Book covers creation of PS3's Cell processor, how Microsoft cribbed it for Xbox

[wraggster]

Written by two designers of the Cell processor, The Race for a New Game Machine, is a new book covering the creation of Sony's ambitious PlayStation 3 chip, and how Microsoft got a hold of its architecture for the Xbox 360. The Wall Street Journal, which gave a rather gloomy forecast for the PS3 earlier this week, has an extensive preview.

According to the book, Sony, Toshiba and IBM started working on the Cell in 2001 and planned to spend $400 million over five years. If everything went according to plan, the PlayStation 3 would be out by Christmas 2005. In 2002, Microsoft approached IBM about making a chip for what would later be known as the Xbox 360. IBM ended up making a new chip "built around the core" of the Cell it was currently creating for Sony. In the end, Xbox made the 2005 launch (with a time bomb under the hood) and Sony came out a year later.

As the WSJ points out, for all the power and money behind Microsoft and Sony's consoles, Nintendo has outsold both with its "sound strategic vision" with the less-powerful Wii.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/31/bo...icrosoft-crib/

[JLF65]

That's retarded! The PPE can hardly be called the "core" of the Cell. It's a stripped down PowerPC for heaven's sake! The "core" of the Cell is in the SPEs. The PPE by itself is fairly wimpy, especially by modern standards. The XBox 360 has a CPU with three PPEs. Sorry, but three times zero is still zero. The power in the PS3 is in the raw throughput of the SPEs all operating in parallel. The more a program uses the SPEs, the better it is.

[mike03$$$]

^^^ thank you and i need to start posting again here jeez been awhile