Sony claimed that the PS Vita had a GPU as powerful as the PS3's
Sony didn't claim that. EA's CEO said something like that in a vague way (he said the Vita was like a PS3 you can put in your pocket) and the press took it literally.
You're reading the benchmark results backwards. The smaller the number, the faster the CPU is, so your conclusion is wrong. But in any case, SunSpider isn't a very good CPU benchmark since the results depend just as much, if not more, on the OS and browser used.
For various reasons, the consoles don't use cheap PC-style DDR RAM.
Because it has to share it between the CPU and GPU, the Xbox 360 uses the high-bandwidth GDDR3, which was very expensive in 2005 when it launched. Sony being Sony, the PS3 uses high speed XDR RAM, the successor to Rambus' RDRAM, which ended up losing to DDR2 in the PC space. They are basically the only ones using it, so it's very expensive.
Incorrect. It's neither a quad core nor POWER7. It's basically a triple core version of what's in the Wii but clocked higher. Some developers have said that it's weaker than the Xbox 360 and PS3 in terms of CPU.
The CPU is triple core evolution of what's in the Wii and it's definitely not POWER7 contrary to some rumours and vague misleading PR from IBM that they have retracted later.
There's been talk of that EOMA thing at least since the Raspberry Pi was announced, and it was presented as an alternative to it. Now the Raspberry Pi has gone and sold more than half a million units and there's still no sign of EOMA ever coming out.
Do you have a source for the CPU ? I never found anything that stated how fast it is and how many cores only that it's an IBM PowerPC chip (which isn't surprising since the Gamecube, Wii and X-Box 360 all use some derivative of that).
It has more memory (about twice as much, if you remove the 1 GB reserved for the system) and a more modern and faster GPU than the PS360 but the CPU is lacking even compared to that of the 360. In the end it makes the console a bit faster but not by much and it will have to compete with the next generation of Sony and MS consoles which are expected in about a year or so.
Article mentions 250GBP for the unit which is about $ 400 US.
That's not how it works. You can't deduce the price in your country by converting from a known currency. It wouldn't surprise me if it ends up costing only $250 or $300 in the US. Consumer electronics are generally much more expensive in Europe than in the US.
It uses LPDDR2 RAM in a Package-On-Package format where it sits on top of the SoC. The SoC only supports up to 512 MB of RAM, so if you want more you'll have to redesign the board and use a different SoC.
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No, they ported the Minecraft Pocket Edition, which is written in C++.
Sony claimed that the PS Vita had a GPU as powerful as the PS3's
Sony didn't claim that. EA's CEO said something like that in a vague way (he said the Vita was like a PS3 you can put in your pocket) and the press took it literally.
You're reading the benchmark results backwards. The smaller the number, the faster the CPU is, so your conclusion is wrong. But in any case, SunSpider isn't a very good CPU benchmark since the results depend just as much, if not more, on the OS and browser used.
For various reasons, the consoles don't use cheap PC-style DDR RAM.
Because it has to share it between the CPU and GPU, the Xbox 360 uses the high-bandwidth GDDR3, which was very expensive in 2005 when it launched.
Sony being Sony, the PS3 uses high speed XDR RAM, the successor to Rambus' RDRAM, which ended up losing to DDR2 in the PC space. They are basically the only ones using it, so it's very expensive.
Halo is owned by Microsoft, not Bungie.
garbagechuteflyboy adds links to articles about the dual-OS tablet at liliputing, at Ars Technica, and at PCWorld.
How about a link to Slashdot's story a week ago.
Incorrect. It's neither a quad core nor POWER7. It's basically a triple core version of what's in the Wii but clocked higher. Some developers have said that it's weaker than the Xbox 360 and PS3 in terms of CPU.
http://hothardware.com/News/IBM-Confirms-WII-U-Utilizes-PowerBased-CPU-Not-Power-7/
The CPU is triple core evolution of what's in the Wii and it's definitely not POWER7 contrary to some rumours and vague misleading PR from IBM that they have retracted later.
In terms of CPU, no. In terms of RAM and GPU, yes.
When you factor in the 1 GB reserved for the OS, it's just slightly more than twice the amount of RAM the 360 has (480 MB vs 1 GB).
It's not theirs to open. Mali is made by ARM.
But this board uses the A13, which is a cut-down version of the A10. Perhaps one of the things they removed is the Ethernet controller.
There's been talk of that EOMA thing at least since the Raspberry Pi was announced, and it was presented as an alternative to it. Now the Raspberry Pi has gone and sold more than half a million units and there's still no sign of EOMA ever coming out.
They aren't using the desktop version of KDE. They're using KDE Plasma Active, which is KDE's touch-oriented interface.
OpenGL and OpenCL APIs. They don't "use" LLVM. Only a few implementations of OpenGL and OpenCL use LLVM.
Do you have a source for the CPU ? I never found anything that stated how fast it is and how many cores only that it's an IBM PowerPC chip (which isn't surprising since the Gamecube, Wii and X-Box 360 all use some derivative of that).
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-08-30-how-powerful-is-the-wii-u-really
As for RAM keep in mind MS and Sony reserve memory for their systems as well, they just don't tell us how much.
We do actually know that. The Xbox 360 reserves 32 MB of its unified 512 MB for the OS and the PS3 reserves 43 MB of RAM and 7 MB of VRAM.
It has more memory (about twice as much, if you remove the 1 GB reserved for the system) and a more modern and faster GPU than the PS360 but the CPU is lacking even compared to that of the 360. In the end it makes the console a bit faster but not by much and it will have to compete with the next generation of Sony and MS consoles which are expected in about a year or so.
Article mentions 250GBP for the unit which is about $ 400 US.
That's not how it works. You can't deduce the price in your country by converting from a known currency. It wouldn't surprise me if it ends up costing only $250 or $300 in the US. Consumer electronics are generally much more expensive in Europe than in the US.
Don't lump KDE in with the others. It's just Gnome and Unity doing this.
That part was already open source. It's probably somewhere in here.
It's more expensive to open it than to keep it closed, even if there's nothing valuable in it.
The Pi does have a port of ChibiOS/RT.
The only graphics drivers on Linux for Intel chips are open source, so if you have an Intel GPU, you can't be using proprietary drivers.
It uses LPDDR2 RAM in a Package-On-Package format where it sits on top of the SoC. The SoC only supports up to 512 MB of RAM, so if you want more you'll have to redesign the board and use a different SoC.
If you want to get hold of one, just don't order it from RS/Allied and you'll be fine.