Gabe Newell on NextGen systems

[pso]

According to gamespot this is sony's 2nd 1/4 not the 4th, and the 1st quarter they lossed nearly 3 times as much as this quarter.

That article doesn't make sense, they claim sony had a net loss yet at the same time their profits rose 85%, maybe you can clarify that.

jawed - i'm not buying into the hype. common sense just tells me that a company that is struggling to make profits wouldn't invest ~3 billion dollars in a technology that was intended only for use in their consoles, especially when they could've just gone with a simple 3 core IO CPU like MS did.

and also that the strength of CELL truly seem to be as a massive A/V decoder/encoder and not as a console CPU.

Then again they did a very similar thing with the EE, so trying to guess at Sony's motives/rationale is kinda hard.

Ah ha! Sorry, I forgot it was time for a new earnings report - TOTALLY my fault and I apologize for that.

Anyway the loss is for the quarter in that previous article, and the gain is profits for the entire year (all four quarters combined, and compared to the previous years performance.)

As far as Cell and it's investment, cosnider it 'only' ~$600 million for the R&D itself, and the rest as investments in fabbing capacity.

Yeah though, Sony is reporting a loss for the second quarter in a row here; bad news. Still, they'll be profitable for the year again, even if seemingly less so than last year. It's certainly not what you want, but it's not the vultures of bankruptcy just yet either.

I don't know man, $61 billion in debt from last year is bad, any way you look at it.

"Standard & Poor's today said it is reviewing Sony's A+ long- term debt rating, its fifth-highest, for a possible downgrade because the acquisition may damage Sony's balance sheet. MGM's losses over three years, which total about $740 million, make it ``uncertain what contribution MGM can make to Sony's profits,'' S&P said. Sony's total debt stood at 6.71 trillion yen ($61 billion) on June 30."

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=aiimIU_uzAs0&refer=asia

 

[Sonic]

Why did IBM primarily develop CELL just for game consoles? That type of thinking would tell me that Intel makes CPU architectures only for word processing and nothing more.

I'm fairly positive IBM can stick another type of PowerPC core that has OoO and all the other features onto a CELL based chip and still include SPE's. It might take a redesign, but the basic architecture for CELL is in place. It's not some gimmick only meant for multimedia applications. Sony's version of CELL for PS3 may seem like that, but that does not mean future iterations of CELL are the same.

 

[Fox5]

Really? I didn't see PSP using an OLED screen.(don't think it uses ATRAC either)

psp screen is sharp's make. but the thing uses atrac. it also uses memory sticks.

Oh, I didn't know it used atrac.

And if Sony is so interested in pushing their own stuff, why does it use a sharp screen? Why even use LCD, or is OLED not even remotely ready yet?
And don't they have like multiple agreements with Samsung to use Samsung's flat screen technology(LCD, plasma, and DLP)? Yet I've seen very few if any Sony products using Samsung screens, from PSP to monitors to TVs, I don't think I've seen any using Samsung screens yet.

You seem to be buying into the hype. Cell is far too powerful (in FLOPS!) for all these applications.

Encoding and decoding HD content? Maybe even audio conversion at the same time. Still, I don't see how Cell will fare any better than PC cpus in trying to get into everything.....PC cpus were never considered for that purpose because something that performs just as well could be had for 1/10th the cost and not require active cooling. I think G3/G4 cpus faired a bit better in getting used in other devices, but not much, and only because they were programmable and didn't require much cooling so they could be used in tinkering projects.

 

[passby]

Dunno how this thread got here, at least I got some interesting info.

if you can't run simrate of at least 60 fps, NovodeX is completely useless.

XNA, btw, doesn't really exist yet. Nobody has any majorly useful tools, or anything new, but it's not like Microsoft has said XNA is complete, either.

....

P4s can do up to 4 FLOPs in one instruction using SSE ops, but you can only issue once every other cycle. So it averages out to 2 FLOPs per cycle * clock speed.

The SSE bit is interesting. I didn't know that. Intel never mentions stuff like this in their optimization guide!

 

[Fox5]

According to SiSoft Sandra, a hyperthreaded 3.8ghz 1MB cache P4 can do 4380 MFLOPS, or 7909 using SSE2. I'd imagine with SSE3 and 2MB cache and the 1066mhz fsb that might be pushing up towards 8500MFLOPS. Hmm, according to Sandra, the P4s destroy the Opterons in FLOPS once SSE is used, strange I always thought opterons were supposed to be the FLOPS masters, or is it just in semi real world situations?

 

[randycat99]

It's for FLOPs coming off the x87 unit, not the SIMD unit.

 

[Fox5]

It's for FLOPs coming off the x87 unit, not the SIMD unit.

So P4 has a superior SIMD unit or what?

 

[Carl B]

I don't know man, $61 billion in debt from last year is bad, any way you look at it.

"Standard & Poor's today said it is reviewing Sony's A+ long- term debt rating, its fifth-highest, for a possible downgrade because the acquisition may damage Sony's balance sheet. MGM's losses over three years, which total about $740 million, make it ``uncertain what contribution MGM can make to Sony's profits,'' S&P said. Sony's total debt stood at 6.71 trillion yen ($61 billion) on June 30."

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=aiimIU_uzAs0&refer=asia

Actually what you're quoting me is Sony's total liabilities - not Sony's debt; there's a difference and a lot of it has to do with Sony's insurance business, among others. ExxonMobile has $93 billion in liabilities - do you think they're in trouble to?

