The 360-PC speculation.

[Java_man]

Some food for thought, but after nearly everyone here at this site has just got done assessing how a PPE/X360 CPU will be "horrid" at general processing, what makes you think it will pull off realtime compiling or even one-time compiling jobs with any sort of practicality? (This is not to say it couldn't be done, but they may need to rename it as "Just-In-Time-for-Dinner" or something, and it becomes fairly obvious that a conventional PC that you already have will do the job far better, anyway) I think that is about as much a long shot as it would be running the latest Windows OS over VirtualPC on a CPU that is supposed to eat it when it comes to branchy/spaghetti code. Seriously folks!

This is why i thought(before the IBM chip disclosure) that MS would use a custom chip for the XBox 2,a custom chip optimised for both .Net CLR and Windows Vista.
This way they could have push .Net and Vista much more.

I'm just as curious about a Linux-based PS3 computer, fwiw. However, that doesn't sit well with the prevailing understanding that general processing is as hampered as some here expect it will be. I believe this is one of those things where you can't have it both ways. Either the general processing issue isn't as bad as we thought it was or any of these console-based home computers will turn out mediocre at best for actual desktop work.

Well, If Sony was really serious about running Linux on the cell,then it should have had an Out Order PPE thus it would have had significantly less troubles for running O.S such as Linux and Mac OS X.
Even with one or 2 less SPE the Cell would still have been a very powerful streaming/multimedia CPU.
With an OO PPE it would have been also much more developper friendly.
I don't say that the Cell can't run Linux but it should be a pain in the a** to optimise Linux for it in order to gain decent performance.

 

[gurgi]

What exactly could Dell, HP, ect do about it though? Pre-install linux instead?

 

[gurgi]

RE: general performance

I wonder how much cpu power regular OS use would really need? I wonder if the kernel couldn't take on the shortcomings of the in order design and utilize the 3 powerful cores so users wouldn't really notice a difference anyway. And it's not like these machines would be excel workstations, they'd be running web browsers, email and irc clients.

It's always seemed to me that MS was trying to slowly break into the PC market via the Xbox brand, but for some reason, I don't think this will happen, at least not this gen. The PPC architecture just makes it so far fetched imo.

 

[Java_man]

What exactly could Dell, HP, ect do about it though? Pre-install linux instead?

I don't think that dell,HP need to pre-install Linux as i doubt that Linux will take a significant part of the home computer market anytime soon.
Even if Linux is packed with the PS3 hdd how many of the customers will really use the PS3 as an alternative
for a PC with Linux ?