardware to come down enough in price to catch on in the mainstream so it won't be as big of an advantge(if at all) this generation.
Wort Wort Wort!
I smell a 3DO or CD-i disaster brewing.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
As far as video clarity goes Blu Ray & HD-DVD are going to fail unless they force studios to stop making DVD's. Read any of the CES coverage and you'll find 1080p plasmas running a Blu Ray/HD movie and the same set running a regular DVD on an upconverting dvd player.
Every one of them says the difference is hardly noticeable, slight bit of extra sharpness to the picture for the HD one. This is NOT the jump from VHS to DVD.
Other than for data storage these two formats are about 7-10 years ahead of when they'd really be needed.
Why they felt the need to try and push another new format on top of DVD is beyond me. Sounds like a pissing match that got out of hand. Where was the guy standing up in the meeting asking "Wait why are we spending time and tons of money on this right at this moment?"
-- taking over the world, we are.
Nothing says "accuracy in reporting" quite like claiming the PS3 will have a hard drive.
Memory cards will cost $1200. ;)
"This thing does science so hard, you say, 'I've never seen that much science.'" -Sam
The real difference in resolution is noticeable when you have a really large screen area. Forget plasma, because if your image is projected to 100"+ then the difference in resolution will be pretty clear (no pun intended).
ART on dA
Compound this with the fact that the early games will be quick rewrites of last-gen titles... and remember: Netflix/Blockbuster will not be renting Blu-ray movies for a long while.
I have no doubt that in 2008, a sub-$300 PS3 will be an attractive purchase. By then, game coders will figure out how to program the Cell, and a decent catalog of Blu-ray movies will be available. Before then, though, buying a PS3 gets you bragging rights and little else.
As it happens, I'm planning a $500 investment in gaming hardware soon: a new mobo, CPU and graphics card. I'm confident that the results in 1600x1200 will look as nice as the PS3, and I won't be paying Sony to lock me out of using my hardware in the way that I see fit.
And 640K ought to be enough for anyone, right? (Don't care who said it, same concept.)
This is a game console - games are alreadying running up towards the 8.4GB limit that dual-layer DVDs have. The PS3 is supposed to run for about four years at least before being replaced by the PS4. The space will be needed before the PS4 comes out. Consoles always use bleeding edge technology on release, because in two years, it'll be standard, and in four, it'll be obsolete.
Bet you would have laughed at the CD drives for consoles when those came out too. "Who'd ever want to use a CD? You have to load to use those, cartridges are so much better!" New generation of game console, new media format.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The image quality difference between (prerecorded, good quality) VHS and DVD isn't particularly big on a standard-def set either. I certainly wouldn't call it a jump. I think people in general bought into DVD for the other advantages it has.
I'm surprised anyone expects a jump either - you're going from 540 lines of resolution* to 720. Whoopty do. 1080 is more like it, but interlacing in 2006?
*with a PC/upconverter. 480 on TV.
My first reaction was to disagree with you, but after I thought about it, Gran Turismo looks about the same in 480p as it does in 1080i (my TV doesn't support 720p). I would imagine that all things being equal there wouldn't be much of an improvement over current HDTV owners.
But, I don't think that most gamers are going to be looking at it that way (going from current-gen systems on an HDTV to next-gen systems on an HDTV). It's going to be more like going from current-gen systems on a normal TV to next-gen systems on an HDTV. How many people with HDTV's have component cables for their current-gen systems? I do, but gamers I talk to don't even realize that their current-gen systems would look better with a component cable (most Xbox games are progressive scan and several PS2 and GC games are as well).
The difference between composite video to s-video is definately noticable on any decent TV over 25 inches, and the difference between s-video and a 480p signal is even more noticable on my HDTV. Basically, I think (for gamers) this IS the equivalent jump as the VCR -> DVD transition was for movie-watchers.
This assumes of course that most next-gen consoles will be played on HDTV's.
The PS3 will need to have an extremely strong launch lineup without any delays to ensure that people buy it for that kind of money, that or they could just take the easy way out and release it at christmas, when people will buy it anyway for the kids.
Business Voyeur
As a person who was deeply disappointed by DVD format, here's why I think new standards are necessary.
