Tony Hill
11-05-2003, 05:07 PM
On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 17:02:43 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
<removethisspam.bjsk90.removethispam@hotmail.com> wrote:I'm not sure if this is official, semi-official, or just another opinionpiece, but this article indicates that the new Xbox2 will run old Xbox1games through emulation technology:http://www.it-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=11396
Ohh yippie! Another editorial by a totally clueless journalist who is
passing his opinions off as fact, even though some are totally wrong.
Let's see here..
"The implications for Microsoft: ... The Xbox is also important
because it is Linux-proof."
Umm.. huh? So you mean those people who are running Linux on the XBox
are just delusional?
"The implications for IBM: It means that IBM is winning its battle
with Intel for the 64 bit chip market. IBM had already got Nintendo's
business and now it has the XBOX. If you add Apple into the mix (Apple
has used the PowerPC chip since it first appeared) you have serious
volume chip production. This is going to help IBM's server business
too."
Ohh, where to begin here! First off I haven't seen any suggestion
elsewhere that this will be a 64-bit chip, and even if it is it'll
make essentially zero difference. A 64-bit CPU doesn't do ANYTHING
for games.
(Note: before someone sprouts off about Epic's Unreal seeing a 30%
performance improvement on AMD64, I can pretty much assure you that
the difference is due to the extra registers, not the 64-bitness).
IBM does already have Nintendo in the mix, but that is with a 32-bit
PowerPC, again I see no connection to the 64-bit comment.
As for the "serious volume", Nintendo sells maybe 10 million
Gamecube's a year. Microsoft might be managing twice that many XBox
systems. Apple sells about 5 million systems a year. IBM themselves
probably sells about a million processors for their own server line.
All of these are fairly high estimates, but probably not too far off
reality. Total sales between these is 36 million. Lots of chips, but
not THAT many. For comparison, AMD sells about 25 million x86 chips,
and Intel sells about 125 million x86 chips.
Of course, if you take the TOTAL chip volume of PowerPC, it's a whole
heck of a lot larger, because they sells quite a large number of
embedded chips as well, but that's another story.
Let's move on...
"The implications for HP: HP threw its hand in with Intel, betting
heavily on Itanium. This now looks like the wrong bet. Where else can
HP go? Not to IBM, I'm sure, so I guess they'll be tipping their hat
to AMD."
Wow, now THAT one was a quite a stretch!
"The implications for AMD: It's good news. Period."
Umm.. yeah. IBM makes a new sale and it's good news for AMD? Only in
the "it's not a sale for Intel" kind of way, and even then it's quite
a stretch.
"The implications for Apple: You can almost hear Steve Jobs laughing."
I can almost hear Steve Jobs now caring. So MS is another PowerPC
customer, big deal. It's not like this is likely to help Apple except
in very obscure ways. It's not like games on the XBox2 will be even
remotely compatible with Apple systems as the XBox2 will be running
stripped-down Windows and DirectX, two things that OS X does not have.
"The implications for Linux: Linux runs on everything anyway. It is
pretty well chip-agnostic. However, we would not be surprised to see
Linux PCs emerging driven by PowerPC chips some time in the near
future. What does that mean? PCs that can't run Windows?"
Err, so those people running Linux on PowerPC chips don't exist?
IBM's whole marketing campaign of getting Linux to run on their Power4
systems never happened? And where in the hell is his "PCs that can't
run Windows" comment coming from? Does he mean sorta like how Apple
Mac PC's don't run Windows?
It also suggests that the PPC that IBM will supply is a 64-bit PPC, not a32-bit one.
Could be, though it seems like a waste of silicon. Mind you, if the
waste of silicon is sufficiently small (should be only a few percent
of the die) than it might not matter and could give Microsoft an extra
marketeering tool, even if the 64-bitness is never used. Why would
you want more than 4GB of memory in a near-future console or integer
values with a range of more than 4 billion in a game?
-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca
<removethisspam.bjsk90.removethispam@hotmail.com> wrote:I'm not sure if this is official, semi-official, or just another opinionpiece, but this article indicates that the new Xbox2 will run old Xbox1games through emulation technology:http://www.it-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=11396
Ohh yippie! Another editorial by a totally clueless journalist who is
passing his opinions off as fact, even though some are totally wrong.
Let's see here..
"The implications for Microsoft: ... The Xbox is also important
because it is Linux-proof."
Umm.. huh? So you mean those people who are running Linux on the XBox
are just delusional?
"The implications for IBM: It means that IBM is winning its battle
with Intel for the 64 bit chip market. IBM had already got Nintendo's
business and now it has the XBOX. If you add Apple into the mix (Apple
has used the PowerPC chip since it first appeared) you have serious
volume chip production. This is going to help IBM's server business
too."
Ohh, where to begin here! First off I haven't seen any suggestion
elsewhere that this will be a 64-bit chip, and even if it is it'll
make essentially zero difference. A 64-bit CPU doesn't do ANYTHING
for games.
(Note: before someone sprouts off about Epic's Unreal seeing a 30%
performance improvement on AMD64, I can pretty much assure you that
the difference is due to the extra registers, not the 64-bitness).
IBM does already have Nintendo in the mix, but that is with a 32-bit
PowerPC, again I see no connection to the 64-bit comment.
As for the "serious volume", Nintendo sells maybe 10 million
Gamecube's a year. Microsoft might be managing twice that many XBox
systems. Apple sells about 5 million systems a year. IBM themselves
probably sells about a million processors for their own server line.
All of these are fairly high estimates, but probably not too far off
reality. Total sales between these is 36 million. Lots of chips, but
not THAT many. For comparison, AMD sells about 25 million x86 chips,
and Intel sells about 125 million x86 chips.
Of course, if you take the TOTAL chip volume of PowerPC, it's a whole
heck of a lot larger, because they sells quite a large number of
embedded chips as well, but that's another story.
Let's move on...
"The implications for HP: HP threw its hand in with Intel, betting
heavily on Itanium. This now looks like the wrong bet. Where else can
HP go? Not to IBM, I'm sure, so I guess they'll be tipping their hat
to AMD."
Wow, now THAT one was a quite a stretch!
"The implications for AMD: It's good news. Period."
Umm.. yeah. IBM makes a new sale and it's good news for AMD? Only in
the "it's not a sale for Intel" kind of way, and even then it's quite
a stretch.
"The implications for Apple: You can almost hear Steve Jobs laughing."
I can almost hear Steve Jobs now caring. So MS is another PowerPC
customer, big deal. It's not like this is likely to help Apple except
in very obscure ways. It's not like games on the XBox2 will be even
remotely compatible with Apple systems as the XBox2 will be running
stripped-down Windows and DirectX, two things that OS X does not have.
"The implications for Linux: Linux runs on everything anyway. It is
pretty well chip-agnostic. However, we would not be surprised to see
Linux PCs emerging driven by PowerPC chips some time in the near
future. What does that mean? PCs that can't run Windows?"
Err, so those people running Linux on PowerPC chips don't exist?
IBM's whole marketing campaign of getting Linux to run on their Power4
systems never happened? And where in the hell is his "PCs that can't
run Windows" comment coming from? Does he mean sorta like how Apple
Mac PC's don't run Windows?
It also suggests that the PPC that IBM will supply is a 64-bit PPC, not a32-bit one.
Could be, though it seems like a waste of silicon. Mind you, if the
waste of silicon is sufficiently small (should be only a few percent
of the die) than it might not matter and could give Microsoft an extra
marketeering tool, even if the 64-bitness is never used. Why would
you want more than 4GB of memory in a near-future console or integer
values with a range of more than 4 billion in a game?
-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca