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IBM's Plans For the Cell Processor
angry tapir writes "Development around the original Cell processor hasn't stalled, and IBM will continue to develop chips and supply hardware for future gaming consoles, a company executive said. IBM is working with gaming machine vendors including Nintendo and Sony, said Jai Menon, CTO of IBM's Systems and Technology Group, during an interview Thursday. 'We want to stay in the business, we intend to stay in the business,' he said. IBM confirmed in a statement that it continues to manufacture the Cell processor for use by Sony in its PlayStation 3. IBM also will continue to invest in Cell as part of its hybrid and multicore chip strategy, Menon said."
What business would want to give up guaranteed sales? I mean, a gaming platform is like walking into a bank, depositing one cent and then getting a cent every second until the bank closes.
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
Bring on a 12 core PS4 with raytracing games.
I wish I could buy a consumer-priced system with one of these CPUs. A very interesting system to develop for. After all, we all are going to use some kind of system with the separate memory model, more like this, when we will come to the end of scalability of the currently dominating multicore CPU with common memory space.
I hope that PS4 (or other console using it) will be linux-friendly as PS3 was until Sony blew it. Alas, however slim this chance is, there seem to be no better chance.
game over more cores with less heat.
Great, but where is the software expert side going to come from?
It seems to take years for any 3rd party to work out how to optimise "anything" HD for the systems.
With a push for more cores how about a push for more developer support vs "cloud-based" and p2p servers.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The basic problem with the Cell processor is that it has 256KB (not MB, KB) per processor, plus a bulk transfer mechanism to main memory. Given that model, it has to be programmed like a DSP - very little state, processing works on data streams. For games, this sucks. No CPU has enough memory for a full frame, or for the geometry, or a level map. Trying to hammer programs into that model is painful. (Except for audio. It's great for audio.) In many PS3 games, the main MIPS machine is doing most of the work, with the Cell CPUs handling audio, networking, and I/O. And, of course, Sony had to put an NVidia graphics processor in the thing late in the development cycle, once people finally realized that the Cell CPUs couldn't handle the rendering.
But if each Cell CPU had, say, 16MB, the Cell machines could be treated more like a cluster. Programming for clusters is well understood, and not too tough.
It's probably too late, though. Multi-core shared memory cache-consistent machines are now too good. It's not necessary to use an architecture as painful as the Cell. It's probably destined for the graveyard of weird architectures, along with data flow machines, hypercubes, SIMD machines, systolic processors, semi-shared-memory multiprocessors, and similar hardware that's straightforward to build but tough to program.
The story is not that IBM continues to manufacture chips but that the Cell design is not dead. This contradicts earlier stories to some degree.
In all fairness, it contradicts only on the surface as IBM only stated in the older story that Cell as separate design will end and its co-processor-heavy design will merge with future POWER iterations.
There were also rumors that IBM won't manufacture PS3 Cell CPUs any longer, leaving it to contractors.
I would not want to be betting against IBM for this marketspace. Their cell chip, which is an asymmetric multi-core CPU architecture, seemed bizarre when announced, but has proven to be quite good for these workloads. If IBM is looking to leverage their regular POWER chipset for the console market, they will probably build some screamers with them. Cell and POWER both have Unix and Linux adaptations running on them, so having the capability seems trivial. Whether vendors will want you using their hardware that way is another matter entirely. After all, the chief reason that console games cost so much is that for every copy sold, the developer pays the console hardware manufacturer a licensing fee. Unlike the PC arena, where the architecture is published and you develop for it for effectively no additional cost.
A while back I was looking for one or two Cell CPU based machines as development boxes for inhouse geophysical software - basicly to see if it's worth going onto that platform. The three week process between contacting what appeared to be the only vendor of Cell based workstations and getting a price for an entry level machine was frustrating. It involved daily calls to a slimy bastard that appeared to just want to waste time trying to become my friend until he had carefully finished weighing my companies wallet.
In the end the time window had come and gone (the developers got bored or gave up on the idea of using the Cell) before I could get even a hint at the price but I kept going for the sake of future projects. The price for one workstation with one processor was fairly similar to that of six of our cluster nodes. You would need some sort of black-ops budget where any Accountants coming close are shot on sight before paying that sort of price. An entry point machine no much different to a playstation with more memory cost a truly insane and unjustifiable price.