1. Capacity
I'd like to suggest the following relationship:
1. documents on 3.5
2. music on CD
3. TV series on X
4. movies on Y
I may be dreaming, but I wish this 100-files-per-media trend that's shown on 1 and 2 to continue on to 3 and 4.
If you count a medium quality movie to be 5mb per 1 min(600mb for 2hr movie), that would require the media X to be 5mb*30min*100 = 15gig, and Y to be 5mb*120min*100 = 60gig.
Therefore, we need a media that needs to be at least 60gig. As you know DVD is nowhere near 60gig. This is also a reason why I prefer 50gig Blu-Ray over 30gig HD-DVD.
2. Quality of the video
As for the clarity of Blu-Ray over DVD, I could actually tell a huge difference(I was at CES). It also bugs me that DVD isn't even filling up the entire 1080p, and I need to stretch it for the new TVs. I guess the general public will decide whether DVD is good enough of not.
While I agree with you that the penetration of the next-gen media will be unlikely for the home theater systems, I think it's in dire need for the computer market. I have 4000 songs(about 20gig) on my computer, and I really wish I can burn the entire collection onto one disk.
Just my personal opinion.
Different AC here, but yes, I do believe so. $500 manufacturing cost? That's a huge amount. I can build a PC for $500 with of the shelf components...
A proper estimate would be $100 or upto $200 if yields would be particularly bad. The same goes for the Xbox360 btw. Producing at a loss, my ass...
The losses people are talking about are actually the initial development cost and marketing. These costs are spread over entire life time of the console. If you would bring these in for just the first batch of consoles sold, both MS and Sony would make more than $10k loss per console.
Pricing the PS3 below the price of the Xbox 360 (or at the same price as the $299 Core version) may very well sound the death knell for MS. As great as the Xbox 360 is in many things, it cannot in any way compete with a Blu-Ray player that is $100 less. Sony, not being smart, or perhaps not wanting to fight against cash-rich Microsoft or not wanting to lose out on automatic profit, won't go that route. They're also not giving pricing information out because they want to let the market figure out pricing. Obviously, people ARE willing to pay $700 for a console. (Check ebay the weeks after the 360). Sony could well sell the PS3 for $699 with a game and two controllers and wait 6 months for a price drop. I have no doubt that even at $999, it would sell like sugar-fried hotcakes. At least to the fanboys and/or early adopters. Is that a smart long-term strategy? No.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
But I've learned long ago that I'm not the "general public" and neither are a lot of the people who post here on Slashdot. And while having all that hardware at your fingertips is totally worth it to somebody with dreams of modding it to run Linux, I'm guessing the price will turn off a lot of their target market who just want to play games.
Not saying it isn't going to work. Maybe BluRay will do for the PS3 what the DVD player did for the PS2. Maybe Sony has some unknown feature that will make the system fly off shelves even at twice the price (video on demand? programmable sex-bot?). But, right now, it is going to be hard to sell a $500 game machine in today's economy.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
You know, as I sit here and realize that we are all yammering on about how a $500 price point is too high, it strikes me that hundreds, if not thousands of Xbox360's changed hands on Ebay for well over $500 not a month ago. The non-core version is still selling for more than $500 in a few auctions.
We all know that the PS3 will blow the doors off the 360 (and some of us saw this @ CES), so where's the problem with the $500?
The simple truth is that if it hits at $500, and you want it, you'll buy it. And if there is a shortage, and you still want it, you'll pay $1000 for it on Ebay.
Its going to be the SAME thing here folks. Is it really that hard to remember what Sony did last time annd reflect that here?
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I agree with previous posters that Sony could come out with the PS3 $999 and still sell out at launch, but they'd be crazy to do so. Even if they came out really high with the intention to drop the price significantly once sales to the hardcore fell off, the high initial price may have permanently scared off more casual buyers. Those casual buyers might even throw up their hands and spend their PS3 money on an Xbox 360. So if Sony launches at $499, they're taking a big risk on a console that will not have a lot of great games on launch (there simply isn't enough time) and for which there aren't going to be a lot of Blu-Ray movies either. To compete, I don't think they have any choice but to come out at no more than $399 in the U.S., likely more in Japan because they can get away with it there. Though, even in Japan, a high priced PS3 may not fly given that it will have to contend with a much cheaper Nintendo Revolution which is a bigger threat to them at home than Xbox 360.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
If they just buy movies for BLUE RAY sony will still profit. Probably at lower margins than for games, but not much lower.
another advantage over MS, frankly.
