Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) FeedBurner Feed
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Saturday, December 09, 2006
IBM dominates CPUs for game consoles
A side track (way out there):
I read in Wikipedia that IBM has delivered the CPUs to Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360. In other words, all the leading new game consoles.
Interestingly each CPU has different specs. It shows IBM is flexible in terms of designing chips for specific customer needs.
Also interesting is that the Cell CPU used in PlayStation 3 is actually based on existing building blocks, depite being an unorthodox design (1 main CPU and 8 co-processors on the same chip).
I'm surprised Intel and AMD are not found here. Can't they make powerful enough chips? Are they too expensive? Too inflexible? Too PC-focused? Are their chips too power-consuming?
Apple is now using CPUs from Intel instead of from IBM, but providing CPUs to game consoles is probably a very lucrative business for IBM.
Will each manufacturer of game consoles now blame IBM for providing inferior CPUs compared to the rivals? There's no one else to blame than IBM, and one of the manufacturers has the lemon.
I read in Wikipedia that IBM has delivered the CPUs to Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360. In other words, all the leading new game consoles.
Interestingly each CPU has different specs. It shows IBM is flexible in terms of designing chips for specific customer needs.
Also interesting is that the Cell CPU used in PlayStation 3 is actually based on existing building blocks, depite being an unorthodox design (1 main CPU and 8 co-processors on the same chip).
I'm surprised Intel and AMD are not found here. Can't they make powerful enough chips? Are they too expensive? Too inflexible? Too PC-focused? Are their chips too power-consuming?
Apple is now using CPUs from Intel instead of from IBM, but providing CPUs to game consoles is probably a very lucrative business for IBM.
Will each manufacturer of game consoles now blame IBM for providing inferior CPUs compared to the rivals? There's no one else to blame than IBM, and one of the manufacturers has the lemon.
