... but aren't Intel processors power hungry? I mean, sure this thing doesn't cost a lot when you buy it, but this thing stays on 24/7, wouldn't it consume more power than the cisco hardware that's tailored to run as cheaply as possible? There's no point paying less upfront if the long term is going to cost you more.
Being in a company who worked exclusively on Intel and nVidia chips until recently, it is possible to have horrible performance when switching to AMD and ATI. In our case, we didn't use any nVidia specific GL calls. As for SS2, it is supported on both platform so in theory it shouldn't be an issue. The reality is, unless you are making a game and using what I'd call "game-oriented opengl calls", the performance is going to vary a LOT between ATI and nVidia. Don't believe the hype of these companies when they say that they support full OpenGL. Some either have very bad hardware for 2d ops with OpenGL or literally do software "decelleration". Benchmarks have shown speed dropping as much as 200% in some areas. As for AMD and Intel, after patching the executable, the performance was different, sometimes in favor of Intel, sometimes on AMD.
With that being said, no platform specific instructions or features were used. I suspect the Skype guys may have simply used Intel machines for so long and never bothered using AMD machines for development and then were too lazy to simply rewrite some of the code so that it runs normally on AMD. This happens especially when you write tight assembly loops by taking into account instruction latencies for one processor and then realize the performance sucks on another platform. You then have the choice, rewrite it so that the performance is similar, or slap a OPTIMIZED FOR INTEL on the box.
Make the developers happy, and they will port their apps. I fail to see how your arguments up to this apply only to open source programmers. I work on a closed source project in a company, and we would love to get a cell based computer to run our image processing routines on. We are already threaded to death and almost scale linearly to the number of CPU (I mean, we do get a almost 2x increase with dual-cores), so something like cell would be very good to us. Closed sources developpers can embrace a new platform as well if not maybe even better than open source programmers, because financial incentives force the embracing of a new technology. Of course, I'm making the assumption that open source programmers are always operating without any economic pressure, which is not true in the case of appplications like Berkeley DB, mySql, the Linux guys at IBM, etc, but these are the exception, not the norm.
Why should you separate each tasks into different threads. Instead, you need to multiply this skinning matrix by a million vertices? Why not multiply half of them on one core and the other half on a second one and then synchronize so that the you move to the next step only when both are done? Most work in a game engine right now is pretty much linear, so it seems to me that the easiest way to use the Cell right now would be to split one task at a time across cores that splitting tasks across cores.
Consider the fact that the movie industry is slowly adopting HDR (that's 32bit per float component, 4 component pixel) as the prefered depth for image processing, I don't see why games should use more. At least in graphics. Plus, using 128 bit floats would cut the number of whatever you want to process each second by 4 since you would need to move 4 times the data for the same work. No, we don't need 128 bit floats for games just yet, or shall I say, 32-bit floats should be enough for everyone.;)
Acutally, we had in Canada for a couple of months an official Xbox Halo/Amped bundle. It was called the Adrenaline Pack if I recall correctly. It came straight from Microsoft, not some EbGames/BestBuy forced upon you bundle. It was actually cheap. It cost me 300CAN$ two years and a half ago, when the console by itself sold at 250CAN$ and Halo was still selling 60$ and Amped 30$.
Well, that's the problem. If you don't have a strong case that the touchdown was valid, then there is no touchdown. In the NHL, if the referees aren't sure the goal is valid, then it isn't.
There were quite a few dodgy referee decisions in that game. I can't believe they gave Pittsburgh that first touchdown. The ball never even touched the line. And no, I'm not a Seattle fan, I'm not even from the States.
The problem is that looking at your arms and legs to see if you're injured in a game doesn't work because in real life you don't have to look, you just know you are hurt. So that way of playing wouldn't be any more realistic than a HUD. I'd rather have my field of vision (in FPSes) start to blur and have more difficulty controlling the character, her the heart beat faster and the character pant. Apparently that's what they did for the King Kong game release recently. And I'd love a game where the gun just does *tunk* and stops firing, that would be cool.:)
Especially since Unreal Engine 3 seems to be pretty much standard for next-gen development. Seems like the console engine war has already been won by Unreal Engine 3.0.
People are saying that China will change, but I feel like China is changing the world instead. It's more like the other way around. By going into China and accepting to censor the results, they are essentially saying that it's OK for the chinese government to impose it's will on companies that do business in their country. Before it was the United States, and the US is considered as arrogant by other countries. The US hasn't changed, it changed everyone. Now, what do you think will happen with China?
"We realise that China is a growing country that is being more and more aware of the world therefore it represents great advertising opportunities for us. We would be sorry if we missed that boat, since this is our core business."
IIRC, they actually did do a test to find fecal coliforms in the house and one of the places where there were less microbes was exactly on the toilet seat. They even found some in the kitchen, even tough it was far away.
Good to know, I've just bought this book for my development team today so that developers without any knowledge of the language can learn it efficiently. I know, there is an online version, but reading on a computer never beats a good old book (nicer for the eyes), plus, if you want to read it on your way to work, you just can't beat a book.
You are right, but you will still need a lot of land to make a 30%bio/70%diesel mix (considered to be a pretty good mix) The same problem applies than with Ethanol here.
Slashdot Mirror
... but aren't Intel processors power hungry? I mean, sure this thing doesn't cost a lot when you buy it, but this thing stays on 24/7, wouldn't it consume more power than the cisco hardware that's tailored to run as cheaply as possible? There's no point paying less upfront if the long term is going to cost you more.
I meant twice as slow. :) So that would be 50%, silly me.
