michael@hollinger.net
Archive for November, 2006
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Nov 14th
IBM Plays All Sides of Console Wars
Nov 14th
No matter whether Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony wins the video game console war, there already is one huge victor: IBM, which designed and makes the microprocessors for all three units.
While previous generations of chips were always tuned to generate faster and faster processing cycles (known as clock speed, measured in megahertz and now gigahertz), IBM pushed a “multicore” design that stresses the efficiency of multiple factors, such as power consumption or graphics rendering. The setup also enables more flexibility to customize chips for particular customers’ needs.
The customized “Power” chips that IBM made for the Microsoft and Nintendo consoles, as well as the “Cell” chip that IBM, Sony and Toshiba Corp. jointly created for Sony’s PlayStation, all use multiple cores. Cell has nine such processing engines.
– AP Article (Click to read the full article)