You've really missed hearing about Cell?
It's a new processor architecture, IBM and Sony (and possibly others) had a hand in it. Effectively two "Power" cores and a bunch of vector processing units. It's supposed to be very very good for vector operations. For a while (a few years back now) the world's most powerful supercomputer was a machine composed of nodes containing two cell processors and an Opteron each.
It's different to other parallelisation strategies as the vector units (SPU/SPEs) allow you to parallelise stuff at an operation level, unlike just stuffing more cores into the box which is the intel/PC strategy. For games and graphics this it thought to be good, hence its inclusion in the playstation 3. It's also supposed to be good for scientific computing.
I guess you could think of it as somewhere between a CPU and a GPU, or a hybrid of the two approaches.
So, shortly:
Cell is a processor with two PPC cores, interfaced with a bunch of auxiliary CPU cores optimized for SIMD, each with its local memory.
Right?
At the very least, you should acknowledge that the continued development of gaming devices (and associated technology) is spreading out into improvements in many other fields of technology, some of which you may find more interesting/relevant to your everyday life.
I acknowledge it if you like. But I fail to see how the Cell chip, in particular, has achived this: all the improvements in the technology, only Mercury computers are not related to gaming.
Yes, until some time ago,one could run Linux on PS3 (thus making use of the Cell chip outside the entertainment area)... but the rumors have it as no longer possible.
Do you know otherwise?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
On further reading - not two PPC cores, one core with two threads using a similar (but possibly superior) technology to hyperthreading.
But yeah, essentially your short description there is correct.
Also I've looked at the top 500 list - The cell, though not the variant in the playstation, is in Roadrunner. Roadrunner is the third fastest computer on the planet.
... is that it lies in between ordinary x86-type multicore processors and CUDA/GPGPU, and there's not much room in between.
How about #3 in top500 (#1 a few years back)?
...platform where you don't have to worry about some idiot company dictating what software you run on the hardware you purchased, don't you think?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
They originated it, not copied it.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
...the Cell might have had when they locked down the PS3.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
It is actually one branch of what is appearing to be a fork in gaming machines: ultra-high-performance renderers like the PS3, and peripheral driven lower performance systems like the Wii, Some people have sid that the Wii is the way of the future, current generation renderers do all the graphics you need, gaming developments will be in the UI not in graphics. This is a step down the opposite path: we can ans should g3t better graphics.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I wonder what it's gonna have to absorb to evolve into the Perfect Cell. :)
What would be a pretty cool chip would be an 8-core chip with 4 x86_64 cores, two graphics cores, and two Cell cores. (perhaps IBM + AMD working together)
After that, build a custom Linux with MeeGo as the front end / launcher.... It would be cool if game console makers embraced Open Source for everything up to launching the games. ...and if they don't want their SDK open source, that's fine, just make the Operating System so it can launch the games, then get out of the way. Run it on two cores (for better functionality with Multimedia capabilities, ebook reading, etc.) and use the rest of the cores (2 x86_64, 2 Graphics and 2 Cells) for gaming.
As for the other hardware, Composite, Component, HDML, VGA, WiFi, Ethernet, and a headphone jack.(maybe bluetooth for wireless controllers and the ability to use bluetooth headsets)..blu-ray, card reader, and USB.
This is all off the top of my head, and would be a pretty cool gaming console, which would truly capture the home entertainment medium and make most people looking for gadgets, consoles, or HTPCs drool appropriately.
Make America grate again!
I think this guy is suggesting we buy some of his shoes, but I'm not quite sure.
My UID is prime. Hah!
Of course game developers tend to be a bit more sceptical. The Cell requires a very specific way of programming (don't align your data flow to the processor's capabilities and performance nose-dives), which doesn't go over well with people who have limited time to make their game/engine work on several different platforms, most of which work roughly the same.
I attended the Games Convention Developers Conference 2008. A number of panelists mentioned that what they presented was harder to get working on the Cell due to its unique requirements. It really does require a different approach to every other system on the market.
Add to that the fact that the PS3 doesn't appear to deliver obviously superior performance to the more conventional X360 and the question arises whether the Cell is worth the hassle in the gaming sector. Scientific programming can afford to write system-specific code and jump through hoops to attain maximum performance (after all, 10% faster execution speed may mean their calculations finish a month or more sooner). Game developers, on the other hand, are on a very tight development schedule and might make a better game with a sightly less powerful but conventional platform to develop for.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
...processor is that the company selling it's flagship product decided to lock out people wanting to experiment with it.
