Playstation 3 Gathering Components 443
briancnorton writes "Cnet has a story about how Sony has licensed some Rambus connection technology for the playstation 3. One technology is for chip-to-chip communications and the other for chip-to-RAM at over 100 Gbps. These are all parts of the 'Cell' processor system that is supposed to do over '1 trillion mathematical calculations per second.'"
yeah okay... (Score:2, Insightful)
Thing is it sounds impressive, but will that still be the case when it ships? If it was available now then of course things would be more interesting.
And Rambus: maybe this is their real market, PCs are too much of a commodity to employ their expensive memory. The only 'expensive' discrete component in a PC nowadays is Windows, and even that seems on the way out.
seany
Re:Wait A Second.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or a PS2, as there's been Rambus tech in there from day 1.
Patents and stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
Lovely. Let's all go out and throw support to this wonderful company!
Seriously, though, I'm in the market for a new computer right now. I'm looking for a high end machine, but I refuse to buy one with RDRAM. It's just too expensive and not effective enough. Thankfully, you can now buy high-end DDR based Pentiums at Dell.
Rambus sucks.
Re:overkill? (Score:2, Insightful)
Won't be seeing it for a while. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Console development is damn expensive (and getting worse each time around), and there is a *lot* of life left in the PS2. Hell, they're still selling PSOnes at a good clip!
I would expect Sony to milk the PS2 for all its worth before updating the hardware (and forcing updates from those developing for it, always a hassle). The only thing that would make them move more quickly is to one-up an opponent. And even then, they may wait; its the games that make money, and there are some pretty damn good games for the PS2.
Re:Rambus (Score:5, Insightful)
The main drawback to RAMBUS on a PC architecture, IMHO, is the tight grip on manufacturing, and the possible inability to get parts at a reasonable cost (not that it was really reasonable in the first place).
When's the last time you upgraded the RAM in your console?
S
Re:1 trillion ips (Score:5, Insightful)
It was actually *much* better than the Dreamcast, but it required a different mindset in order to work with the hardware. The graphics hardware in the Dreamcast was very similar to that of the PC, whereas that of the PS2 was much stranger to the uninitiated.
Here's hoping that Sony funnels a reasonable percentage of the PS3's power toward making thing headache-free for developers, instead of even more complex.
Re:overkill? (Score:1, Insightful)
Resolution doesn't mean much, I can put CS in 1600x1200 and it won't look as nice as Doom 3 in 1024x768 =/
Re:1 trillion ips (Score:2, Insightful)
A good bit of prolog and Lisp should help in the training, then drop what they've learnt back into more predictable languages like C.
Re:overkill? (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe he deserved to be shot down, but not by an even bigger idiot. As a matter of fact, the reply was so much more extremely stupid, I felt moved to invent a "new word"... fucktard. English is a living language, you cretin, that means that there is no such thing as a non-word, especially when meaning is implied and a context exists that allows other people (stretching the definition I know, including you in "people") to understand that meaning. You sir, are what is meant when people use the word "fucktard". I only wish I could honestly claim I invented that beautiful, lovely word... how else would I tell my friends about quasi-persons like yourself?
These will NEVER be publically mod-able. (Score:3, Insightful)
Then they'll refocus where they should (Score:4, Insightful)
Then the focus will move -- as it rightly should -- from the performance, resolution, and just plain Goshwow Factor(TM) of the hardware to the important things in the games: design, balance, artistry in textures and layout, and (dare I say it?) playability.
I could even envision a time (once again, depending where you're reading this) where the biggest name on the box isn't the manufacturer, but the designer's or artist's. Hideo Kojima, Sid Meier, Will Wright... they're all names that might be recognized already. There are other talents out there too that probably deserve recognition.
As it stands in the marketplace today, it's not enough about good gameplay and too much about pushing the product.
As Console Wars go, this is a not unreasonable move on Sony's part to drive further nails into the Xbox's rather large and well-ventilated coffin. It's talk of the successor to the PlayStation 2, which is likely to blow the doors off off the current Xbox. It's FUD, pure and simple. It shows Sony [playstation.com] has a lock on the market, if they can do that to Microsoft [xbox.com].
Sadly, even if people decide that the Console Wars aren't worth fighting, it still won't change much of gaming's status quo. Clever little puzzlers like Devil Dice [playstation.com] disappear off radar because they don't get "enough attention" while Electronic Arts [ea.com] manages to dump yet another sports-themed game on the public year [playstation.com] in [playstation.com] and [playstation.com] year [playstation.com] out [playstation.com] because the public can't get enough of it.
(You want a cause for skyrocketing player salaries? Look no further than the unwashed masses, clamoring for tickets in the stadium, coverage on television, this year's hot merchandise, and every last tidbit of gossip and news they can get. The insanity ends when people finally decide the celebrities aren't worth the price of admission.)
Re:OT, but...Neurocomputers (Score:1, Insightful)
Artificial synapses copy brain dynamics [trnmag.com]
Computing and Learning with Dynamic Synapses (1999) [nec.com]
Computing at the Tissue / Organ Level [liv.ac.uk]
From neurobiology to silicon [washington.edu]
Principle of Neuroinformatics and Neuroinformation Coding [cuhk.edu.hk]
In short. The synapse is a computer in it's own right.
Re:Wait A Second.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead, the USB is used only for the force feedback wheel, keyboard, mouse, and maybe ethernet IIRC? The 1394 is even worse, it's used only for the little-used networking function in the PS2 (At least GT3:A-Spec uses it.) Sony missed the boat entirely. Obviously microsoft gets it, XP Media Center edition don't ya know. The next xbox will be running that, I'm sure, at least it will multiboot to it if nothing else. Why doesn't Sony get it?
Re:These will NEVER be publically mod-able. (Score:2, Insightful)
see:
http://www.ps2linux.com/ (jap)
or:
http://playstation2-linux.com/ (us
for more info.
bah some people.