Recent Comments:
Apple drops iPhone NDA {Engadget}
Oct 1st 2008 12:25PM Good, now we should get some books and wider reference material, articles on the web, etc. about iPhone development.
Personally I am holding out for "iPhone Programming for Dummies" :p
Sony said to be hanging onto Cell processor for PlayStation 4 {Engadget}
Oct 1st 2008 6:15AM LameDuck, you forgot that the 3x PowerPC cores of the Xenon are hyper-threaded so in real terms are 6x PPC cores.
In contract the Cell's single PowerPC core is also hyper-threaded and is in effect 2x PPC cores, plus 7 SPE (1 lost due to yields) where 1 is reserved due to OS so 6x SPE; giving a total of 8x hardware threads but only 2x PPC core ones.
Interestingly the SPE are similar (but not identical) to the Motorola’s Altivec vector processors that Apple had bolted onto PowerPC architecture when they used it as their core platform, it accelerated media processing on PowerMacs; Intel's equivalent is SSE and its derivatives.
Even more interestingly, both Cell and Xenon have VMX extensions (which are Altivec but IBM brands differently) in their PowerPC cores; however, for the Xenon IBM beefed up VMX into VMX128 with functions specifically designed for 3D graphics and physics modelling and increased number of registers up from 32 to 128. They are also hyper-threaded so Xenon gets 6x VMX128 and Cell gets 2x VMX; this is why Microsoft have been recently pushing developers to make more use of VMX128 in forthcoming Xbox 360 games.
So the tally is...
Cell: 2x PowerPC core, 6x SPE, 2x VMX
Xenon: 6x PowerPC core, 0x SPE, 6x VMX128
[/geek]
Netflix API open to all: let the developing begin {Engadget}
Oct 1st 2008 5:29AM Yes, Apple should now put Netflix on their Apple TV product … but they wont because it would compete with iTunes. :(
They should really open up that little box to all-and-sundry media formats and services, then they might sell more than 'hobby' levels.
Sony said to be hanging onto Cell processor for PlayStation 4 {Engadget}
Sep 30th 2008 7:18PM Playstation 3's GPU is the Nvidia RSX.
RSX is very similar architecture to Nvidia's G70 core, which was the GeForce 7800 GTX back in June 2005. The RSX runs 28% faster than the 7800 GTX, but has fewer pixel processing pipelines and 60% of the memory bandwidth.
RSX's total programmable GPU floating point performance is 228.8 GFLOPS.
[/GEEK]
Sony said to be hanging onto Cell processor for PlayStation 4 {Engadget}
Sep 30th 2008 6:58PM Pink slime has so much ... untapped potential
Bleszinski: Definitely no Gears of War 2 on the PC {Xbox 360 Fanboy}
Sep 29th 2008 8:12PM I plan to buy my first 360 soon to solve problems like this, I am a long-time PC gamer who buys all his games but is getting POed with no-PC versions of big titles.
Every single one of my friends who has an Xbox 360 has mod-ed it firmware with a download they've burnt to disc -- not really that hard is it?
Once they've done this (which is straight after getting it out the box) they have never purchased a single game, ever, not one of them! 0 game sales.
But they have every title available which they download from the internet, and even use white DVD-ROMs so they can print the artwork on the disc.
Not only do they not pay for any games, but they also get them before they are available at retail.
Piracy isn't limited to PC, it is rampant on Xbox 360 too.
Gears of War 2: Skorge in multiplayer, no PC version, rumored map remakes {Joystiq}
Sep 29th 2008 7:50PM Not doing a PC version because of piracy?
I know people with Xbox 360s who have not bought a single game as they pirate everything, they even have games like 'Star Wars: The Force Unleashed' a week before its available at retail in USA.
So it's not really a good reason why we can't have a PC version. I paid for GoW PC version, and would happily pay for GoW2 on PC too.
Rumor: Is the Apple TV being replaced? {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Sep 27th 2008 2:42PM Could be why they haven't updated the Apple TV firmware for HD televisions shows.
Stephen Hawking unveils the most morbid, amazing $1.8m clock you'll ever see {Engadget}
Sep 21st 2008 5:04AM I want one!
Inquirer: Google to buy Valve, Valve denies [update] {Joystiq}
Sep 17th 2008 10:19AM I was in the original Steam beta for years, from when it just updated HL1 and did nothing else at all.
