MS wants XBox2 out before PS3?

[zurich]

SCE is great and all, but I don't see how people can think that their engineers > NVIDIA's engineers. Its kind of like comparing Trident of Tseng Labs to, well, NVIDIA. With their sick SGI patent portfolio, I really don't see how SCE+IBM+Toshiba can beat NVIDIA at graphics tech, it just doesn't seem feasible.

zurich

 

[zidane1strife]

hey, talking about patents... is it true that sony bought the rights to transistor yrs ago.... read that from some reputable sources...

Anyways we all saw how sony crammed quite a chunk of transistors at .25m with the original GS... that's about 2/3rds what Nv dared to do at .15m...

Combined with the fact that the gphx rendering is likely to be split between two processors in the ps3 design... sony seems to have quite a larger transistor budget then Nvidia and their projected 300m transistor Gpu...

Ohhh, and about cell, if it weren't showing great possibilities in the current R/D it would've already been dumped... many seem to think sony is aming for crazy unrealistic ways of obtaining power thru the use of broadband.... let's just say they have people in the know(who clearly are aware this is not possible.), and clearly that's not the case.

 

[Guest]

Xbox2 will still be able to produce better looking games than PS3.
Being release ealier or later(within 1 year), it does not matter much.

Xbox totally obliterated PS2 and GC, graphically, even though they are in the same generation.
Proves that using third party current developed PC technology is better than long in-developing custom projects.

We do not even know whether the much hyped CELL will be in PS3.
Dont be surprised if PS3 uses a souped up multiple EE2 and GS2 brute force combination again.
If so, NV? + DX? shall whoops their sorry arses again.
Hype will not save them this time.

I am still amazed at how superior Xbox is to the competiton.
I cannot recall when was the last time that a console is so much better and yet affordable than its competitors in the same time fame.

MS is GOD. MS is too damn good....
MS shall use their godly powers to crush all their rivals, again.

 

[PiNkY]

hey, talking about patents... is it true that sony bought the rights to transistor yrs ago.... read that from some reputable sources...

yeah right...

Perhaps XBox2 will use a radically enhanced NV4X or NV5X, or perhaps multiple GPUs. Since PS3 is going to be obsenely powerful with many, many CELLs in parallel, and no doubt many pipelines as well, I would favor MS/Nvidia using 4 of the most advanced GPUs they can come up with in XBox2. Perhaps 4 enhanced NV45s or enhanced NV55s. I doubt Nvidia is going to have a single chip by 2005 that can outperform the PS3. While I believe Nvidia (and ATI) will be significantly ahead of Sony in terms of image quality and feature set, Sony will likely have a large advantage in bandwidth and parallism with EE3+GS3 in PS3.

If Sony is going to have massive parallelism in PS3, why not have at least a high degree of parallelism in XBox2. ATI's R300 was design with massive parallel processing in mind. you can combined upto 256 R300 GPUs in one system. NV30 probably has a similar capability. Even though Nvidia has never favored multi chip approach (and I still think NV30 is one chip btw) times are changing.

I really do not see any of this happening. Consoles are all about hitting a high performance/cost ratio with a heavy emphasis on price. IMO PS3 will as PS2 be about high level integration on as few dies as possible, following embedded systems design philosophy. MS will yield econimies of scale and include off-the-shelf mainstream technology from the x86 world with what will be nvidias high-end graphics tech. @ release date.

Anyways we all saw how sony crammed quite a chunk of transistors at .25m with the original GS... that's about 2/3rds what Nv dared to do at .15m...

Comparing logic transistors to Edram transistors is really pointless imho. If that would be a relevant measure for technological archievement, Micron, Samsung, Infineon, etc. would "rule the world" with their GBit Drams....

 

[Guest]

Like i said, MS Xbox2 will still be better than PS3.
Mark those words of wisdom.

Sony will be spending too much time money on the CELL research.
While MS can concentrate on marketing, DX and XBL networking, Nvidia will do the graphics card hardware and Intel will look into the new XCPU2.
Put them together and we have a Sony Playstation killer at hand.

