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Playstation 2 Workstation
xtra there's been a lot of talk about the power of the Playstation 2. Now it seems that
Sony believes that the graphical power of the PSX2 is so great, that they are going to use it as the heart of "Creative Workstations", developing a line of computers for people working with graphical content, mainly. The day of covergence draws one step closer.
I actually don't think the port would be all that difficult, relativly speaking. AFAIK the "emotion engine" is running the MIPS instruction set which we already have a port for. So, a port would need, ideally: X, sound, Mesa, and any system specific stuff (booting, MMU etc.) USB and Firewire too of course, for full functionality.
Please BE CHEAP PLEASE BE CHEAP! LINUX + GAMES would finally give me a reason to leave windows forever! If it runs linux that is.
"The PC is losing its position as the technology driver; so are workstations," said Kutaragi. I think the guys at Sony are getting a wee bit too self-confident about their technology...
In the early nineties, Sony produced a line of MIPS based graphics workstations that ran the proprietary, Unix-like NEWS-OS. These machines were called Network Workstations, and Sony provided an OpenGL for the accelerated 3D graphics hardware. (NWS-5000G series, I believe.) )
Sony did not market these systems outside of Asia, so they were something of a dud. This also makes finding any information on it next to impossible if you don't speak japanese. I would never have heard about this platform if it weren't for the "Sony NEWSmips" page on the "Supported Platforms" area of the NetBSD site...and web searches have only turned up a smattering of information. If anyone out there can point me to some web resources?
Now we know Sony has MiPS workstation and Unix experience, there is a gaping vacuum where SGI once was, and Unix is on the rise again.
Foregone conclusion: SGI is -meat-.
In doubt: is Sony going to revive the NEWS-OS, or are they going to be the first major workstation vendor to back Linux whole-hog?
SoupIsGood Food
Yes, I think doing it in realtime mean something for the digital artists. Try to make a good animation without having it at it's real speed. And if you can do it, is 15000$ big money for a company producing digital media, and cutting developement by 3 or 4, by simply spending 10000$ more ? Think about it.
It's really starting to irk me that people see the arrival of the PSX2 as some sort of "second coming of Sony". The hype that Sony has been pushing for the PSX2 is approaching techno-religious evangelism.
The Playstation 2 is a machine. It's faster than what we have now, but it isn't some amazing god-machine that will destroy the evil PC empire.
Grab the recent edition of Next Generation magazine that has the Phantom Menace special on the cover. Turn to the PSX2 article and read the tiny numbers on the right side under the graphics synthesizer picture. Or, even better, do a bit of searching and find the specs on the web.
Now go dig up your old comp sci books and find the sections on parallel processing. Find the section that says something to the effect of "Parallel processing is great for big problems, but it's very inefficient for small problems". Good. Now take those specs on the PSX2, do a little math, figure out what parts of the PSX2 are parallelized, and then do a little more math to estimate some real-world performance figures. Don't forget to take into account things like RAM latency, bus contention, DRAM random-access stalls, etc.
Work it all out and you'll soon find that the PSX2 is doing nothing amazing.
The one big thing that they have going for them - and most people forget about this - is that the box's display is a standard television, with a max resolution of 640x480. Televisions have the nice property that they blur things so much that people don't notice how jagged and rough most of the games actually look. Would you play a 3d shooter on your PC if it only ran in 320x240?
Double the performance of a current-generation chip by massively parallelizing an existing architecture, then cut the screen size down to a quarter of what it was (1280x1024 -> 640x480). Set the hardware in stone, so game programmers can optimize to their hearts' contents. Quote absurdly high "theoretical max performance" figures without ever touching on how those figures translate into real-world statistics. Spice it up with a few pretty pictures and let the hungry gamers do the rest.
When Sony releases some ProCDRS, viewperf, glperf, and SPECmarks that show their machine is orders of magnitude beyond anything we have today, then I'll start to believe the hype. Till then, you have to sit down and do the math.
