»

[Tripitaka]

Just as many rumours that PS4 will be CELL based than the ones that it will not. So hardly a basis for factual discussion.

As for Wii U, the only official release of CPU spec from Nintendo is as follows:

IBM Power Architecture-based multi-core 45 nm microprocessor based on the POWER7 architecture found in the Watson supercomputer.

The rest is pure speculation.

Regarding "the desktop" as a yardstick, it's worth noting that more "computing" is now being performed on mobile devices than anything else. The classic PC model is dying, smartphones, pads and consoles are becoming the norm. Even a lot of PC owners use mobile devices and consoles more hours per day than their PC's. I for one count more Wii hours than any other computational device I own, and I own a lot of them (as do many others on this forum).

[Tripitaka]

Originally Posted by takemehomegrandma

Equals to **DEAD** for all purposes interesting to us

You assume too much. My interests are not necessarily the same as yours.

[takemehomegrandma]

CPU architecture in consoles couldn't be more uninteresting, to a user it doesn't matter one bit what's "under the hood" in a console, as long as it's powerful enough, cool/silent enough, and helps making the system cheap enough. Games and services are what matters. Who knows, maybe the upcoming "x86 killers" ARM chips from nVidia will be the answer to all three of those criteria? Wouldn't surprise me one bit if Microsoft's cooperation with nVidia in the ARM venture would include console as well, Microsoft has been completely absent on the very lucrative mobile devices market, especially mobile gaming devices, and I think they want in on everything mobile (that's why they are going ARM with Windows). Maybe there is a point in having a common "architectural eco-system" for a "Xbox 720" and "Xbox Mobile", who knows? I guess we'll know when we are closing in on Christmas 2013.

But it doesn't matter one bit to anything "Amiga", so I wonder why we are discussing it here...?

[takemehomegrandma]

Originally Posted by Tripitaka

You assume too much. My interests are not necessarily the same as yours.

You obviously failed completely to comprehend my point. I wasn't talking about individual interests, and for the record, I couldn't care less in what you are interested in...

[paolone]

Originally Posted by Digiman

So how comes IBM's AI machine called Watson which outsmarted the two best champions on Jeopardy TV show uses Power7 not x86 architecture?

youtube video

If only an IBM engineer was a nostalgic Amigan with a dream to out do Wintel at least technically.....

The datacenter where I work every day is plenty of powerPC-based servers. This does not change, however, the fact that this architecture has completely missed even the last train to desktop computing. Sorry.

[billt]

Originally Posted by takemehomegrandma

CPU architecture in consoles couldn't be more uninteresting, to a user it doesn't matter one bit what's "under the hood" in a console, as long as it's powerful enough, cool/silent enough, and helps making the system cheap enough. Games and services are what matters.

I disagree with your claim of uninteresting. While most console users do not feel the need to care what's inside their gizmos, we have reason to find it an interesting detail. Why? Well, some people say that PowerPC is not developed with desktop computing in mind, and therefore these network router chips are relatively poor as desktop processors compared to Intel and AMD things. As the old term "convergence" gradually comes true, these consoles are going to start doing more desktop like things, and they already have. They now surf the web, play movies, show pictures, do video conferencing.

So long as these console makers continue to choose PowerPC, for whatever reasons they have to do that, PowerPC processors will be pulled toward features and instructions beneficial to these and new tasks that historically may be considered desktop things rather than router or car engine things. As these desktop-alike things filter into PowerPC, our situation, so long as we are unwillingly chained to the PowerPC flagpole, can improve. Doesn't mean it will, as that depends on someone taking such a new PowerPC chip and makign a desktop with it, but at least it's possible.

An observation of this happening is the return of Altivec to Frescale's product line. They'd lost interest and dumped it. But enough customers had enough reason to want it back that Freescale had to give in. We potentially benefit from that, as a desktop AmigaOS machine with Altivec is better than one without. As long as consoles and other things want certain features they will much more likely remain core requirements of the PowerPC spec, rather than drift away to optional features or even removed in future spec releases.

[paolone]

Originally Posted by takemehomegrandma

Who knows, maybe the upcoming "x86 killers" ARM chips from nVidia will be the answer to all three of those criteria?

I know very well Nvidia's PR strategies and I really doubt there will ever be any x86-killers from them. According to their statements, Tegra3 should have been the fastest, most powerful ARM based chip on the market, however Snapdragon S4 outperforms it in many areas, while the iPad3 competes fairly well with Tegra3-based tablets. And while Nvidia improves its Tegra line of ARM-based SoCs trying to follow its roadmap, Intel makes thinner and thinner transistors, placing billions of them into 22nm-based Ivy-bridge CPUs. Intel has both the knowledge and the economic power to enhance their Atom line as they wish so, if ARM really gets too dangerous for them, they just need to answer once for all.

[billt]

Originally Posted by paolone

The datacenter where I work every day is plenty of powerPC-based servers. This does not change, however, the fact that this architecture has completely missed even the last train to desktop computing. Sorry.

What details do you think need to be changed in PowerPC in order to get on one of these trains?