Here's Sony's balance sheet if you like: Balance sheet

As far as the MGM - I'm a big believer in that one; that was a great move on Sony's part.

That's not saying everything's roses for Sony, because that's not the case. But nor is it the case that Sony's in financial dire straights.

 

[randycat99]

It's for FLOPs coming off the x87 unit, not the SIMD unit.

So P4 has a superior SIMD unit or what?

Too little information/context to simply conclude that from the information presented so far. What you can be reasonably sure of is that Intel's SSE2 implementation is well-ironed out and "well-supported" by the benchmark. Doesn't AMD use something different- 3DNow?...or if they do have SSE2 onboard now, there is always much conjecture over how "similar" it functions to Intel's SSE2. Who knows- it may even be better, but the benchmark is "tuned" to Intel's SSE2 implementation. Hence, people are led to believe Intel has the "superior" solution. I only say this in the hypothetic sense, as I haven't followed who's ahead of who for some time when it comes to Intel's x87 vs. AMD's x87, Intel's SIMD vs. AMD's SIMD, yadda, yadda, yadda...

All I can say is that I am actually surprised the single-core P4's are still that far away from even the 10 GFLOP milestone (per the specs that were cited earlier).

 

[Carl B]

And if Sony is so interested in pushing their own stuff, why does it use a sharp screen? Why even use LCD, or is OLED not even remotely ready yet?
And don't they have like multiple agreements with Samsung to use Samsung's flat screen technology(LCD, plasma, and DLP)? Yet I've seen very few if any Sony products using Samsung screens, from PSP to monitors to TVs, I don't think I've seen any using Samsung screens yet.

Sony's agreement with Samsung involves a 7th generation LCD panel fab of which each controls a 50% stake.

For Sony those panels are probably best put to use within their new TV's rather than in the PSP, and remember that that fab is owned by the electronics arm of Sony.

The truth is SCEI probably shopped around for the best price within a certain quality range and Sony's consumer electronics division may not even have offered any panels as sourceable whatsoever. Either way, whatever the case it seems Sharp won out on the initial contract.

With Stringers 'ending of the intra-group bickering' era dawning on Sony, hopefully each groups assets will be better leveraged to aid each other rather than a bunch of walled-garden mentalities.

 

[passby]

Doesn't AMD use something different- 3DNow?...or if they do have SSE2 onboard now

OT since this is not the point of your post. 3DNow is really long ago. Anyway I forgot the details and reasons, but SSE was favoured over 3DNow. Today SSE2 is offered by both CPU makers, and optimization guides recommend it.

With Stringers 'ending of the intra-group bickering' era dawning on Sony, hopefully each groups assets will be better leveraged to aid each other rather than a bunch of walled-garden mentalities

Most large entities have the practice where each group is responsible for their own revenue operations.(what's the correct term) I've seen a few rare instances where a group persue decisions so that their earned profit needn't be divided with another group. Vice versa I've seen a rare instance where a group tried to pick a bit of revenue from another group's sales. Unfortunately we'll probably never know how the Stringer management attacks this, since this sort of internal issues are hardly ever publicised. It would have been interesting to know.

Oh and add to that, I'll like to see something done to their TV group. It's the main culprit for bleeding the entire entity, and also the main culprit for giving me an eyesore with their price tags whenever I walk into an electronics shop.

 

[mckmas8808]

Here's Sony's balance sheet if you like: Balance sheet

First and foremost thank you xbdestroya for giving us the truth. Everybody believed that Sony was 61 billion dollars in debt. Again Thanks.

Look at Sony man, they are in trouble! They're TV's aren't selling, PSP is not selling, the company as a whole is bleeding.

Well all I have to say is the PSP is selling great. It's doing exactly what Sony expected. They expect 3 million shipped by March 31 and they had 2.97 million. And if you have seen the sales in America you would know how great the PSP along with the UMD is doing.

 

[jvd]

Yeah though, Sony is reporting a loss for the second quarter in a row here; bad news. Still, they'll be profitable for the year again, even if seemingly less so than last year. It's certainly not what you want, but it's not the vultures of bankruptcy just yet either.

They may not if psp game sales stay weak .


Next year they may loose money on a whole . They will be taking large losses on both psp and ps3 . They most likely will have alot of trouble posting porifts

 

[mckmas8808]

They may not if psp game sales stay weak .

Never make a post that you can not back up. But my good friend this is why I'm here.

 

[jvd]

Yes as I said weak u have 3 games above 200k coipes

 

[mckmas8808]

Yes as I said weak u have 3 games above 200k coipes

Please jvd most of those games haven't even been out for 3 months yet. Think about that.

 

[PARANOiA]

It's tragic Lumines is so low :~

 

[jvd]

Think about what ? Nintendogs sold 300k in a week .

Look at darkstalkers 4 months old and only 80k , fifa only 47 , nba street 50k , streeth show down not even 70k .


These are not strong sales dispite what you want to believe

 

[Sovere]

Erm haven't we veered drastically OT?

 

[Sis]

They may not if psp game sales stay weak .

Never make a post that you can not back up. But my good friend this is why I'm here.
...img snipped>

Can you source this information, please? I have no idea how accurate this information is since for all I know you took a screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet with some made up numbers (I don't actually believe that--but the point remains). Is it sell-through or shipped? NA only or all Japan and NA?

.Sis