Intel talking to Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony about TFLOP chips for NEXTgeneration game systems after b

[AirRaid]

Chip company has spoken to hardware manufacturers, touting new
processors

Intel, the company responsible for the majority of processors used in
desktop PCs, has spoken to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo about what
chips might power the next round of consoles.


http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=31534


"Intel, the company who produce countless components and processors
that hide away in millions of PCs across the world, has begun talks
already with Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony about providing parts for
the next-generation of consoles. That's right folks; you simply can't
use next-gen to describe the 360 anymore, as we're already onto the
Xbox 720, or whatever it will be called.

When the 360 and it's rivals were built, Intel lost out to IBM, who
secured console-based work with all the main three manufacturers. This
time, Intel have got in early, according to Business Week. Speaking to
the site, a company rep also rather enthusiastically predicted 'hands
free' controllers that will see you using hand movements to play
games, though we doubt the humble button will become redundant quite
so readily.

The good news is that if Intel do get the work, we will be able to
enjoy a games machine running on chips that can perform an
unimaginable 1 trillion calculations a second"

http://xboxer.tv/2007/12/next_nextgen_already_under_dis.html


"Intel has talked to console video game makers about using chips that
can perform in excess of 1 trillion calculations per second
(BusinessWeek.com, 2/12/07) in future products that use cameras to
track body motion to control the action, instead of using buttons or
joysticks. "We imagine some future generation of [Nintendo's] Wii
won't have hand controllers," says Justin Rattner, Intel's chief
technology officer. "You just set up the cameras around the room and
wave your hand like you're playing tennis." Intel missed out on
supplying chips for the current generation of game systems, and is
trying to gain a foothold there."


http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2007/tc20071212_550604.htm

 

[Bill Davidsen]

Chip company has spoken to hardware manufacturers, touting new
processors

Intel, the company responsible for the majority of processors used in
desktop PCs, has spoken to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo about what
chips might power the next round of consoles.


http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=31534


"Intel, the company who produce countless components and processors
that hide away in millions of PCs across the world, has begun talks
already with Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony about providing parts for
the next-generation of consoles. That's right folks; you simply can't
use next-gen to describe the 360 anymore, as we're already onto the
Xbox 720, or whatever it will be called.

When the 360 and it's rivals were built, Intel lost out to IBM, who
secured console-based work with all the main three manufacturers. This
time, Intel have got in early, according to Business Week. Speaking to
the site, a company rep also rather enthusiastically predicted 'hands
free' controllers that will see you using hand movements to play
games, though we doubt the humble button will become redundant quite
so readily.

The good news is that if Intel do get the work, we will be able to
enjoy a games machine running on chips that can perform an
unimaginable 1 trillion calculations a second"

http://xboxer.tv/2007/12/next_nextgen_already_under_dis.html


"Intel has talked to console video game makers about using chips that
can perform in excess of 1 trillion calculations per second
(BusinessWeek.com, 2/12/07) in future products that use cameras to
track body motion to control the action, instead of using buttons or
joysticks. "We imagine some future generation of [Nintendo's] Wii
won't have hand controllers," says Justin Rattner, Intel's chief
technology officer. "You just set up the cameras around the room and
wave your hand like you're playing tennis." Intel missed out on
supplying chips for the current generation of game systems, and is
trying to gain a foothold there."


http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2007/tc20071212_550604.htm

I personally doubt that talking first has anything to do with who gets
the contracts. The vendors will balance cost, performance, and features,
and make a decision based on profit.

That's not a bad thing, but performance is generally not an issue now,
other than people writing brute force solutions because they're gamers,
not programmers, and believe that hardware should make crappy code look
good anyway.

 

[Quadibloc]

That's not a bad thing, but performance is generally not an issue now,
other than people writing brute force solutions because they're gamers,
not programmers, and believe that hardware should make crappy code look
good anyway.

That, of course, depends. What if you're calculating output to go to a
holographic display device instead of a flat screen?

Or, even if we restrict ourselves to conventional HD displays, what if
we want greater photorealism in characters, so that every strand of
hair can be individually animated, so that images can be fully ray-
traced (instead of taking visibly inaccurate shortcuts), so that
intelligent NPCs can pass the Turing test...

Performance is _always_ an issue, because what you want to _do_ with a
computer expands to fill its capacity even with really *good* and
optimized code.

Unless you just want to surf the web, read E-mail, and type letters.
Then, you need a wretchedly inefficient operating system to force you
to buy a new computer... and video games are not applicable.

John Savard

 

[Terje Mathisen]

I personally doubt that talking first has anything to do with who gets
the contracts. The vendors will balance cost, performance, and features,
and make a decision based on profit.

This is almost certainly correct.

That's not a bad thing, but performance is generally not an issue now,
other than people writing brute force solutions because they're gamers,
not programmers, and believe that hardware should make crappy code look
good anyway.

This otoh is totally bogus:

Games programming is probably the only existing source of new
programmers who actually care about performance, care to an extent where
even 25% speedups are a big deal.

Yes, there are a lot of programmers even inside successful games
publishers who don't know/care about what makes a program fast, but
those same companies probably employ up to half of all the current
world-class performance programmers.

Terje

 

[Nick Maclaren]

|> >
|> > That's not a bad thing, but performance is generally not an issue now,
|> > other than people writing brute force solutions because they're gamers,
|> > not programmers, and believe that hardware should make crappy code look
|> > good anyway.
|>
|> This otoh is totally bogus:

Oh, come now! It's not TOTALLY bogus - just largely so.

|> Games programming is probably the only existing source of new
|> programmers who actually care about performance, care to an extent where
|> even 25% speedups are a big deal.

Nope. HPC provides some, too. Not a lot, but a few.

And most of the people Bill Davidsen were talking about (i.e. who write
crappy code and believe that it is the hardware's business to make it
run fast) are in neither gaming nor HPC. In those areas, people learn
better - in other areas, they can get away with being idiotic, sloppy
and just plain crazy.

E.g. you can explain why, as time goes by, GUIs get slower at popping
up new windows and even responding to mouse clicks - but most people
(even most GUI programmers) can't.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

 

[Terje Mathisen]

|> >
|> > That's not a bad thing, but performance is generally not an issue now,
|> > other than people writing brute force solutions because they're gamers,
|> > not programmers, and believe that hardware should make crappy code look
|> > good anyway.
|>
|> This otoh is totally bogus:

Oh, come now! It's not TOTALLY bogus - just largely so.

|> Games programming is probably the only existing source of new
|> programmers who actually care about performance, care to an extent where
|> even 25% speedups are a big deal.

Nope. HPC provides some, too. Not a lot, but a few.

Indeed.

There are probably at least an order of magnitude less HPC programmers
than (performance) games programmers, but still significant,
particularly due to having thought a lot about clusters vs SMP,
single-core vs dual/quad/many-core etc.

Terje