[Tripitaka]

Originally Posted by takemehomegrandma

You obviously failed completely to comprehend my point. I wasn't talking about individual interests, and for the record, I couldn't care less in what you are interested in...

Fair enough, that's the trouble with text communication, it lacks emphasis so is easily misinterpreted. I am forced to regard your comment of "Equals to **DEAD** for all purposes interesting to us" as meaning "Equals to **DEAD** for all purposes of interest to Amiga users". That of course is simply just not true anyway, we have OS4 and MOS both running on PPC. How does that equate to dead?

As for " I couldn't care less in what you are interested in...", well, that was a bit unfriendly. Have I offended you somehow? I've always thought we've had quite interesting and adult discussions in the past even if we don't always agree.

[fishy_fiz]

The whole "desktop machine is dying" thing is pretty darn premature. We've been hearing it for years, and while additional devices are becoming mainstream, it hasnt been to the detriment of desktop sales.
There's quite a few tasks that simply arent practical elsewhere.
Desktop cpu sales continue to increase year in year out. Hardly demonstrative of it becoming a dying market.

[dammy]

Originally Posted by paolone

I know very well Nvidia's PR strategies and I really doubt there will ever be any x86-killers from them. According to their statements, Tegra3 should have been the fastest, most powerful ARM based chip on the market, however Snapdragon S4 outperforms it in many areas, while the iPad3 competes fairly well with Tegra3-based tablets. And while Nvidia improves its Tegra line of ARM-based SoCs trying to follow its roadmap, Intel makes thinner and thinner transistors, placing billions of them into 22nm-based Ivy-bridge CPUs. Intel has both the knowledge and the economic power to enhance their Atom line as they wish so, if ARM really gets too dangerous for them, they just need to answer once for all.

Depends on what you consider dangerous. ARM already has the lion share of CPUs being produced, even if you combined Intel's and AMD's x86 CPU production:

[Tripitaka]

Originally Posted by billt

I disagree with your claim of uninteresting. While most console users do not feel the need to care what's inside their gizmos, we have reason to find it an interesting detail. Why? Well, some people say that PowerPC is not developed with desktop computing in mind, and therefore these network router chips are relatively poor as desktop processors compared to Intel and AMD things. As the old term "convergence" gradually comes true, these consoles are going to start doing more desktop like things, and they already have. They now surf the web, play movies, show pictures, do video conferencing.

So long as these console makers continue to choose PowerPC, for whatever reasons they have to do that, PowerPC processors will be pulled toward features and instructions beneficial to these and new tasks that historically may be considered desktop things rather than router or car engine things. As these desktop-alike things filter into PowerPC, our situation, so long as we are unwillingly chained to the PowerPC flagpole, can improve. Doesn't mean it will, as that depends on someone taking such a new PowerPC chip and makign a desktop with it, but at least it's possible.

An observation of this happening is the return of Altivec to Frescale's product line. They'd lost interest and dumped it. But enough customers had enough reason to want it back that Freescale had to give in. We potentially benefit from that, as a desktop AmigaOS machine with Altivec is better than one without. As long as consoles and other things want certain features they will much more likely remain core requirements of the PowerPC spec, rather than drift away to optional features or even removed in future spec releases.

I couldn't agree more. Once consoles played games, now we can surf the net, stream videos and play our music collections on them. Even a certain level of music and video editing is slipping in, the Wii U demo video even shows the new controller being used as a rather nifty digital sketch pad. Combined with pads and smartphones, how much more will it take before we abandon our desktops completely and leave them to be the tools of coders only? Only time will tell.

[Tripitaka]

Originally Posted by fishy_fiz

The whole "desktop machine is dying" thing is pretty darn premature. We've been hearing it for years, and while additional devices are becoming mainstream, it hasnt been to the detriment of desktop sales.
There's quite a few tasks that simply arent practical elsewhere.
Desktop cpu sales continue to increase year in year out. Hardly demonstrative of it becoming a dying market.

Statistics are so much fun don't you think? Yes, I agree that PC sales still increase year on year BUT, relative to smartphones, consoles and tablets the overall share of the computational marketplace that PC once had just doesn't look as strong as it once did. I still think the desktop PC has life left in it but it's not the force it once was.

[dammy]

Originally Posted by fishy_fiz

The whole "desktop machine is dying" thing is pretty darn premature. We've been hearing it for years, and while additional devices are becoming mainstream, it hasnt been to the detriment of desktop sales.
There's quite a few tasks that simply arent practical elsewhere.
Desktop cpu sales continue to increase year in year out. Hardly demonstrative of it becoming a dying market.

Desktops account for about 20% of computer sales and has remained relatively flat line at 20% over the past several years. It's not on it's death bed, but it's certainly nothing what it use to be like either as industry continues to project desktops around 20% while portables (laptop/notebooks/tablets/smartphones) eat up the rest of the 80% of the computer market.

If ARM ever gets a stable environment that x86 has enjoyed, desktops will take another drop in sales.

[runequester]

Originally Posted by takemehomegrandma

You obviously failed completely to comprehend my point. I wasn't talking about individual interests, and for the record, I couldn't care less in what you are interested in...

Aren't you just a bundle of sunshine