PSX2 speculators tend to overlook the fact that the PSX2 has Firewire *and* USB ports in addition to the two-on-the-front game controller i/o ports.
I'm willing to bet that there will be cheap USB joysticks and controllers on the PC market in 6 months, which means that Sony *not* putting more proprietary ports on the front is a good thing.
They'll put 'em on there, so that they can bundle cheap controllers in the box, but really I think that USB-based controllers will take over from there.
And I'm willing to bet their Game API's can seamlessly switch between a USB controller and a cheap-front-i/o-port controller...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
No DVD
Therefore the PS2 will also double as a DVD player, and will be easier to make games for, as DVD's should be much cheaper to manufacture than some GCD crap.
This is similar to the mistake that Nintendo made when choosing the cartridge over the CD. And Nintendo has suffered greatly.
Uh.. I'd buy a playstation computer with no OS and sit down with a few mips manuals and code my own in assembly language for fun.
I'm sure alot of all the unix type OSes would be ported to this computer in no time.. not to mention BEOS.. in my opinion, the software is the easy part that they should leave to the hackers whom like to sit around all day and write code religiously.
The digital entertainment developer market is different now. For one thing, it's quite a bit larger, and far more diverse. Now is also the ideal time for Sony to stick their foot in the door, with the trip-ups recently by SGI and Intergraph. As an artist at a game company, this really is something that piques my interest, as software has always had trouble keeping up with hardware, mostly due to developers simply not having solid hardware from the respective companies to work with before it gets shipped. So you see a new 3D accelerator come out with all these shiny new features, and don't see any products that take advantage of it for at least a few months, when lo and behold, the hardware developer announces their next big thing. I appreciate the progress, but it's a stagger-step way to do things. Sounds like Sony plans to improve on the model greatly by giving developers access to the new hardware in time to give them a chance to release products using concurrent technology. This, I look forward to.
Technically, it -did- work.. Where Amiga failed was in marketing. I'm sure Sony isn't anywhere near as clueless as CBM was.. And anyway, there was no such thing as desktop video publishing before the Amiga...("what's multimedia?") Things shouldn't be so hard now that the road's been cleared. Didn't see any mention of the OS, though...
Lowes, I believe.
Not the same system... The enxt Nintendo system will be Power PC based... does that mean the the PowerMac's have failed?
...get linux running on this thing. They should probably use X windows for it since it already available and you don't really need anything better for a workstation. If the command line was good enough to produce ocean scenes for Titanic, I think Sony could do worse than to use X.
Thinking about it, some of the ASCII art I've seen has been pretty good, so you might not even need a GUI. If someone needs to do true color art, they can fire up their hex editor and do it right. Why do people try to make computers easier to use with their fancy window managers. It's all pretty ridiculous. I've read Neil Stephenson's article on the beauty and grace of the command line and agree completely with anything he says because he wrote Snow Crash and it was cool.
What they should do is implement and accelerated command line architecture so that the machine prints things on the screen slightly faster than I can type it. That would allow me to read ahead and edit the text before I've written it. This would save me a lot of time. And if they make it open source I can work with a bunch of people and make it better. The machine could write and edit my work and I could just give it the once over at the end of the day.
The Playstation 2 is just that powerful!
Oops, the nurse says it time for me to take my Ridalin...
>But Sony don't want to enter existing workstation markets, so they will not quite face the same
>problem. They want to create new markets.
No, they want to enter the Macintosh market. Most Macs in business settings are used for exactly the same sort of thing - graphics, layout, multimedia. Sony is rich enough to give it a go - the result should be more choices and better/cheaper Macs. Both are good things.
Back when SGI was making systems everyone wanted, their microprocessor engineers had developed two next generation chip designs for the MiPS family. Code named "The Beast", the first design was to be every inch as fast as a top of the line Cray vector processor, at microprocessor prices.
The second design would be a complete revamp of the MiPS architecture, and was code-named "Alien. It's proposed specs made the Beast look like a 286 with asthma.
