don't hype Cell, only listing what I know about Cell from news media.
For Xbox2, I know nothing other than its 'leaked' spec and the rumor they use Mac G5 for dev platform and its CPU & GPU are by IBM & ATI. But at least from the discovery that IBM is to make Xbox2 CPU, one can estimate the R&D period for Xbox2-specific CPU design is shorter than that of Cell by 1-2 years, because while Cell design started in 1999, it's sure that Microsoft had no plan to move to IBM platform then with Intel + nVidia before 2002.
Really ?
Hmm. I would say the g5 development started in at least 1999. So I would say they are equal the same age.
After all a year or two agao ms didn't just go to ibm. Hey make us a chip and ibm went sure. Took out a pen and paper and made a chip.
They used existing ip , existing tech , old design ideas that had been constantly worked on and improved.
Hell. Just because ms decided to go with ati a year ago doesn't mean thast when ati's development on the r500 started.
That chip was in the works regardless of if ms wanted it or not.
The only thing in both counts is whats modified for it .
perhaps the xenon cpu was going to be a single core chip. But ms wanted a 3 core dual chip design. So ibm took a core in production and modified it to work the best it could in that design.
For all we know the chip could have been in the works from 1998 from ibm. Before blue gene even started.
Granted Microsoft is a software company and Windows is flexible to be recompiled to run on PowerPC, and by using off-the-shelf stable tachnology which is long developed already the length of the period for specific chip design may not matter
Microsoft for all its faults is a great software company and they have years of work put into dx versions and the tools for it. What do you think happens when ms turns its might onto the xenon. Your going to get a very good kernal and dev platform for the xenon . I would wager better than ibm and sti could do .
But this is not the PC market where x86 still dominates, this is the embedded console market where you can adopt radical design such as PS2 without compatibility to old technology
Problem is with such a radical design comes problems with devs and programing. Ask any dev what a pain in the ass early development was like on the ps2. Just look at the tights. The horrible jaggies. The half res crap. All of this was becasue of the radical design.
They are just lucky they had a ) the hype b) the price advantage c) the later start over the dreamcast. Because if the dreamcast launched in 1999 when the ps2 did and sega spent as much on it as sony . The ps2 would have had its ass handed to it . THe could have made a faster sh-4 on a smaller process , used a elan tnl chip and a faster neon 250 or even 2 slower ones .
PS2 is seen as less powerful machine than newer Xbox, but if PS2 had had more memory, and if Toshiba had not misestimated future GPU trend in designing GS...?
Right and if a tnt 2 was clocked at 800mhz , had 128 megs of ram instead of 8/16 and was coupled with a 4 ghz cpu it would have been awsome too.
To bad they didn't wait to release it eh
What many people here want to forget is the fact that ibm makes good cpus for a living. Perhaps sony did get a better cpu.... Your forgeting that then there is ati. And its most likely that ms got the better vpu.
I duno about u but i would put my money on a r500 with 3Dc , almost long horn features (if not longhorn features) Hyper z hd , ati's rotated grid fsaa , ati's trilinear filtering optimization , and ati's pipe lines against a cell gpu any day of the week .
Right now we are seeing 16x520mhz vpus from ati. Most users who own them are hitting 600mhz on the core . I have no doubt in my mind that next year ati can't hit 700mhz with a beast like that and if the rumors are true and ms is renting alot of ibms 65nm space... well i can imagine a beast that would put the r420 to shame.
SO i get tired real easily of the cell hype. I've had to deal with it a long time.
Cell is not a some all powerfull tech. Any of the new systems can end up the most powerfull. What matters is what the diffrence is on the screen and in the game play .
That is why my money is on nintendo
