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IBM kills Cell chip line - Ninthing kills Sony then wakes up sticky, confused
- Thread starter Falafelkid
- Start date
Panajev2001a said:
The question of what's going to actually go into PS4, what would be the best choice for Sony, what would be competitive are indeed interesting and open.
But I was purely focussed on rubbishing this notion that Sony CAN'T use Cell in a future Playstation.
They could if they wanted. Whether it would be a good choice or not is open to question though, and you cover a lot of the pertinent points. I'm not sure if it would, IMO I think it depends a lot on the backwards compatability question. If there's a better choice available that keeps them covered in terms of BC, then by all means they should choose that. I think I like the idea of a tweaked Cell + a 'big' gpu/cpu hybrid ala Larrabee.
CrushDance
Banned
What? Noo. Wii and DS are the biggest brands in gaming right now, period. They're basically the "iPOD" of gaming right now. Them saying DS/Wii are big does not mean Playstation is irrelevant.Svpam said:
Ninja Moomin
Banned
told you their upgrade path was screwed...
McBradders
NeoGAF: my new HOME
:lol @ title change
You were obviously not around when the skies were covered with stars and the ground with rings. We ran around with red shoe's and red hats, eating Zelda cereal and watching Sonic the Hedgehog on television. Or we beat each other up at school to decide if Aladin on SNES or Genesis was superior. Movie/cartoon games used to be good, we went to the moon with Scrooge McDuck and experienced Jurassic Park for real. Well I don't recall much about that time either, but I still realize that the golden age of gaming has been long gone.Svpam said:
Pureauthor
Member
We've landed on the moon?
I'm in a hurry but here are some Google results:CrushDance said:
http://videogamesrepublic.com/?p=11043
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/david-capece/sparxoo/coca-cola-and-nintendo-re-invent-brand-image
Make of them what you will or try to find better results...
GrotesqueBeauty
Banned
I just watched Inland Empire today, and I have to say this thread makes way less sense.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_80PQ543rMPureauthor said:
Spread your wings and fly, fly to better times!
Ninja Moomin
Banned
legend166 said:
The playstation brand is still widely respected, known, and regarded among most consumers... it's not as tarnished as people think.
Anyway.... are we basically saying that all this Cell-specific tech sony have worked on and developers have worked on... will go in the bin next gen?
CrushDance
Banned
I just said that no?Taurus said:
PuppetSlave
Member
NinjaFusion said:
Good news! There actually is a middle ground between most powerful brand and awful.
Reading through the heise.de article again while sipping tea it does indeed not look good for Cell.
Killing their next step in the roadmap is definitely not a good sign. Telling your clients to write OpenCL code to stayplatform agnostic flexible does not help after that, especially if you state that "parts of the Cell design will live on" and hint that Cell BEs may become coprocessors.
IBMs PR department will be crying bloody murder, I bet, no matter what the truth of the matter is.
That doesn't mean they'll just kill the entire family off. I have doubts this will ever affect Sony in any way, too. Still, it certainly sounds like Cell has suffered from a setback. What does ProcessorGAF say? I'm more of an interested layperson in that regard.
Killing their next step in the roadmap is definitely not a good sign. Telling your clients to write OpenCL code to stay
IBMs PR department will be crying bloody murder, I bet, no matter what the truth of the matter is.
That doesn't mean they'll just kill the entire family off. I have doubts this will ever affect Sony in any way, too. Still, it certainly sounds like Cell has suffered from a setback. What does ProcessorGAF say? I'm more of an interested layperson in that regard.
APZonerunner
Member
Somebody post the original blog post to N4G stat, it'll be hilarious.
Disregarding speculation, the bottom line is that there is no Cell without IBM. Sony brought the marketing, Toshiba brought the notions of extended functionality, IBM brought the actual chip design and production. All three brought money, but money can't buy you love. The other two can go, but the party's over if IBM leaves.
I'm predicting Sony will stay in gaming, but solely as makers of an as yet unannounced handheld system. I wouldn't put it past them to make it really powerful and slap the Playstation 4 label on it. Marketing will focus on convincing the consumer that console gaming is dead and that portable gaming is the only way to go. Sony will continue losing money before pulling out completely, GAF will explode with megatons and weeping, and that will be the end of it. Sega (in partnership with Microsoft) vs. Nintendo two gens from now. I can't wait.