Then SGI bought Cray, who whined that their sales would plummet if their pricey, high-margin system looked like a chump next to commodity electronics. Then Beluzzo stepped into the scene, and abandoned MIPS altogether, spinning off the company and washing his hands of RISC. End of story.
Until...
Sony needed something special for the PSX-2. MIPS just happened to have this Beast and alien crap that SGI didn't want anymore, so...MiPS figured if they could make a workstation as powerful as a supercomputer, they could make a game console as powerful as a workstation.
Sony has just awakened to the raw possibilities afforded by the MiPS platform, and Sony -never- misses an opportunity. They're big, they're fast, they're hungry, they're linux-friendly, and that sound you hear is the sound of SGI running for it's life.
The beast is back.
On another note, Atari and Amiga failed because they were run by total incompetents who couldn't balance their own checkbook, never mind run a multinational technology giant. The Amiga 1200 and Atari Falcon were the best selling models in either company's history, with more orders than they could ever hope to fill. Runaway Growth + Moronic Management = Death.
SoupIsGood Food
My neighbor's cat told me the exact same thing. I guess I should pay more attention the lottery number she keeps giving me.
"If PCs with a 400-MHz Celeron processor and several gigabytes of hard-disk storage satisfy most PC users, product differentiation loses meaning and only price talks, he said. Some PCs have broke $1,000 and dropped to $500 or less, and some are offered for free. " well seeing someone is giving away free pc's let us all build beowolfs..... what the funk is this guy on about? sounds like marketing hype at its best..... everyone email sony for the location of these "free" pc's........
Somebody coming across a Playstation will probably be like somebody coming across an Atari 2600 today. Today we go "cool" and play the old favorites of Adventure, Superman, Space Invaders, Yars Revenge, Breakout, Warlords, etc. In 20 years it'll be "wow" and we'll play our old favorites of Spyro, Crash, Einhander, etc.
Of course, there might be an issue as the transition to HDTV should be complete. NTSC will no longer be a standard and might not be supported by the TV sets of 2019 :-)
From what I've heard of the playstation 2, it doesn't sound like it would be that hard to network it to a Linux box and then have it run a GLX server... does this sound like an unreasonable way to get major graphics acceleration to your regular workstation? As for specialized graphics processing, perhaps there's a similar way to get a whole bunch of them to do clustering when networked to a server workstation... hmm rc5 ...
PSX2 will own.
their Vaio line is nice... but expensive.
Anyway, they are doing it for PSX2 game developers, so they only need to sell a few thousand.
1394 is on Macs, PSX2, Sony camcorders, Viao notebooks and desktops, TiVo, HDTV's and external hard drives... Kiss Ethernet goodbye.
>Try to make a good animation without having it at it's real speed.
I might be misunderstanding your point but has _any_ animation is not done in real time. Animators have and are trained to do it frame by frame. Disney & co did everything by hand. No real time there.
>cutting developement by 3 or 4,
Most of the development time is _not_ in computer/rendering but in the artist/work side.
People make animation, not computers.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Sony hand out dev kits to video game store owners now do they? In my experience video game store people make such drivel up as they go along.
Regarding the Playstation Workstation, well the name needs some polishing. I find it amusing everybody discounts the Nintendo console (and why is everybody so concerned about the software medium, the carts had advantages).
On a slightly more relevant point, why is Sony wasting their time making a whole computer when they could make a card with a few of their graphics processors and have better results to show for themselves. I can't say I'm wowed by what I've seen of the PS2 in any case...
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Bleem and PsEMU Pro already do this. Bleem claims that it only needs a p166.
With any luck, downloading a 650Mb PSX disc image will be as much a matter as downloading a 40k C64 tape image is today
People with cable modems, DSL, at schools, or any other place with decent bandwidth can already download a playstation game in 1 or 2 hours (less depend on where you are).
As for the companies caring.. they still care. But maybe in a few years :).
...