And if you look at history, pretty much all systems launch at about 400 dollars, adjusted for inflation.
This may sound odd, but Blu-Ray isn't that expensive once manufacturing is set up. Basically if Sony is willing to take a one-time hit to setup the manufacturing lines, and ignore sunk development costs, Blu-Ray shouldn't cost them much more than a standard DVD drive. However, those were costs Sony was planning on eating anyway to get Blu-Ray to be a popular standard, so it is really costing them nothing extra. Of course, Sony also plans to ship the PS3 will ship sans a HDD, which would be an extra 50 or so in material costs to put towards any special Blu-Ray manufacturing. (the article incorrectly claims the PS3 ships with a HDD, unless they know something we don't).
Chip fabs are also a sunk cost: it costs a stupid amount of money to setup a chip plant, but once you do the new ones cost about the same as the old ones. As Sony has been planning on making this chip standard in all of their electronics, that cost can also be counted against all of Sony's product lines once, and as such shouldn't cost the gaming division a bundle.
Sony has the advantage over Microsoft in this case in that they do a lot of consumer electronics manufacturing, and don't need to contract that out... they eat tooling costs once and can churn these things out cheaply. Microsoft has to pay for someone else to manufacture their stuff, and as such has tooling cost and profit added to each and every one of these that gets made for them.
In the article's defense it does say that analysts really don't know, and poses the theory that Sony may be faking everyone out and ship at a much lower price. Again, history has shown that the price will probably be about 400. Irrespective of manufacturing costs, Sony will find a way to make it about the same. Even if it were cheaper, Sony would probably sell it for about the same. That's the nature of console sales. Only Nintendo lowballs, and it doesn't seem to pay off for them anywhere but handhelds, as it destroys the illusion of value.
As a side note, I do wish that people would stop relying upon "analysts," as for the past few years analysts has been synnonymous with idiots. Those who can, do. Those who can't, analyze.
The ______ Agenda
I guess what I'm saying is tech is great as long as it makes sense. This drive better read damn fast or I'll be pissed. I'll be first in line if it's price is 500 or less, but I'm allowed to complain about some things.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Arrgghh, Mates! Ya gotta stop the PIRATES! It has nothing to do with consumer's viewing experience, it has all to do with a far better DRM/copy protection (anti-piracy) for the media industries. Don't kid yourselves- the only way this concerns you (us consumers) is how to coerce us into maintaining thei profits, nothing more.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
"The strongest argument behind the $499 price point is the PS3's inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive." This, of course, is assuming that Blu-Ray is going to win the format war in the first place...
From the end of the articule:
Well OK. maybe not by Sony directly. Maybe it is? You can never tell these days who has payed who. Well... at least they arn't as bad (or good depending on you point of view) as Nintendo who actively bait discussion by not saying much. That is to say hearing that it might cost over $400 hasn't made me put it my 'must buy' list.
I am reminded of a time when the Playstation 2 came out and the buzz around DVD players. I also recall my first two DVD players. The first was in a computer and was considerably cheaper then stand-alone players or the PS2. The one to follow was a Philips DVD player which cost around $100 and was also cheaper then the PS2. I already had a Dreamcast, so why did I need a PS2?
Let us speed forward to the present day. I have an HDTV, 7 DVD players (2 in desktops, 2 in laptops, 1 in a media player, 1 PS2, and my Philips) and a job that actually allows me to spend money on things (including my massive DVD collection). I have enjoyed the high quality images and sound of HDTV and enjoy the thought of a format capable of giving me movies that way, but something is wrong.
First, there is the format war. Some of us are two young to remember Betamax and VHS, but this battle took some time to resolve and in the end was settled by the porn industry (or so the legend goes). Here we are with another format war and suggestions that a victor could take 10 years to determine (of course history says choose against Sony). Do I want to invest money in a player that could be obsolete in a few years? Not really. I am not convinced quality of sound or image will be improved enough for me to warrant buying a player and re-building a movie collection.