 

[MfA]

Being release ealier or later(within 1 year), it does not matter much.

60% more transistors for the same price matters much, add on top of that that m$ was willing to take a greater loss on the launch which might even turn out to be a loss over all (which Ill assume they dont want to do a second time).

A lot of the money Sony is investing is in manufacturing technology, even if they have to ditch Cell they can always leverage that and switch to say SuperH (which because of its design should be relatively easy to shoehorn into a multi-core die) writing off "only" a couple 100's of millions in the process.

Marco

 

[Guest]

MS will spend more.
They, MS/Nvidia/Intel, know that consoles are the 'next' big thing.
Sony and Playstation struck fear in them and their PC empire, they will want to kill off Sony fast.

And if MS wants, MS gets.
If the justice department could not stop MS, there is noway puny Sony can.
MS is too darn good.

 

[MfA]

If they are willing to take a loss on another generation then maybe, but that is different from saying it is the choice of technology which is making the difference.

Marco

PS. I see SuperH is actually planned to go multi-core by design by 2005, interesting ... Ive always liked that line of processors, although their pricing for "normal" third parties is ridiculous at times, pity Sega is out of the picture

 

[Guest]

Yes they will.
You and i know they will.
They have spent so darn much now, that it is worse for them to stop.
MS will do their utmost to get rid of that pesky Sony ASAP.

Sony Playstation shall die.

 

[wazoo]

Yes they will.
You and i know they will.
They have spent so darn much now, that it is worse for them to stop.
MS will do their utmost to get rid of that pesky Sony ASAP.

Sony Playstation shall die.

Ms already failed in the past.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

"Xbox totally obliterated PS2 and GC, graphically, even though they are in the same generation. "

lol.. ok..not yet, we keep seeing screenshots, but we are waiting for the games to back it up.
it has some graphical strengths, but also has many a weakness, like for instance, I like my blacks to be black, not grey, I like vibrant color, and most times games tend to turn out washed out on the XBox. Its more powerful ues, but OBILTERATED is as farfetched as it gets.

 

[megadrive0088]

really do not see any of this happening. Consoles are all about hitting a high performance/cost ratio with a heavy emphasis on price. IMO PS3 will as PS2 be about high level integration on as few dies as possible, following embedded systems design philosophy. MS will yield econimies of scale and include off-the-shelf mainstream technology from the x86 world with what will be nvidias high-end graphics tech. @ release date.

maybe not, but perhaps if XBox2 has two major chips, but each chip has several cores. First, I think that XBox2's CPU will be more specialized than XBox's PIII/Celeron hybrid. Or at the very least, more impressive.
I see MS going for a multi core (single die) CPU solution from AMD (Hammer) or Intel (Prescott, or something else) then for graphics, I see the NV40 or NV50 being the basic building block of XBox2's graphics hardware. Would it not be possible to put several NV40 or NV50 cores onto a single die? I believe Nvidia did this, in a way, with GeForce256. It was basicly two TNT2 cores combined with a T&L unit and some other stuff. or at least, it was 2 sets of TNT2 pipelines (2 each) combined with T&L. the same might apply with ATI if MS chooses them for XBox2 instead of Nvidia. Take several R500s or R600s, put them on one die, or the basic elements of those cores, putting several together. whatever it takes to out perform PS3 by a significant margin. while still only having
2-3 major chips in XBox2 (CPU, GPU, APU)

 

[Kolgar]

Gosh, those tunnel-visioned, gushing Microsoft lovers are embarrassing.

Kolgar

 

[Brimstone]

MS will spend more.
They, MS/Nvidia/Intel, know that consoles are the 'next' big thing.
Sony and Playstation struck fear in them and their PC empire, they will want to kill off Sony fast.

And if MS wants, MS gets.
If the justice department could not stop MS, there is noway puny Sony can.
MS is too darn good.