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
Just when you think emulating something as "advanced" as N64 or PSX is difficult. I sometimes fail to see why buy them in the first place.. we have a N64 and PSX and I am playing them on my desktop!!
Legalities aside..
Except that Sony has stated when asked that the USB ports are _not_ for controllers (probably for expansion devices like digital cameras and whatnot). They are not planning releases of two different types of controller connections, which is quite understandable, and are releasing a multi-tap instead for the normal controller ports they have.
And your basis for this is? If Sony/Sega/Nintendo press their own game media, then it makes no difference for the developer in terms of ease of use. Sega's decision is not nearly as bad as the one Nintendo made. The GCD format is proprietary but still only coded onto a piece of plastic, same as the DVD, so there's no electronics or moving parts to worry about. Cartridges had electronics and could not stream movies. Nintendo bet that the lack of load time would counteract the cheapness and storage space of CD derivatives, and they were wrong. Sega bet that the lower storage of the GCD compared to a DVD would be offset by the lower cost of the system, since licensing DVD technology would add to the price. Time will tell if they bet correctly. Sega has a DVD player done already for the Dreamcast, although they didn't specify the price or release date. I'm thinking they're going to price it cheap to make it comparable to the PS2 total price and try to take some wind out of their sails/sales.
Wondering: how exactly are you planning to work with your new PS2? It's got its OS hardcoded into its software medium, 8-button controllers as interactive interfaces, and they're not going to hand out the development platforms running Linux (no one's said anything about the _games_ running Linux) to anyone...
Isn't this what happened with the Amiga. "Once a games machine, always a games machine" is what people thought, and although a few academics and scientists and the odd media company bought into the "Amiga as computer", business by and large treated it as 'games machine', despite its greater power.
I think Sony have a tough task if they want to pull this off.
-----
I noticed in the article that Sony plans to increase the power of the workstations by an order of magnitude every few years. Does this mean they're also going to require end users (read: PSX2 gamers) to upgrade their PSX's as well?
I think that if it's relatively simple to do so (swapping out a CPU or increasing the amt of RAM), like a simple computer hardware upgrade (w/o mobo reinstall), they'll have a lock on the market. But if they expect people to keep in line with the Intel Syndrome (architecture / mobo changes every 9 - 16 months), I'd rather have a fully-powered PC than an almost-obsolete gaming box.
Maybe this is Sony's way of justifying the (expected) high price (compared to other consoles) of the PSX2.
"It's not an expensive game console, it's an inexpensive graphics workstation."
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
Discuss
http://www.beowulf.org/listarchives/beowulf/199
http://www.eet.com/story/OEG19990302S0026
Since Linux has been so portable in the last years, I think they just need to port Linux to their platform and you get Yet Another Hardware Platform To Choose For Your Linux.
Seems very easy to be true. What do you think?
--
That would make it a bit easier to put Linux on it. Does anybody have an opinion on whether these would be really useful for beowulf cluster graphics? Perhaps real-time visualization of simulation data or to replace SGI's reality X series for running immersive VR stuff like CAVEs or ImmersaDesks? The natural problem (and still SGI's advantage) is the Reality series' shared memory structure...
(nil)
But I keep my fingers crossed... I hope they do it right and don't get carried away with the power of the machine. Yes, it's next-generation, but even 50 years from now, we'll still be asking for game machines, so there's no need to transform it all into something it is not already.
Still... Dang. I read a review by George Lucas, saying he received an early version of the PS2... Probably a machine sent to LucasArts or something. Anyway, he said there was a difference between the resolution produced by real-time imaging on the PS2 and the one used in TPM, but that you couldn't tell the difference on a television set.
Speaking of TPM, let's hope the PS2 won't receive a hype backlash like TPM did. There is such a thing as over-hyping.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
A game console that is really a computer? How many times have we heard that (see amiga and atari.) Sega and Nintendo seem to learn from their mistakes (and from the mistakes of others.) For some reason Sony thinks they can make all the same mistakes others have made and still rule the world. A backwardly compatible console that is expandible and will be more than just a console. Uh huh -- see CD-I, atari 7800, sega CD (backward compatible and expandible,) atari and coleco vision computers and many more. It seems to me that if Sony does rule the world it will be as much due to luck than anything else. I am not saying they won't get lucky, I am just saying that they aren't paying attention to other peoples mistakes.