Because those people made such progress after having nearly four years to experiment? It's time people around here quit pretending like Sony never gave them the chance to dink around with the PS3.
I have been wondering just how long it will take for the "ooohhh shiny!" factor to wear thin. Hell I fire up Far Cry I or Wolfenstein on my $36 HD4650 and the people stand around and go "oooohhh". You really don't need any higher to have decent immersion in a game, and especially with FPS if the game is worth a damn you are too busy dodging fire to just stand around and look at the shiny. Then add in the spiraling costs and delays to market adding lots of "ohhh shiny" add, and it quickly becomes "get a hit, and on time, or we'll all out of business" and that simply isn't sustainable long term.
That is why I wouldn't be surprised if the next gen gaming consoles don't do something similar to the original Xbox, which I thought was a damned good idea at the time. You could take a cheap ULV Phenom II Quad, add a 5xxx Radeon GPU and some decent controllers and have the average Joe drooling at the "ooohhh shiny" for a long time, and the combination of cheap hardware, the ability for developers to easily code with tools they already have, and the quick time to market would probably make it a hit.
I just don't see the incredible amounts required to bring a new gen of consoles not seriously hurting any companies bottom line. With a more off the shelf approach all they have to do is cook up the DRM and a close to bare metal OS for it and let the economies of scale keep the price low out the gate and drive prices even lower as time goes on. While MSFT could blow the cash simply because they have twin cash cows in Office and Windows, I doubt Sony will be able to afford the needed capital, and Nintendo has made it pretty clear they aren't gonna play the "ooohhh shiny!" game at all with targeting the Wii to casual gamers. I just don't see a never ending ooohhh shiny arms race being good for anybody. Just look at how ATI is using Eyefinity to push new GPUs and Nvidia looking at HPCs with CUDA, even they know the "ooohhh shiny" can only go so far. Hell I figured when I got the HD4650 it would just be a stopgap until I could get a $150+ GPU, but now? Hell it plays Bioshock II and everything else I throw at it with plenty of ooohh shiny and doesn't turn my apt into a sauna bath, so why bother? I used to be a serious graphics whore, but even I got tired of the ooohh shiny and now prefer games that are actually...what's the word?...oh yeah FUN. I'm starting to wonder if the whole graphics race is starting to hit a dead end.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
"Sony had to put an NVidia graphics processor in the thing late in the development cycle, once people finally realized that the Cell CPUs couldn't handle the rendering."
My god. You are repeating that Beyond3d forum lie in late 2010???
"For games, this sucks"
"Trying to hammer programs into that model is painful. (Except for audio. It's great for audio."
"In many PS3 games, the main MIPS machine is doing most of the work, with the Cell CPUs handling audio, networking, and I/O."
"It's not necessary to use an architecture as painful as the Cell."
"tough to program."
It's like you tried to parrot every Beyond3d x86 fanboy talking point you could remember.
Back in the early PS2 we would talk about what a next generation PS2 would look like. Those whiteboard diagrams looked almost identical to what Sony and IBM came up with.
The parallels between the PS2/EE/GS and PS3/Cell/RSX are almost identical:
Execution starts on the EE/PPU
Heavy/parallel computation task is spawned off to the VUs/SPUs
Light control code runs in parallel on the EE/PPU
As graphical elements become read to be rasterized they are spawned off to the GS/RSX
In a well running PS2/PS3 engine all three major areas are running full speed in parallel. Split memory architecture lets each area of the machine run at full speed without interfering with the rest of the system.
Kutagari and IBM did a masterful job. It was an obvious choice to build off the model of the most sucessful console architecture in history and the one all console developers had intimate knowledge of, the 145 million selling PS2.
That's gotta sting Xbox 360 developers - to have fanboys calling the chip that beat the shit out of you this gen called nothing but a 'toy version'.
The Xbox 360 is also powered by a 'toy version' of PowerPC which is a 'toy version' of POWER.
Also, I think Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are all evil, and I do my best not to give any of them money any more. That means buying everything used and not paying for Live Gold. If that makes me a fanboy, then your comment makes you my bitch. But we knew that already because you're an anonymous pussy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just FYI.