Being in a company who worked exclusively on Intel and nVidia chips until recently, it is possible to have horrible performance when switching to AMD and ATI. In our case, we didn't use any nVidia specific GL calls. As for SS2, it is supported on both platform so in theory it shouldn't be an issue. The reality is, unless you are making a game and using what I'd call "game-oriented opengl calls", the performance is going to vary a LOT between ATI and nVidia. Don't believe the hype of these companies when they say that they support full OpenGL. Some either have very bad hardware for 2d ops with OpenGL or literally do software "decelleration". Benchmarks have shown speed dropping as much as 200% in some areas. As for AMD and Intel, after patching the executable, the performance was different, sometimes in favor of Intel, sometimes on AMD.
With that being said, no platform specific instructions or features were used. I suspect the Skype guys may have simply used Intel machines for so long and never bothered using AMD machines for development and then were too lazy to simply rewrite some of the code so that it runs normally on AMD. This happens especially when you write tight assembly loops by taking into account instruction latencies for one processor and then realize the performance sucks on another platform. You then have the choice, rewrite it so that the performance is similar, or slap a OPTIMIZED FOR INTEL on the box.
Thankfully we rewrote.
Analyst Sees 12 Million 360s by Year End
That's nothing. I once knew a kid who saw dead people.
Make the developers happy, and they will port their apps.
I fail to see how your arguments up to this apply only to open source programmers. I work on a closed source project in a company, and we would love to get a cell based computer to run our image processing routines on. We are already threaded to death and almost scale linearly to the number of CPU (I mean, we do get a almost 2x increase with dual-cores), so something like cell would be very good to us. Closed sources developpers can embrace a new platform as well if not maybe even better than open source programmers, because financial incentives force the embracing of a new technology. Of course, I'm making the assumption that open source programmers are always operating without any economic pressure, which is not true in the case of appplications like Berkeley DB, mySql, the Linux guys at IBM, etc, but these are the exception, not the norm.
Why should you separate each tasks into different threads. Instead, you need to multiply this skinning matrix by a million vertices? Why not multiply half of them on one core and the other half on a second one and then synchronize so that the you move to the next step only when both are done? Most work in a game engine right now is pretty much linear, so it seems to me that the easiest way to use the Cell right now would be to split one task at a time across cores that splitting tasks across cores.
Consider the fact that the movie industry is slowly adopting HDR (that's 32bit per float component, 4 component pixel) as the prefered depth for image processing, I don't see why games should use more. At least in graphics. Plus, using 128 bit floats would cut the number of whatever you want to process each second by 4 since you would need to move 4 times the data for the same work. No, we don't need 128 bit floats for games just yet, or shall I say, 32-bit floats should be enough for everyone. ;)
Acutally, we had in Canada for a couple of months an official Xbox Halo/Amped bundle. It was called the Adrenaline Pack if I recall correctly. It came straight from Microsoft, not some EbGames/BestBuy forced upon you bundle. It was actually cheap. It cost me 300CAN$ two years and a half ago, when the console by itself sold at 250CAN$ and Halo was still selling 60$ and Amped 30$.
Remember that Vista will probably run mostly on x86 machines while Xbox runs cell processors
Wow, that must have been some really good crack.
Well, that's the problem. If you don't have a strong case that the touchdown was valid, then there is no touchdown. In the NHL, if the referees aren't sure the goal is valid, then it isn't.
There were quite a few dodgy referee decisions in that game. I can't believe they gave Pittsburgh that first touchdown. The ball never even touched the line. And no, I'm not a Seattle fan, I'm not even from the States.
He just forgot to give us a safe word...
Or maybe he's being a dick for all we know.
The problem is that looking at your arms and legs to see if you're injured in a game doesn't work because in real life you don't have to look, you just know you are hurt. So that way of playing wouldn't be any more realistic than a HUD. I'd rather have my field of vision (in FPSes) start to blur and have more difficulty controlling the character, her the heart beat faster and the character pant. Apparently that's what they did for the King Kong game release recently. And I'd love a game where the gun just does *tunk* and stops firing, that would be cool. :)
... of your robot escape techniques.
Especially since Unreal Engine 3 seems to be pretty much standard for next-gen development. Seems like the console engine war has already been won by Unreal Engine 3.0.
See it this way : if your car broke, would it be legal and moral to steal someone else's car, even if it's the exact same model?
... in the handheld market, I think they should do what they do best : buy the competition. ;)
People are saying that China will change, but I feel like China is changing the world instead. It's more like the other way around. By going into China and accepting to censor the results, they are essentially saying that it's OK for the chinese government to impose it's will on companies that do business in their country. Before it was the United States, and the US is considered as arrogant by other countries. The US hasn't changed, it changed everyone. Now, what do you think will happen with China?
"We realise that China is a growing country that is being more and more aware of the world therefore it represents great advertising opportunities for us. We would be sorry if we missed that boat, since this is our core business."
This is nothing more than a business decision.
... a monopoly? Wow. Slashdot actually endorsing monopolies now.
IIRC, they actually did do a test to find fecal coliforms in the house and one of the places where there were less microbes was exactly on the toilet seat. They even found some in the kitchen, even tough it was far away.
... the games are also orders of magnitude more complex? Complex software having bugs, who would have thought?
Good to know, I've just bought this book for my development team today so that developers without any knowledge of the language can learn it efficiently. I know, there is an online version, but reading on a computer never beats a good old book (nicer for the eyes), plus, if you want to read it on your way to work, you just can't beat a book.
Turns out their wings don't help them raise to the sky, but the wind produced by them is actually strong enough to lower the Earth underneath them.
You are right, but you will still need a lot of land to make a 30%bio/70%diesel mix (considered to be a pretty good mix) The same problem applies than with Ethanol here.