Are they fighting for the Apple customers?
Sony didn't capture such a huge share of the home electronics market by not working hard. I find the last paragraph about movie theaters very intriguing indeed. I think they are right about that - movies theaters eventually will go to digital projectors, and Sony (if it continues the course) will have a lock on that market.
Sony already sells a huge chunk of music and movies that are made. I'd say this ties very well to their overall strategy.
- fog
Maybe they could sell PCI graphics cards - but entire work stations - I don't think so.
They are. As of now, most PSX2 games are being developed on Linux, and I hear the PSX2 development box is Linux based. But as for the actual end-user box, who knows. The rumor is it's going to be Linux based, but that could be just to score geek interest above all the recent WinCE/video game "achievements".
Source of rumor: a good friend owns a video game store, and is pretty in on the industry. Take that for what it's worth.
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
If I'm producing CG for tv or theaters or games I don't need to do it in real-time. So couldn't I do everything on a expensive PC? (Dual Processor/Oxygen graphics card/unholy amount of RAM/HD)
Doesn't the current software apps, SoftImage/3D Studio Max, already have a lead in many graphics companies? (Many graphics people are trained to use them and they are a proven technology)
Will SGI take this lying down?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
True the Amiga was a games machine with delusions of grandeur, but it managed to be highly competitive in the video market. On the other hand Sony are a huge company which is well managed (Amiga was never well managed). As someone who hates PC based technology with a passion (X86 blows), I am more than willing to look at the fringe systems which may never even become available. Now I'm looking at the Sun MJAC chip and wondering when a workstation powered by it will come out, when I spot that Sony are making a workstation. Of course I'm immediately interested, anyone who detests X86 should be interested. I couldn't care less about compatibilty with PC (though no doubt it will be) As for the guy who thinks that PC technology will have caught up in mid 2000 with the specs of the PS2 HAHAHAHAHA Don't make me laugh Intel are very good at making x86 (but all they do is increase clock speed and occasionally issue more than one instruction) AMD are good at copying Intel A new system is long overdue, and this could be it. I have more faith in Vapourware produced by Sony running a flavour of UNIX, than in X86 powered junk running anything (windows or whatever) Just one thought PS runs Unix variant ever seen one crash, ever???
If only we could have a small hard drive on the thing. Well, I guess I'm assuming ethernet will take up the PC Card slot. Perhaps not, we could use a USB->Ethernet connection, and slam 340meg or so into the PC Card slot.
USB harddrives are around, just not bootable... Firewire on the other hand....
Perhaps once USB becomes a bootable medium these things will be more viable.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I remember some time ago that Sony said their development platform for the Playstation 2 was going to use Linux as it's operating system. Doesn't anyone else remember that? I think I even read it here at Slashdot. I just hope they come up with something totally new in the way a computer is built. Instead of just rebuilding the same computer over and over and over again like everyone else does (ok...hard drive, PCI slots, floppy, CD-ROM/DVD in a box that you plug these things into...blah blah blah....let's build something different folks).
Sounds like Sony wants to eliminate the PC with cheaper systems based on Playstation technology?
:)
I think we have seen stuff like this happen with the Oracle/Netscape/Sun's Network Computer and Intel/Microsoft's NetPC and Microsoft's Windows CE and Gateway/Amiga's New Amiga.
What have we learned from these failures?
