Why IBM?

[ninzel]

IBM seems to be the choice this gen for consoles, what is it about IBM that makes them the choice if anyone knows.
Thei rwork with small closed form factors, low cost, politically they are more neutral in the CPU war?? I'm curious.

Edit: Darn, wrong forum clicked. Could you move this to Console technology.

 

[Acert93]

Because IBM was willing to give up the IPs of the chops (thus people like MS could integrate the processor with the GPU down the line and also include the technology in future consoles).

Because IBM had the features and technical know how to get out the products.

Because IBM had chip solutions that were console friendly. e.g. the PPE has decent performance in ideal situations, is small, and has a fairly high frequency.

Because MS/Sony are committed to multicore; if MS had gone Intel/AMD they might not have been able to get a multi-core chip at the size they wanted.

Because IBM was willing to bend over backward; I don't think Intel even cared.

Because IBM was the lowest bidder.

Because IBM has some experience making cheap, custom console processors.

Because if you don't go IBM you have AMD and Intel and... no one of consequence.

I am sure there are other reasons, but those are the ones off the top of my head.

 

[ninzel]

Cool thanks.

 

[Guden Oden]

It would really surprise me if IBM gave up any IP of what they was a part in developing. Frankly. that would be monumentally stupid of them, and perhaps not even possible as these chips (or at least those in PS3/360) are in part all redevelopments of existing IBM designs.

 

[ADEX]

They're one of the few companies capable of making processors this powerful and are the probably the only company who will custom design them for you.

They also allow them to be produced elsewhere which Intel or AMD almost certainly wouldn't allow.

 

[drpepper]

Why IBM?

Why not...?

 

[pc999]

They're one of the few companies capable of making processors this powerful and are the probably the only company who will custom design them for you.

They also allow them to be produced elsewhere which Intel or AMD almost certainly wouldn't allow.

Probably it is only because the custom and fab reason, as power is relative to the function (eg they would very bad on the PC), althought they are probably the ones with more experince in this kind of CPU.

 

[Carl B]

Sony had an alternative of sorts in their own and Toshibas efforts, but of course we know IBM was brought in for the Cell initiative right from the start. For the others, Nintendo's worked with IBM before (and I really don't see them going to NEC or anyone in the modern era, though that might be cool), and for MS they wanted a powerful chip and custom - Intel and AMD likely would have been willing to do a variant of their standard SKUs only, a la the XBox chip.

This gen just turned ino a 'perfect storm' of sorts as far as IBM's role in consoles goes.

 

[Fox5]

IBM seems to be the choice this gen for consoles, what is it about IBM that makes them the choice if anyone knows.
Thei rwork with small closed form factors, low cost, politically they are more neutral in the CPU war?? I'm curious.

Edit: Darn, wrong forum clicked. Could you move this to Console technology.

IBM will sell the IP and not just license it, making it a lot cheaper.
IBM will do custom designs and already has the ability to make them fast and in large volume.
The Power architecture is easier to program for.

AMD or Intel would get the companies stuck with outright buying Pentiums or Athlons, and IBMs probably about the only other company that can compete on the same tech level.

They also allow them to be produced elsewhere which Intel or AMD almost certainly wouldn't allow.

AMD might (they've already outsourced production before), but I don't think the integrated memory controller would provide nearly as much benefit in a closed console, and that's where most of AMD's R&D has gone over the past few years. Memory controllers in consoles already seem to be much better than their PC brethren, so AMD's best may have come off more like a dual core athlon xp, due to the relative performance of all other processors increasing as well. (though that's not so bad and may even be competitve or better in most respects than the x360 cpu, but resources can be better used in a closed environment like a console)

 

[Urian]

The answer is more simpler than all this that all you are saying.

When the next gen consoles started to be designed the MIPS architecture, UltraSparc and other MIPS architectures were oblitterated by the x86, only the PowerPC survived because the Apple computers needs good performance against the PC.

I am sure that the next-next gen consoles are going to be using an x86 processor, perhaps the "Cell" version of Intel.

 

[SubD]

I am sure that the next-next gen consoles are going to be using an x86 processor, perhaps the "Cell" version of Intel.

That made my morning. Thanks.

 

[Urian]

That made my morning. Thanks.

PowerPC is dead, Cell is a new architecture, Xenon/Waternose is only for 360 and the most probable thing is that Revolution is going to receive an existing PowerPC processor.