You see, some people still record movies on regular old film. Some now use digital technology, but even then it is not always HD cameras doing the recording. The actual number of available items truly recorded in HD is so limited that the resolution bump will not help many movies, and might even hurt some. This is especially true for older movies, we all notice it; the grain you see on your TV and holes that appeared as the film aged. Sound is almost equally pointless for many of these same reasons; I actually have DVDs with nothing but Mono or Stereo tracks.
There are also the quality concerns and lack of features that are often inherent on first generation products. Don't we all remember those 1st generation DVD players and how wonderfully they have stood the test of time. So the PS3 might seem tempting at first, but in the end separate HD-DVD and Blu-Ray drives in your PC might (and most likely will) cost less. Now a real fascinating trick that would send my entire complaint down the tube (well the format war at least), is if someone could/would develop a player with a single drive capable of playing both formats. Oh how nice that dream would be.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
First, the tools for producing HD content are not all up to snuff yet. So the quality of BluRay and HD-DVD may be expected to increase over time, whereas DVD tech has had years to optimize and is probably as good as it will get.
Second, DVD content has no security, which all of the major content producers want. BluRay and HD-DVD both offer DRM.
People may not be aggressive about going out and buying a new system at first. But they will when they can no longer rent or buy their favority movies for their existing DVD system. Much like I (who cares less about picture quality than most) didn't buy a dvd player until I could no longer rent most movies on VHS at BlockBuster. By then it only cost me $40 anyway. Same will be true for the new systems, probably with a slightly slower uptake.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I got off-topic a bit and was focused more on the formats for video and movies than I was for a console. Of course for data that new games might take up you'll want those large discs.
-- taking over the world, we are.
It looks to me like Sony is up to the same old game of trying to impose their own formats on the market. They have this overwhelming desire to control markets with their formats. Who the hell wants to adopt an expensive, overly complicated format when there's a superior alternative. All they do is upset the market and make it difficult for anyone to adopt a good standard. The problem this time is that they seem to have the movie industry backing blu-ray. $1800 for a glorified DVD player... Ridiculous.
What share of the patents around Blu-Ray does Sony hold? If it's most and they control the licensing of the portfolio, they could discount certain elements to try to entrench the technology, (readers for players cheap, writers, readers for computers expensive, expensive media), then they could use their control of the portfolio to essentially force everyone else to subsidise the production of their products to some degree.
HD-DVD just got a little more attractive.
Sony may have Squeenix and it's mainstream series still in their pocket, but Microsoft and Nintendo have Mistwalker Studios.
Sakaguchi's new company is already working on 2 RPGs for the 360, Last Odyssey and Blue Dragon, plus ASH for the Nintendo DS(Sakaguchi lays out Mistwalker plans). Sakaguchi is basically considered the father of the FF series, having been either been a producer or director on all the Final Fantasy games(even FFXII from what the IMDB says). IMO, he alone is enough to tip the tide for the 360 in Japan. Mistwalker just has to start getting its games out!
With the potential capacity of Blu-ray and HD-DVD you could get into a whole new arena of products, and still be looking forward to others.
A season of a primetime 1/2 hour show on a disc, not in a boxset. Nothing wrong with more porn (keep the resolution where it is if you want, I don't need to know the truth).
My Seahawks are having a hell of a year. They should get to the NFC Championship, and might get to the superbowl. Is a smattering of highlights enough? What a game on 1 disc in HD. A Season in a box?
The ultimate videodisc would be able to do something like hold 1 full season of football for one team (up to 24 games), snipping out commercials, with perhaps selected analysis, press conferences, or news stories of note throughout the year as extra features, in 1080p. Alternate audio tracks such as something like Autumn Thunder with dramatic narative, as broadcast commentary, ambient sound, home radio broadcast, away radio broadcast, and perhaps a coaches and/or players commentary!! And that's hardly the end of it.
And then there is baseball....
Hundreds of Gigs, to start. People collect and trade low resolution games as it is. But they have to pick their spots. As these technologies grow, they'll be able to have a more perfect record of the times in which they live. The moments common to their culture that were meaningful to them. When they want to share these with people who didn't share in them when they were live, the technology will allow people to share those moments with other people, again, and in a context and manner of their choosing. "Fucking awesome" doesn't come close to describing that. It like a time machine and making your house bigger all in one go.
"Pricing the PS3 below the price of the Xbox 360 (or at the same price as the $299 Core version) may very well sound the death knell for MS. As great as the Xbox 360 is in many things, it cannot in any way compete with a Blu-Ray player that is $100 less."