"I really think Sony are underestimating the growth of PC power. By the time the PS2 finally comes out you'll have cheap 800Mhz Althons or 600Mhz G5s running fully geometry accelerated GeForce256 cards." So, by these words, you reckon PS2 will still be 1.5 to 2X the power of 800MHZ Athlons and GeForce256 when it comes out People seem to forget that the GeForce256 has around 1/4 of the raw power of the Playstation2
Now, before I get flamed for this one, consider this. The Dreamcast has a built-in 56K modem, out of the box. And (since I have one, and know) it is easily pulled out and has an interesting port that it plugs into... proprietary, but it is claimed by Sega bigwigs that they'll be offering a DSL or cable (or both) modem upgrade in the future for Dreamcast owners, and it makes sense. Games for the DC are going to need slightly more bandwidth than the regular 56K they can get (and usually less) through a regular phone line. But they have it integrated. Sony's plans call for PS2 owners to have to go out and buy one later on, but theirs will be an Ethernet type card; not only will owners be forced to purchase the card, but also they will need to get an ISP that supports such a device. If Sony expects to succeed, they need to either A)Offer a competitive priced service for their Internet gaming over Sega's or B) Offer a regular modem for those of us who don't feel like going Ethernet just yet.
This might not seem like much of a problem, but I think that Sega's got the right idea. Multiplayer is where things are going, because the computer (while being interesting) never really DOES provide the same challenge (or satisfaction) of beating a friend who you know, or playing in a tournament against other players who are really good too. Example: Armored Core. There is already heavy development on AC2 for the PS2 (and it's pretty much the sole reason I'm getting one) but the computer is going to be second-rate compared to a true AC champ. Besides, how cool would it be to play a four-way AC deathmatch? I drool at the prospect, but with only two ports on the front (a near-fatal decision, IMHO) it won't happen. And the system is DEFINITELY able to handle the workload, so the idea that it's too much of a strain is BS.
I'll be getting a PS2, but I don't know how well it's going to work out. My budget is limited to about $400 for the total system, and it is expected to be released soon (March, IIRC) in Japan for about $375. If I also have to buy a NIC for it, which will probably be a bit of a cost as well, and pay for a service (which I don't even know if I can get yet) I don't know how well this system is going to go... so far, Sega's done everything right. Let's hope that Sony doesn't make mistakes. Competition is good.
(PLUG: Check out my Armored Core web site! With pics I *borrowed* from From's website... go here.)
to say about this. Sony has got very very good technology. Their know-how in consumer electronics and media production is phenomenal. However, the content and media tools field is creativity and software driven with many firms holding content franchises and/or proprietary visual special effects close to their chest. Despite the inroads of the NT juggernaut, SGI does still hold some sway in the media industry with Apple probably filling the lower niche. Also developing efficient code and compilers for multiprocessors is not trivial. How many programs are currently optimised to use Apple's Velocity or the Intel/AMD SIMD extensions? The silicon hardware is willing but the carbon wetware (ie brain-power) is weak. I'm not saying that a revolution of the media industries can't be done, the Japanese are brilliant engineers but the competition for skilled developers and creative storyline writers (the so-called Gold Collar workers) is going to hurt. Also the content is going to be revved up if you don't want 3D reruns of old scripts. I suppose a holoplex where instead of a sit-down film, you have Indianna Jones experience for hormone driven teenagers can't be too far off.
An interesting world, I wonder what Shakespear would have done in today's time.
LL
Nothing worse than a first post that isn't even actually a first post. :)
This article quotes sony as saying that the PSX2 will use PC Card slots for expansion, and USB ports as well: http://www.eet.com/story/OEG19990302S0026 . This is news to me! I thought I'd kept up on the PSX2 pretty well, but I think we have a viable thin-client computer here. If only we could have a small hard drive on the thing. Well, I guess I'm assuming ethernet will take up the PC Card slot. Perhaps not, we could use a USB->Ethernet connection, and slam 340meg or so into the PC Card slot.
This is a great deal: $400 for a game console, and a thin-client (or server) for the internet.
I don't think the point is Sony's "game machine becoming workstation" - its more Sony thinking: "SGI is now the vassal of Wintel so we can be the next SGI".