The next PowerPC architecture is the POWER6 that is outside the market of PowerPC and the Cell Broadband Engine PPE is marketed with the name POWER processing element and not with the name PowerPC processing element. POWER is the trademark for their server series and PowerPC is their trademark for desktop CPUs and Blade Servers.

I know a person that works with the MareNostrum in Barcelona (spain) he said to me that IBM has send a letter to them with an offer for replacing all the 970FX Blade Servers in the supercomputer for Cell Broadband Engine and we know that the Broadband Engine is marketed with the label POWER instead of PowerPC.

 

[Megadrive1988]

because PowerPC (well POWER) is finally getting its dues ^__^

roughly a decade and a half after PowerPC came into being for consumers/industry.

IBM was willing to do whatever it took. they've brilliantly shut Intel out of the console market for this new cycle. though there are rumblings of an Intel-Apple alliance for an entertainment device for the livingroom (not even a specific rumor about a specific box, just that an alliance may happen).

 

[OtakingGX]

because PowerPC (well POWER) is finally getting its dues ^__^

roughly a decade and a half after PowerPC came into being for consumers/industry.

IBM was willing to do whatever it took. they've brilliantly shut Intel out of the console market for this new cycle. though there are rumblings of an Intel-Apple alliance for an entertainment device for the livingroom (not even a specific rumor about a specific box, just that an alliance may happen).

I can't wait!

 

[Megadrive1988]

I can't wait!

yeah if Apple tries again, this time they will need actual 3D graphics hardware in the box

 

[Fox5]

The answer is more simpler than all this that all you are saying.

When the next gen consoles started to be designed the MIPS architecture, UltraSparc and other MIPS architectures were oblitterated by the x86, only the PowerPC survived because the Apple computers needs good performance against the PC.

I am sure that the next-next gen consoles are going to be using an x86 processor, perhaps the "Cell" version of Intel.

Hey, what not ARM or SH? Dreamcast and Sega's arcade stuff got decent performance out of SH, ARM could definetely scale upwards (SH did afterall), and Sony still seems to have something for MIPs as the PSP uses it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I am sure that the next-next gen consoles are going to be using an x86 processor, perhaps the "Cell" version of Intel.

That's not really x86 though, is it? Anymore than Cell is PPC. Unless their 'Cell' version is just multicore x86s, which isn't then a 'Cell' version.

 

[NANOTEC]

Personally I would've liked to have seen something from Sun or NEC. Heck a AGEIA PPU would've been interesting. Sun's offering would've probaby been based on Niagara or Rock and NEC's would've been MIPS based with a bunch of vector units kinda Like a monster Emotion Engine except with higher efficiency.

 

[inefficient]

When the next gen consoles started to be designed the MIPS architecture, UltraSparc and other MIPS architectures were oblitterated by the x86, only the PowerPC survived because the Apple computers needs good performance against the PC.

This is false. Apple was just their most high profile customer. But the reality is that Apple was one of the smallest PowerPC customers IBM had. Only a small fraction of PowerPC CPUs ended up in Apple desktops.

If you are only looking at the consumer products space, then it might look like Apple was the only customer for the Power Architecture. But if you look at the enterprise and business systems space you will see this is not the case. These CPUs get used everywhere from routers to dedicated mass storage devices.

 

[inefficient]

Personally I would've liked to have seen something from Sun or NEC. Heck a AGEIA PPU would've been interesting. Sun's offering would've probaby been based on Niagara or Rock and NEC's would've been MIPS based with a bunch of vector units kinda Like a monster Emotion Engine except with higher efficiency.

Not sure I agree with that at all. NEC and SUN are bleeding edge as far as processor technology compared to IBM. SUN especially!

SUN Microsystems is practically the poster boy for bleeding edge technology these days. Basically any system engineer will agree that SUN hardware strong point is reliabilty - but high performance for the dollar they are not. But customers with mission critical apps/data (like banks) don't care about spending 10-100's of thousands on multiprocessor server hardware that is several times more expensive than Intel/AMD kit running linux.

The Niagra CPUs might sound impressive. But have you seen the prices? I think the best deal you can get right now on a server with a single T1 CPU is still over $10,000USD. And considering that with 8 core it is not even twice as fast as a baseline 2 CPU intel box even running the type of application it was designed to run...