Slashdot Mirror
The Worst Tech of Q2 2006
ClickOnThis writes "CNET has an article on the Worst tech of Q2 2006. Their rogue's gallery includes: Segway Polo, the 'Nyko Intelligent Remote 360', and a dishonorable mention for the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray format war. My personal (un)favorite is the appropriately-named Pantech 300 mobile phone, which is so small you could almost swallow it. From the article: 'When it's in your hand, you will feel like Gigantor. But it's a trick. You are not Gigantor. And if you're at a monster truck rally, bully convention, or Hell's Angels hangout while you're using it, you'll catch some hell for being Mr. Fancy Li'l Mini Phone. A wedgie, Kick Me sign, or stop-hitting-yourself situation might ensue.'"
How about "worlds smallest mobile phone"r oduct_idx=322
http://www.vkmobile.com/uk/product/gsm_spec.jsp?p
I bought mine a month ago and love it. Only 48g, very thin. Easily fits comfortably in shirt pocket or suit pants. And rather cheap also!
Only con - shorter than average battery capacity.
An article with next to no content, that doesn't even stick to the tech like the headline states...so-so reviews...and an annoying convoluted site design.
but I'll say it now; The name change might be good for publicity, but I still find the new name retarded.
You have been grossly mis-informed. The embedded memory within the GPU itself a massive benefit to developers. It allows the GPU to do extra graphical work (such as Anti Aliasing) without moving the data back to the GPU's memory (in the case of the 360, the 512MB system memory) - this saves system bandwidth, data retrieval time, and system memory usage. The 10 megs of embedded memory should not be considered a framebuffer. The only other system I'm aware of that has a similar setup is the Flipper in the Gamecube (3MB) - and likely Hollywood in the Wii. No GPU you can purchase for your PC has this, the PS3 does not have this. The GPU itself is more akin to the X1900 from ATI in that theres a unified shader system, which gives developers a lot more freedom (and ultimately more performance since the system wont be waiting for shader pipes to free up) with what is rendered.
We've not had the 360 on the market for a year, and launch developers had a fraction of the time required to tune their games to the hardware.
Frankly, the 360's biggest problem (ironically, the same problem area that the PS3 will present) is with the CPU. It has the potential to be an incredibly powerful unit, however programers have to relearn normal program flow to even use it. Splitting a game into (up to) 6 different threads, none of which can issue an out-of-order call, is a monumental headache. The timing required to get things working perfectly will take years to develop. I believe this is where your performance loss, framerate included, is do be found.
They never assumed you would have to fit your whole framebuffer in EDRAM at once, that's why they have predicated tiling. I'm not going to go beyond what info is publicly available, but you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
Predicated Tiling