IMO this was one of the main failures of the architecture. Xbox360 developers just have to worry about parallelizing their code, Cell developers on top of that have to worry about writing code that can make use of the SPE's, let alone efficient use of them.
The Cell was designed back when Sony needed hardware that could decode their high definition blu-ray streams. I think this is why the SPEs are useful for decoding operations and little else in the gaming world.
I think the true power of the PS3/Cell will be it's longevity.
Look at the PS2. Now look at the 1st gen games for it versus some of the latest ones. The differences are huge, and they are due purely to better programming techniques (same hardware.) I've no doubt that the PS3/Cell will have a similar lifespan.
Also, I know it discussed in almost every tech generation of consoles, but this time it might be true: Is the hardware finally good enough? This may be directly influenced by the popularity of Flash-based and iPhone games. Is the game market still being driven by the faster-polygon-pushing race? Maybe not..
killzone doesn't look better than modern warfare 2. and that game is on both platforms.
you are the one who sounds like a damn fanboy.
I remember reading somewhere that one of the goals in PS2 programming was keeping that DMAC running full tilt streaming data. Ah, found it, Ars Technica:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2000/04/ps2vspc.ars/4
Interestingly, Cell was tolerant of losing SPUs in manufacture. A lot of "bad" chips would've been used as lower-end Cells for cheaper devices, while being essentially the same platform as far as developers were concerned. I don't think much came of that though. One laptop with a 4-SPU Cell, talk of a 2-SPU Cell as a video processor in a high-end HDTV. A shame, really, as they had a lot of half-dead Cells rolling off the line when they were trying to crank them out for the PS3 launch. Wonder what happened to them.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Yeah until you see Modern Warfare 2 at 1920x1200, highest setting on an LCD monitor. It looks so sharp and the spectral and bump mapping and huge texture resolution really blew me a way. The hundreds of particles from various fires in the game, for instance the tree on fire in the sub urb map is an amazing sight I've never seen before. At 120hz for a more solid experience when you look around.
But yes gameplay is just as important. Monsters in Doom 1 and 2 that had pixelated blood splatters around the walls, and being stunned when hit is something i've missed in current FPS games. Doom 3, Quake 4 and Prey are pretty dumb. Red puffy sprites as blood and no depth in the gameplay. Destructive environments we had a long time ago, and been missed. The depth of games like System Shock 2 and Baldur's Gate might never come again. Many courses to choose, several ways to complete a level, hundreds of character development options. Add in an incredible story, excellent voice acting and exceedingly well written sentences and dialogue. Dragon Age is childish in comparison and not worth a "Baldur's Gate spiritual successor" in any means.
http://jooh.no/web/bloodshot_sprite_texture_puff_quake_3.jpg
http://jooh.no/web/Doom2_pixellated_blood.png
http://jooh.no/web/XCom_UFO_what_went_off_here_640.png
http://jooh.no/ss_baldurs_gate.html
Teasing the nobles, and rightfully so!
I found this article interesting. They write about Valves approach to multi-core CPU's and game engines.
The programmers at Valve considered three different models to solve their problem. The first was called "coarse threading" and was the easiest to implement. Many companies are already using coarse threading to improve their games for multiple core systems. The idea is to put whole subsystems on separate cores; for example, graphics rendering on one, AI on another, sound on a third, and so on. The problem with this approach is that some subsystems are less demanding on CPU time than others. Giving sound, for example, a whole core to itself would often leave up to 80 percent of that core sitting unused.
The second approach was fine-grained threading, which separates tasks into many discrete elements and then distributes them among as many cores as are available. For example, a loop that updates the position of 1,000 objects based on their velocity can be divided among, say, four cores, with each core handling 250 objects apiece. The drawback with this approach is that not all tasks divide neatly into discrete components that can operate independently. Also, if some entries in the list take longer to update than others, it becomes harder to scale the tasks evenly across multiple cores. Finally, the issue of memory bandwidth quickly becomes a limitation with this method. For certain specialized tasks, such as compiling, fine-grained threading works really well. Valve has already implemented a system whereby every computer in their offices automatically acts as a compiler node. When the programmers were getting ready to demonstrate their results on the conference room computer with the big screen, they had to quickly deactivate this feature first!