Sure the PS2 looks good now, but in 12 months PC's will eat it for breakfast.
I really think Sony are underestimating the growth of PC power. By the time the PS2 finally comes out you'll have cheap 800Mhz Althons or 600Mhz G5s running fully geometry accelerated GeForce256 cards.
But I guess the point isn't really about the best hardware, its probably more to do with licensing and trapping developers into using their proprietry system rather than encouraging cross platform development.
Cheers,
justin.
Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.
Creative Uses for your old Playstation
If they were computers, you could reformat and install Linux when you got your next upgrade. So what do you do with your old Playstation, after you've gone out and plunked down the $$$ for a new game system?
We want endless gardens of data, where the bits can flower, flourish and reproduce. -- Andy Mueller-Maguhn
NTSC to HDTV converters are going to be in such demand that hopefully Radio Shack will be selling them for $20 for a long time to come. (After all, they still sell 8 Track stuff!)
Well at least I hope so. There's an enormous investment out there in NTSC beyond Ataris and Playstations, even if it's not being broadcast.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Two days ago Steve Jobs made clear that the way Apple intends to stay relevant beyond making the coolest-looking browser terminals is by establishing itself as the 'Desktop Video' content creation king. Sony, meanwhile, has been cutting deals with cable companies to supply their next-gen set-top boxes (PS2s). These are two trains on a collision course. Either Sony needs a Quicktime client for their set-top boxes or Sony needs a way to create and vend streaming media content - ie their own platform and time-based media standard.
As the two companies that seem to grok the beauty of marrying computer tech and consumer electronics these two have much in common. Yet for all the lovey-dovey nice-nice talk between Sony and Apple we hear lately these two are either going to get married or open fire on one another at some point.
The Japanese, as a culture, do not like royalties; they'll pay them when they have to but they generally consider royalties theft. I'm betting Sony will try with these 'Creative Workstations' to quickly establish their own streaming media content creation standard - surmising that since the majority of the world eats Microsoft's dogfood with little complaint that software quality is a non-issue and marketing prowess is king. On the other side, Steve ought to be on the phone this morning to Tokyo with flowers in hand offering Sony the sweetest Quicktime licensing deal ever.
Iago
My understanding is that these "workstations" are already running Linux. Thus, as the Linux kernel is GPL'd software they should be posting the patches needed to run the Linux kernel on the emotion engine. I'm planning on buying an PS2 to run Linux on it. I hope Sony doesn't think they can charge extra to run Linux on PS2. Perhaps, the FSF lawyers (or other free software lawyers) need to get after Sony to release the code. I don't care if they're currently keeping it hush, hush. Like the Merced port is, but when PS2 ships the code should be available....will it be?
I think it would be one of the few potential buyers that would treat SGI with the respect it deserves... Hell, they may even bring back the old logo.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
We should probably take jsut about everything that is being said about the PS2 with a big pinch of salt right now. SONY is in somewhat panic-induced hype(r)-drive with on the PR front these days, because: 1) The dreamcast is out and more attractive than (SONY) expected. 2) The PS2 is likely to be late. Basically they are hyping the PS2 heavily now to push the horizon for its arrival closer in the public's eye so stear them away from the dreamcast.
I don't know about other people, but I think that you can only get "true" power when it comes to things like grapics design when you have a proprietary hardware specifically designed to do one thing. The manufacturers don't have to worry about making anything compatible with anything other than itself. This means they can develop software specifically for the hardware, and they don't have limitations like trying to code a 128-bit port of windows (or linux, or MACOS, or *BSD, or IRIX, or Solaris, AMIGAOS, *, *, ...). You get more power with proprietary things. It is also easier on the companies pockets to opensource to software becuase they will make all the money off of the hardware.
Nobody knows BeOS or what ? This is the right OS for such Hardware. Let linux do what it can do : be a wonderfull server. But don't try to put it everywhere. If you do so, remember M$. They put Windows everywhere, and it becomes a bloatware. Try BeOS, and you'll learn something really good.