The PS3 BR player will not fit *any* market.
Any Home Theater enthusiast would definately NOT use a PS3 BR player for movie watching. The enthusiast market with 50" plasmas and custom audio systems ONLY buy the highest quality movie players (Denon for example). A PS3 BR player will not compete with these other high-end systems, it simply can't for the money.
The other market, the gamer market, is very low on HDTV's. These people on standard NTSC 4:3ratio televisions will not see an image quality difference over a normal DVD due to the resolution limitations of the monitor.
Actually my friend, i'm not sure that there is ANY optical media that can handle the bandwidth of uncompressed HD and 5.1 surround (at 192kHz 24bits) together. Even most hard drive RAIDs will strain at that. The media isn't "beyond its time", it is just in time and perhaps behind.
I haven't done the exact math, but wouldn't it probably take ~9 Tb of data to store these uncompressed for a movie that's about 2 hours long?
Hell, just the audio is pretty hefty at that.
(Roughly) 24 bits * 192khz/sec (192,000) * 6 channels = 28,224,000 bits/sec. I think thats around the same amount of data as most DVDs use for video today. Pump it up to 12 channels, and that's a good amount of data (10.2 audio). Add on spanish, and french audio tracks, and that's a lot of information.
The video is even worse. I'll leave that for someone else to calculate at 1080i uncompressed with 14 bit colour.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Long pipelines
Which is good unless your code is real branchy. Newer instruction sets are designed to avoid branches. One technique found on ARM, TI C6000, and IA-32 architectures is conditional execution, where each instruction has a "skip" flag that executes or doesn't execute depending on the flags register (which is set by arithmetic instructions). This can be used to avoid branches by running parts of both "then" and "else" paths in parallel and accepting the "right answer" once the condition becomes available. Even if a branch is unavoidable, if the "then" or "else" path is much more common in a given circumstance, newer microarchitectures have a dedicated "branch unit" that will try to predict which path is more likely and take it.
no cache
The Cell CPU's seven signal processing units run all their code and data in 128 KB RAM segments. The PowerPC core handles moving data in and out of cache. So there is a cache, albeit a software defined one like on the Atari Jaguar and GBA.
without out-of-order execution IIRC.
Out of order is only useful if your binary needs to run on multiple microarchitectures. Otherwise you could just have your compiler generate the opcodes in the best order for the CPU, following all the pipeline assignment rules (U-V for Pentium 1, or 4-1-1 for P2/P3/PM, 3-pipe for Athlon, or whatever the P4 uses) and instruction delays (e.g. a mul will take longer to return a result than an add) for one make and model.
IBM has invested a lot of money in Cell development, I wouldn't be surprised to see it put in workstations if IBM think they can make a few dollars off of it. Just don't expect them in the price range of the average Dell.
O rly? Once the PS3 becomes mature, and most of the R&D is paid off, "Dude you're getting a Cell."
Fine, buy a Game Cube, or a current generation PS2 or X-Box.
What happens when developers no longer make new games for the video game console I have? What happens when the console maker turns off the multiplayer server, as has already happened even for numerous PS2 games?
The real difference in resolution is noticeable when you have a really large screen area.
And if you don't own a lot of real estate, you don't have any place to put a really large screen area. Remember that real estate is at least an order of magnitude more expensive than electronic toys, especially in Japan. Analysts have conjectured that the Xbox would have sold a lot more units in Japan if it were this big.
Can your HDTV actually input a 1080p signal? I seriously doubt it.
Given that 1080p/24 and 1080p/30 are two of the eighteen resolutions supported by ATSC, I'd wager that most HDTVs with at least an HDMI input can take 1080p/30. Most feature films run at 24fps and will likely be encoded on BD (yes, BD not BR according to Sony) at 1080p/24. Were you thinking of 1080p/60?
This isn't VHS vs DVD where a SDTV could display the difference in quality.
The real difference: VHS "just worked", but DVD faded in and out because most TVs had only a coax input and the only widely available RF modulator was the one built into a VCR, which got fooled by Macrovision encoding on most DVD-Video titles.
new technology trying to integrate into the market... as far as the formats go BR holds more data than hd dvd so why is this a war?