The approach that Valve finally chose was a combination of the coarse and fine-grained, with some extra enhancements thrown in. Some systems were split on multiple cores using coarse threading. Other tasks, such as VVIS (the calculations of what objects are visible to the player from their point of view) were split up using fine-grained threading. Lastly, whenever part of a core is idle, work that can be precalculated without lagging or adversely affecting the game experience (such as AI calculations or pathfinding) was queued up to be delivered to the game engine later.
Valve's approach was the most difficult of all possible methods for utilizing multiple cores, but if they could pull it off, it would deliver the maximum possible benefits on systems like Intel's new quad-core Kentsfield chips.
To deliver this hybrid threading platform, Valve made use of expert programmers like Tom Leonard, who was writing multithreaded code as early as 1991 when he worked on C++ development tools for companies like Zortech and Symantec. Tom walked us through the thought process behind Valve's new threading model.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2006/11/valve-multicore.ars
Teasing the nobles, and rightfully so!
Yes, your response was informative and I know you're trying to help.
But seriously, if this person has no idea what a Cell processor is, I'm pretty sure the concept of CPU optimization will be lost on them. You could say it was a new type of chip made by elves to regrow tissue and they would probably believe it. Just how out of touch would someone have to be to miss the Cell, and not bother to Google it before posting?
I bet you didn't like that I used the word "Fail" in the modern vernacular sense. But in case you thought I was being non-factual, here is information on the real cell processor which IBM sells for truly incredible amounts of money. I've looked up the pricing, and it is scary.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't particularly care about the XBox. The last non-portable console I actually was interested in was the PS2.
This comes from the point of view of a casual gamer who is not concerned with having the latest and greatest but has a brother who is. I've seen the X360 perform on a large HDTV set and I've seen the PS3 perform on the same set. Both look good. The Cell may outperform the X360 by a large margin if given enough time but that remains to be seen. Right now I'd put them as reasonably close (= to someone who isn't an expert on console graphics the PS3 is not obviously superior, which is exactly what I wrote).
Don't get me wrong, the Cell is powerful. Nobody would use the X360 for a scientific cluster but the PS3 was popular for that until Sony killed Other OS. However, that power is not easy to work with. They had a very impressive realtime raytracing demo on the GCDC with the SPEs doing the raytracing work and the PPE coordinating and compositing everything. Very nice.
But at the same time there were a lot of workshops (and at the GC proper, a lot of developers) who pointed out that getting an engine to work on the PS3 is much more work than on more traditional systems because it's a completely different programming model. Treat the SPEs as small CPUs and watch your framerate go to the low single digits. Ignore them and you're wasting most of the system's power. The SPEs have a tiny amount of RAM and you're expected to code in such a way that you deliver data to them in a single DMA operation. If your data set is too big for the SPE or your packet size does not align with what the Cell can do in a single DMA operation you plug up the bus and all SPEs starve.
It may very well be that the PS3 is a late bloomer and that we will see more and more optimized graphics for the Cell. Then again, Microsoft might be able to afford to just release a new XBox sooner than Sony can relace the PS3 as (if I remember correctly) the PS3 was really expensive to develop.
The big question is whether the PS3's approach of having a really powerful but hard to use processor is viable in the marketplace. If Microsoft can just toss out consoles at lower development cost and Nintendo outsells both of them by delivering cheap systems to casual gamers, Sony might be facing trouble.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Why not tell us that Intel is going to continue to make chips too?
Wait! What?
Have you heard something?
Posted anon - are you an Intel insider?
Xbox and PC gamer fans
Ok, seriously, what's the deal with this? Sure, there are plenty of 360 fanboys out there who say nonsensical stuff about the PS3 (and PS3 fanboys saying nonsensical stuff back), but why lump PC gamers in with them? I'm not sure PC gamers generally care one way or another which console does what graphically these days, considering that with the 4-5 years of advancements in hardware since they came out, you can now buy a video card that'll run any half-assedly (un)optimized console port at 1920x1200 at 60fps (instead of usually ~720p at 30fps upscaled on either console) for a whopping $100, along with other stuff neither console can handle. Not necessarily because they're better or worse on some fundamental level, just much newer.
