ATI seeks to expand Microsoft partnership

[London Geezer]

Hey, maybe in 5 years PVR might have got their shit together..... :|

Ok, it was a good idea to just stick with ATI

 

[jvd]

I think they have thier shit together . ALl thier tech seems very very good esp the mobile side. They just seem to not want to make any desktop products haha

 

[PC-Engine]

Have not heard anything interesting out of NEC in a while.

They have different priorities just like Intel has different priorities. You don't think Intel, AMD or NEC has the knowhow to build a competitive custom console specific CPU if offered enough money? Just look at the CPUs used in the Earth Simulator that's based on 4 year old technology. The ES is currently ranked #3 on the top500, but guess what? It only uses around 5000 CPUs. The current #1 spot held by IBM's BGL has roughly twice the theoretical performance as the ES, but it needs about 32,000 CPUs or 6 times the number of CPUs to achieve that. If that wasn't enough, the ES has around 88% efficiency when it comes to scientific computing problems while BGL can only get around 77%. Imagine what a ES2 using 32,000 SX-8 CPUs could achieve...about 220 TFLOPS compared to BGL which is only 70TFLOPS.

BGL does however have one nice benefit though, it doesn't consume a lot of power.

 

[London Geezer]

Have not heard anything interesting out of NEC in a while.

They have different priorities just like Intel has different priorities. You don't think Intel, AMD or NEC has the knowhow to build a competitive custom console specific CPU if offered enough money? Just look at the CPUs used in the Earth Simulator that's based on 4 year old technology. The ES is currently ranked #3 on the top500, but guess what? It only uses around 5000 CPUs. The current #1 spot held by IBM's BGL has roughly twice the theoretical performance as the ES, but it needs about 32,000 CPUs or 6 times the number of CPUs to achieve that. If that wasn't enough, the ES has around 87% efficiency when it comes to scientific computing problems while BGL can only get around 55%. Imagine what a ES2 using 32,000 SX-8 CPUs could achieve...about 230 TFLOPS compared to BGL which is only 70TFLOPS.

Completely off topic, but just for the sake of the argument, maybe diminishing returns start kicking in, maybe the 5000CPU ES is like that because adding 5 times more CPUs might not yield 5 times the performance?

Maybe after a certain point, increasing the numbers of CPUs just doesn't help anymore, i'm sure they thought about adding more CPUs, it's not like they can't afford it.

Don't know, i'm just babbling.

 

[PC-Engine]

Have not heard anything interesting out of NEC in a while.

They have different priorities just like Intel has different priorities. You don't think Intel, AMD or NEC has the knowhow to build a competitive custom console specific CPU if offered enough money? Just look at the CPUs used in the Earth Simulator that's based on 4 year old technology. The ES is currently ranked #3 on the top500, but guess what? It only uses around 5000 CPUs. The current #1 spot held by IBM's BGL has roughly twice the theoretical performance as the ES, but it needs about 32,000 CPUs or 6 times the number of CPUs to achieve that. If that wasn't enough, the ES has around 87% efficiency when it comes to scientific computing problems while BGL can only get around 55%. Imagine what a ES2 using 32,000 SX-8 CPUs could achieve...about 230 TFLOPS compared to BGL which is only 70TFLOPS.

Completely off topic, but just for the sake of the argument, maybe diminishing returns start kicking in, maybe the 5000CPU ES is like that because adding 5 times more CPUs might not yield 5 times the performance?

Maybe after a certain point, increasing the numbers of CPUs just doesn't help anymore, i'm sure they thought about adding more CPUs, it's not like they can't afford it.

Don't know, i'm just babbling.

I doubt it since theoretical performance is linear going from 1 CPU to 5120 CPUs. This applys to IBMs supercomputers too. Technically there isn't really a hard limit to the number of CPUs. The number of CPUs will be limited by other things.

 

[_xxx_]

If you have longterm partnerships with industry leaders, then it's safe to say that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

One word: 3dfx.