I'm predicting Sony will stay in gaming, but solely as makers of an as yet unannounced handheld system. I wouldn't put it past them to make it really powerful and slap the Playstation 4 label on it. Marketing will focus on convincing the consumer that console gaming is dead and that portable gaming is the only way to go. Sony will continue losing money before pulling out completely, GAF will explode with megatons and weeping, and that will be the end of it. Sega (in partnership with Microsoft) vs. Nintendo two gens from now. I can't wait.
Maybe the very specific parts of it, but in the larger picture it's still very valuable. I think the quality of early next-gen games will be up a lot thanks to developers having worked with something containing more than 3 cores and a memory architecture where you can't just hope for cache taking care of everything for you.NinjaFusion said:
McBradders
NeoGAF: my new HOME
Boerseun said:
Hey, the OP has an second account!
Ninja Moomin
Banned
Tiduz said:
that part is hilarious...
but the fact is that with no IBM there is no cell...
And that does raise major issues
1 - the upgrade path for sony will be tough... whereas it seems a given that MS will be using ati / custom powerpc again... meaning that backwards compatibility could be an issue... with the PSN and XBLM becoming a key part of the market, the ability to migrate that content across to the new systems will be important... an you imagine if MS just carry their market place across and all of sony's PSN games don't work, for instance? epic fail.
2 - Developers... all their custom cell tech becomes useless. Who will optimise for the cell during the later years of the PS3 if it becomes clear that all that tech will end up in the bin. On the flip side they might well welcome a move away from cell and it could mean the next two systems have a much more equal footing in terms of support / ports, etc.
3 - do we go through another couple of years where sony's in-house studio output is hamstrung by learning the tech rather than making games...?
it looks very hazy for sony in terms of how you manage all of this with a move to a new chipset... especially if microsoft offers developers and publishers an easy / smooth transition.
Interesting times ahead!!!!
fortified_concept
Banned
IBM kills Cell chip line - Ninthing kills Sony then wakes up sticky, confused
:lol:lol:lol
I literally laughed out loud
:lol:lol:lol
I literally laughed out loud
PetriP-TNT
Member
expert thread, A++++
go ninty!
go ninty!
Flachmatuch
Member
badcrumble
Member
:lol wowBoerseun said:
Nuclear Muffin
Banned
Didn't Toshiba and Sony both drop out of cell manufacturing before? Meaning that IBM are the sole producers of cell arcitecture processors?
If that's the case then wouldn't the article be correct about the lack of ability to use an enhanced cell processor at low cost for the PS4 then? (since it would have to be made on request, thus infating the manufacturing costs significantly)
If that's the case then wouldn't the article be correct about the lack of ability to use an enhanced cell processor at low cost for the PS4 then? (since it would have to be made on request, thus infating the manufacturing costs significantly)
TheRagnCajun
Member
Baseless speculation-age ftw! :lol
Doubledex said:
so what is this:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/20/sony-selling-cell-chip-facilities-to-toshiba-for-835-million/
NinjaFusion said:that part is hilarious...
but the fact is that with no IBM there is no cell...
And that does raise major issues
1 - the upgrade path for sony will be tough... whereas it seems a given that MS will be using ati / custom powerpc again... meaning that backwards compatibility could be an issue... with the PSN and XBLM becoming a key part of the market, the ability to migrate that content across to the new systems will be important... an you imagine if MS just carry their market place across and all of sony's PSN games don't work, for instance? epic fail.
2 - Developers... all their custom cell tech becomes useless. Who will optimise for the cell during the later years of the PS3 if it becomes clear that all that tech will end up in the bin. On the flip side they might well welcome a move away from cell and it could mean the next two systems have a much more equal footing in terms of support / ports, etc.
3 - do we go through another couple of years where sony's in-house studio output is hamstrung by learning the tech rather than making games...?
it looks very hazy for sony in terms of how you manage all of this with a move to a new chipset... especially if microsoft offers developers and publishers an easy / smooth transition.
Interesting times ahead!!!!
This almost as bad as the OP albeit a touch more articulate. It's predicated on the same assertion - that Sony can no longer use Cell if IBM stops using it.
There is absolutely nothing stopping Sony from just sticking another variant of Cell into the PS4 if they want to do that.
IBM's own plans for the chip have nothing to do with that. Anymore than their own plans, or lack thereof, for Xenon or ATi's plans for DX7 hardware have anything to do with Microsoft's or Nintendo's ability to use that hardware or variants of it in their designs, for example.
I don't know if Sony will use Cell again in PS4, but saying they cannot is silly.
If they choose not to use Cell then I would wonder about BC and how they'll manage that. It'd obviously be a much greater challenge, much less straightforward than just putting another Cell design in there. But we shall see what happens.
EmCeeGramr
Member
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