Console A can do foo, but Console B can do bar? Big frickin' deal, says the PC that can do foo, bar and baz (by virtue of not being 4-5 years old). More importantly, which one(s) has/have the games you want to play? Some people want to play stuff that's only on the PS3, some people want games you can only get on the 360, some like PC exclusives, and some of them even enjoy the Wii. It'd be nice if we could all just be ok with that instead of having these retarded arguments over esoteric hardware architecture details, but there's no reasoning with fanboys, I suppose.
I'm not even going to get started on all the other ridiculous replies going on about "x86 fans" in relation to the 360, which is PowerPC-based...
Except if you look at Tigerdirect and Newegg the most popular models are 1600x900, NOT 1920x1080. As the article on /. pointed out not too long ago we are losing screen height as the new monitors and nothing but LCD TVs without a tuner. I personally have a 1600x900 22in given to me brand new in the box as a thank you gift from a customer, and the "oohhh shiny" looks just fine and any bigger I would need to get a new desk.
So I have no doubt if you buy the biggest monitor you can find you're gonna need a big card to run it, just as I'm sure ATI is pushing Eyefinity hoping you'll get some really big suckers to show off your card. But dealing with customers every. single. day. I can tell you 1920x1080 is NOT the norm, with many having the older 1366 by 768 and nearly all the new ones are 1600x900, so having lots of horse really don't help in those cases. i can crank up the graphics just fine at 1600x900 and not ever have the HD4650 1Gb fall below 30FPS, and with the economy in the crapper folks are buying cheap above all.
Hell it's all moot anyway, since laptops are outselling desktops so badly many of my fellow shopkeepers aren't even carrying more than a token couple of PCs. of course with the low end laptops (which is what is selling huge right now) you certainly aren't gonna get 1920x1080, and are lucky to get a GPU capable of gaming at all. But the desktops I see folks buying simply don't have the big pixel monster monitors with them, and folks just don't care. As long as it can do ooohhh shiny on the level of even a 45xx card they seem to be quite happy. I guess that is what happens when you have a race to the bottom, eventually you hit it.
As for it being MORE expensive than a dedicated console? Citation please? As I find it hard to believe something as created in such massive quantities as an AMD or Intel CPU along with a bog standard Nvidia or ATI GPU could be more expensive than a completely custom designed POWER chip along with a totally made to order GPU. The economies of scale even on an x360 simply are nothing compared to what AMD and Intel crank out on a quarterly basis.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I've wondered this for a while: IBM, Toshiba, and Sony developed the cell. Pray tell, they sell a cell, how do they divide the income?
Actually, since console graphics are meaningless next to sales numbers (this is business, after all) the winner is Nintendo, with Microsoft and Sony being also-rans. Using a souped-up Gamecube (which sold as often as the PS3 and the X360 combined) and a portable system with four megabytes of RAM (which sold as often as the PS3, X360 and PSP combined) Nintendo has outpaced them.
;)
It doesn't matter whether Microsoft's promo videos are pre-rendered and Sony's are not; Nintendo's look like they're from ten years ago and people buy Nintendo. In today's market, graphics don't mean as much as they used to and that's why Microsoft and Sony are busy trying to compete about the sizes of their new-and-improved manhoods while Nintendo is laughing all the way to the bank, selling people yesterday's tech for today's money.
So that's another reason why Sony might rethink their strategy: Neither in the console market nor in the portable market can their more powerful devices compete with Nintendo's old but innvotative ones. Sony can only hope for the second place this generation.
While Sony paid a lot of money for the Cell, Nintendo developed an input system using not particularly new tech like motion sensors and IR imagery. And then Sony imitated it (= paid for much of the same development), giving Nintendo even more of a development cost advantage. Likewise, the NDS combines fairly conservative tech with a touchscreen. The PSP family has more powerful (= expensive) innards and a UMD drive, which again represents development cost.
Combine that with the fact that Nintendo's systems outsold Sony's by a wide margin (and Nintendo made a profit on them while Sony treated theirs as loss leaders) and you see that the company that relied on clever human interaction design made a lot of money and can afford whatever the next generation brings while the one that relied on clever hardware design... Well, they're Sony so they're not exactly poor but they could be doing better.
PS: I know I shouldn't be feeding obvious trolls but hey, I can always use some extra karma.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Best spam evar! (Seriously, that made my day. And they say not to respond to spammers...) Sadly, I have no mod points at this time, so you just get this.