The combination of MS, Intel, and Nvidia is really intresting. Sony is very much a threat to all 3 of these companies in the long term. Sony fooling around with Linux and shunning Direct X API's has to bother Microsoft and also stating they don't like the MS strategy of .net had to really tick off Steve Balmer. Sony using a MIPS design in the last two Playstations, and now having some sort of alliance with IBM must have gotten the top level managment at Intel a bit concerned. For Nvidia, Sony using their own home cooked graphic chip solution limits their market penetration.

MS probably has a very motivated partner in Intel. They can't be happy about millions of consumer devices being sold without an Intel based architecture. I'm guessing Intel wont just try to rain on the Sony/IBM parade of technology, they will bring a furious hurricane to the picnic. Of course this is assuming Intel is involved not AMD.

 

[MfA]

I would not be 100% certain about Intel, I dont think m$ will have much custom work done on the processor ... so they can just wait a while longer. IF AMD gets a better financial footing again in the future then IMO m$ is sure to let them at least bid against Intel, and if NVIDIA is the choice for the graphics processor that might give AMD a small edge in the bid.

 

[archie4oz]

SCE is great and all, but I don't see how people can think that their engineers > NVIDIA's engineers. Its kind of like comparing Trident of Tseng Labs to, well, NVIDIA.

I take it you've never been to any of their fabs, or seen any of their R&D facilities?

Nobody's saying that Sony's engineers are necessarily > than NVIDIA's. However NVIDIA isn't end-all to be-all either...

Comparing logic transistors to Edram transistors is really pointless imho. If that would be a relevant measure for technological archievement, Micron, Samsung, Infineon, etc. would "rule the world" with their GBit Drams....

Yeah, but fabbing them onto a package in a manner that allows interfacing to very wide IFs and eventually a wide logic array, masking refresh latency all 2 years ago no small undertaking...

MS probably has a very motivated partner in Intel. They can't be happy about millions of consumer devices being sold without an Intel based architecture.

I doubt that... Intel's always been pretty small peanuts when you factor in all the embedded devices in the world. That's where 68k and all the diaspora of Z80 floating around. Even today it's pretty much 68k/Coldfire, MIPS, ARM and PowerPC. Hell everybody and their grandmother licenses MIPS and ARM cores. Then there's the DSP market where Intel doesn't even exist, and is pretty much the domain of TI, Lucent and Motorola... Intel's best efforts led to their supercomputer failure i860, and short flash with the i960. The best thing they have now is the blessing of DEC's demise that killed Intel's biggest large-scale MPU threat, and delivered DEC's fabulous ARM efforts into Intel's hands...

I'm guessing Intel wont just try to rain on the Sony/IBM parade of technology, they will bring a furious hurricane to the picnic. Of course this is assuming Intel is involved not AMD.

More like doing continuing to invest more into fab-space to price AMD (who I might add has gotten into the MIPS market) and any IA-64 competitor out of the market.

Speaking of partnerships, it's interesting as this so-called 'Xbox partnership' has two hardware partners who have had a tendency to avoid one-off designs to get where they are today, yet everybody here seems to expect them to just stop doing what got them where they are today. Intel's pretty much been a mass producer of a limited lineup, and Nvidia who's leveraged their existing IP through their entire product line, exploiting their venture into core-logic to win the Xbox contract.

Where as Toshiba and IBM have made quite a business leveraging their R&D facilities into doing one-off designs for their customers...[/quote][/code]

 

[MfA]

OUM might be commercialized by 2005 though, that could give Intel a pretty big advantage.

 

[Guest]

MS is like a big bad behemoth, i am sure many of you anti MS guys fear them.
You are afraid that MS will put an end to your beloved Playstations and Nintendos.

 

[Cyborg]

Chap, do you have anything intelligent to say other than saying how microsoft is good and bill gates is god? Maybe you have to get your head out of Bill's ass and start using logic again.

 

[duffer]

What's the acronym OUM stand for?