ATI and Microsoft Technology Agreement...

I would agree with you about people having a right to mod their xBoxes if the xBox was being sold as a general purpose computer on which M$ was making a direct profit on the hardware. The Lindows CEO recently offered 100-200 thousand dollars to "anybody who could hack the xBox" to get Lindows to work properly and defeat the firmware M$ started putting into the xBox to block such use of its xBox products. I'm not sure what happened there or about the specifics of the money offered, or whether anyone has been paid in conjunction with the offer, but I think his conduct there borders on the criminal, IMO.

The point for me is that M$ doesn't represent the xBox to customers as doing more than running xBox games or having any other function. If anybody who buys an xBox does so with an expection that it will do more than that, he isn't led to believe that by M$. That idea comes from somwhere else.

Obviously, if I buy a general purpose computer I can mod it to my heart's content, because it is an open-ended, upgradeable, multifunction device by nature. Anybody can buy a general purpose computer--so why is Lindows so intent on getting the xBox, specifically, cracked to run its OS? Why isn't Lindows content on simply selling cheap, $200 WalMart Lindows boxes of its own like it did in the beginning?

Answer: far too few are buying general purpose Waltmart boxes with Lindows to suit the Lindows Corp. So, it's looking for an established base of low-cost machines on which it can introduce Lindows--at very little if any cost to itself. This is the motivation behind it, IMO, and all of the protests coming from the Lindows CEO about "customer rights" is just so much window dressing. Heh... He's only interested in the "right" of xBox users to install Lindows software.

Consider that xBox is not a money-making endeavor for M$ in and of itself. The company loses a little on each xBox sold. That's OK--IF--they are able to recoup the money and make a profit on the sale of their software through the xBox developer program. It's the same model that console makers have traditionally used--M$'s is no different. The feasibility of xBox as a product depends on the success of this model. Cracking the xBox to run Lindows to operate as a general purpose PC means that M$ loses money on the hardware, the Lindows corp pays nothing for the privilege, and software is being run on xBox from which M$ derives no income--and so the xBox business model is destroyed. So why doesn't Lindows pick on the PS2, instead? Unlike PS2, xBox is based on off-the-shelf x86 PC hardware and so it is a practical target for something of this type--wheras PS2 is not.

Actually, I would have no objection to the Lindows corp buying xBoxes from M$ at a set price, rebranding them, adding peripherals, and so on, as a vehicle to sell Lindows into the population (provided M$ agreed to this, of course.) But that's not what Lindows is trying to do--they can already do that without any help from M$ and they've already done it with the Lindows WalMart boxes. But, you see, that approach costs the Lindows corp a lot more $$$ out of its own pocket, and why should they do that if they can simply usurp the xBox from M$ and turn it into a Lindows box and have M$ pick up the tab? That's what this is all about, IMO.

 

Since no one addresses my previous post, I'll ask the question again:

With two different console GPUs being done by two different teams (as stated by ATi), will it impact their PC development, considering that recourses are finite?

 

You buy it, it is yours ... very simple.

We arent here to make the console business plan work, if it fails they always have this amazing alternative. How about letting the market do its job and stop trying to make it less transparant by hiding hardware costs in the software prices?

 

It's called "loss-leading" and has been around in many markets for many years. You buy the base unit at a subsidized price, and they make that money back and more from you in consumables. It one of the things that various markets have already decided when it was allowed to do it's job. Look at razor blades, printer consumables, mobile phones, etc.

 

Why would it? If they have a team working to design separate console products, they probably also have a team working on PC products, which is a different kind of market. Resources may be finite, but that doesn't mean they are inadequate. As long as they ATI have enough people/capacity/expertise, there is no reason why one part of the business should suffer for any other. This would only happen if they do not have enough resources to do all three jobs at once.

 

Of course the question is: do they? Few companies have people sitting on their hands doing nothing - if you take on another major project you either need to pull people from other teams or hire more. With 4 PC parts per year, plus two major console project, one could imagine that recourses could become scarce.

 

Of course it can, and probably will, impact PC development.

The question is, will the overall impact be a positive or negative one?

 

The problem is why would we think they could not make all in time ?
For now they seem to deliver in time so until they have problems we may think they know their job and ressources better than we do.

 

There could conceivably be shared technology between each of the chips even if they have different performance profiles. After all why bother to red-design things like memory controller H-Z functions etc when you don't have to?

 

That's a good point; ATi could very well be better of skipping one biannual refresh while delivering chips to Nintendo and MS on time, from finical point of view.

 

ATI already said in their recent conference call that they have enough people - they've been heavily recruiting in order to get these contracts and be able to execute on them.

I guess that they don't want to fall into the same trap as Nvidia did with X-Box, and ATI have already gone thorugh the process of running teams for PC graphics, Gamecube chips, PC chipsets, etc. They already know what it takes to run these kind of projects successfully.

In view of their own words and their recent past performance, there's no reason to think that ATI don't know what they are doing.

 

Of course there is also much shared technology between R3xx chips, yet the derivatives still require engineering effort, and as chips get increasingly more complex, the more effort would be required. In addition, I would expect Nintendo and MS chips have less in common then, say, R300 and R350.

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't ATi acquire ArtX when R&D on flipper was largely complete, and then distribute the their people amount user projects, such as R300? It could be argued that in their current capacity ATi has had little experience running teams for PC and console development in-house, let alone two. The increases complexity of the chips, in addition to switch to 6-moth cycle has undoubtedly put strains on them.

 

BTW, I am sure ATi know what they are doing; however this does not mean that PC development schedule would be unaffected. On the contrary, they could have concluded that slowing down PC GPU deployment would be more then made up for by console contrats.

Every PC-oriented company that has received one (two is unprecedented) console contracts had it's release schedule effected. Of course, in most cases the company was much better off overall.

 

Actually, that wasn't exactly my point.

My point was, the ATI's PC products could benefit from the R&D expended on the console work. And in particular, the close relationship to the X-Box and DirectX can mean an overall win for ATI's PC product line, even if there is a short-term "slow down" of PC parts.

 

Interesting... Thanks Dave.

 

Huh?.... Sony, Nintendo, Sega, etc--all these guys operate from the same basic business model. As I said earlier, that's why 10+ years ago you could by a Nintendo for $200, but you paid as much as $80 each for the cartridges. They *all* make their money on software license fees paid to them by software publishers. Their consoles are essentially dongles for the software.

Don't like that? No problem--I don't either. So you can do like I do and pass on consoles and by computers, instead... Seems pretty simple to me. Want to run Lindows? Great, fire it up on your PC--and there are no problems to be had.

 

I don't understand the point, here. To me the point is that the people who did the work on the flipper project and obtained all of the experience that entailed are now working for ATi. As a result, they should have an excellent idea of what they need to do--unlike nVidia, which prior to the xBox contract had no such experience. Now, it seems to me that if you stipulate that nVidia was able to do the job, then you also have to stipulate that because of Flipper and its associated experience ATi is in a position to do an even better job. All indications are that ATi knows exactly what it is doing regarding its resource allocation for PC.

 

So what are you saying, R400-tech went into R500 chip; if yes then what left for R400.

In other words original plan was Pixel and Vertex 4.0 shaders in ATI R400 chip... Is that what you are saying???