http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/29/technology/cell.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
Not to be confused with the Patriot Act.
(Edited by Bias at 4:17 pm on Nov. 29, 2004)
Not to be confused with the Patriot Act.
Funny!!!
Ok, so time for a little FUD dispelling session here. Gather round the bonfire of corperate lies and deciet, boys and girls. Uncle Kevlar's gonna shoot a few holes in this one.
From the article:
"Cell will be 10 times more powerful than conventional chips"...
10 times more powerful than WHAT 'conventional chips'? The Z80 and the 8051 derivitives are still VERY common, and by most definitions very conventional, yet don't even start to compare to the power of a modern AMD CPU or GPU. Are you comparing them to an embedded processor?
10 times mfore powerful at what task? Floating point operations? Matrix math? Because you're going to have to get up pretty damn early in the morning to smoke a GPU at a 128x128 FFT. Good luck!
Moral of the story, kids: 10 times more powerful than nothing specific is meaningless.
..."and able to shepherd large chunks of data over broadband networks."
*snorts milk through his nose*
What the fuck? Are these now optical switching chips, not CPU's? Oh, ok. So they're 10 times more powerful than the current breed of opto-isolators? Does that mean they consume 10 times more power too? Because if that's true, chances are your better off buying 10 of the old ones than 1 of the new ones for cost reasons. But somehow I suspect that's NOT what they ment. I still get the impression that they're CPU's.
"which is a multicore semiconductor composed of several processors that work together to handle multiple tasks at the same time."
Aaaahhh! Now we're getting somewhere. So it's a multicore CPU design? How does it compare to the current breed of AMD multicore designs? Much more importantly what instruction set does it use? How big is the instruction set? Does it do native 64bit instructions? Emulated ones? Throw me a bone here people.
"In the future, all forms of digital content will be converged and fused"...
More meaningless technobabble.
..."onto the broadband network,"
Oh! THE broadband network. He must mean the InterWeb. Because we all know just how 'broadband' that is.
To quote Vizicni: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Current PC architecture is nearing its limits."
Uhhh yeah? It's called planned obselence. That's why NEW architectures are emerging. Ever heard of PCIExpress?
"It will use advanced 300 millimeter silicon wafers, which yield more chips per wafer than the 200 mm kind."
Oooooohhhh shiny! My dad's silicon wafer could kick your dads silicon wafer's ass.
Rather than give any meaningful details, they choose this nugget of marketing crap? Puhleeze.
"Sony said it would launch home servers and high-definition televisions powered by Cell in 2006, and reiterated plans to use the microchip to power the next-generation PlayStation game console, a working version of which will be unveiled in May."
Oh, yeah. I get it now. High definition televisions can benifit from a multicore architecture. That way they can...
Wait... why would they benifit?
Gaming consoles I get. But what does HDTV need to do that the current generation of EMBEDDED processors can't do?
"Toshiba said it planned to launch a high-definition TV using Cell in 2006."
Yes, always good to speak in the past tense. That way if the plans don't work out, you can say, "Well, we said at the time that we only -planned- to do it. We didn't actually have plans moving forward."
Articles like this piss me off because they do more harm than good. They hype a piece of vaporware and provide no meaningful details which would give a clue as to what they're really hyping.
</soapbox>
-Kevlar
(Edited by Kevlar at 10:09 am on Nov. 30, 2004)
OS 8.6! OS 8.6! OS....wait, why are you not chanting along?! WHY DAMN YOU!!
(ooooh.... do you think anyone will get my irrellivant comment as an actual comment about the irrellivance of the article in question in this topic?)
Frankly, the humming buzzing techno world of computers is fucking complicated to me, and it's just plain old magic and mystery to most. Like, my mom can barely scan an image. Me? I just use the fucking things, and buy a new one *COUGH*yeahright*COUGH* every 5 years when the old ones become obsolete.
And Kev, if LG is going to stick a freakin LCD TV into the door of a fridge, I can see Sony sticking a high end microcomputer into a telivision. Why not? It's just another useless feature that they can market.
NEW SONY VIAOMAX HDTV!
� 32 inch WIDE SCREEN display!
� Digital technology!
� High Definition Television!
� 12.3 ghz processing power gives the VIAOMAX the greatest quality of any TV on the market today!
Why -NOT- shove a high end multiprocessor into a television. Honestly, how many people on SINDOME even know what a gigahertz is, let alone in the general consumer world. People just look at the number and say 'well, this one is bigger than that one, so it must be better!' That is how technology is marketed. On ignorance. And that is the way technology engineers want it. They do not want a well informed consumer populace, because a well informed consumer populace will want to have input into where technology goes.
And we all know that is just not acceptable.
Why, the technology engineers would loose the status of soothsayers and magius. The technology engineers would become... why... little more than -NORMAL- people! Can't have that. No no no.
Good thing the marketing engineers and advertising engineers agree with the technology engineers.
Christ, engineer is the new term for 'MAGICIAN'.
Wow, how does that bridge stay up like that? those engineers are amazing!
Wow, look at all the pretty colours on my TV! Those engineers are amazing!
Holy cow, 3.5 gigahertz! What's are hertz and how much is a giga? Boy, those engineers are amazing!
ALL HAIL THE ENGINEER! OOOOOoooooOOOOOOOhhhhhhHHHHHHHhMMMM!
*lights some incense and donates to the holy church of the engineer by purchasing a fridge with a TV in it.*
.oO(IT'S A CONSPIRACY!!!)
"Ma! Billy Joe has a bigger sharper rock then we do!"
"Junior, go get the feet. We're headed to the quarry!"
Archeologists have unearthed the Bigger Sharper Rock marketing demo.
"As you can see Jim, when this Bigger Sharper Rock slices your fingertips while you prepare this chunk of flesh it leaves a clean and easily cauterized wound!"
"That is, when we invent fire! On next weeks episode of Buy this or Die trying."
Auddiance: Oooo.
Sharper ROCK!
*wanders away*
*wanders back*
�That is how technology is marketed. On ignorance.�
Hrm, isn�t that how ideologies are marketed? Also by fear� give �em fear! And then everything else is easypeasy�
I wouldn�t have said this a year ago but if the buying public doesn't care to learn about the crap they charge on their VISA's or even think about �why- they are charging it on their VISA�s or why someone would want them to charge it on their VISA then why not feed them the useless crap? Who in their right mind -believes- the marketing hype anyways??
*blinks* sorry, I was in a land of hope and blossoming humanity for a second there, or something.
I don�t have to know how to build a damned computer just have a basic understanding of how they work, and be willing to sit down for a bit and search terms and concepts out... *shrug* so if people buy the hype it�s laziness. Or too �much� consumable income, or�. Boredom. Or wait.. what was that? Fear?
People buy things because they are bored. Or fear they will be bored?
Now, the both of you pull a rabbit out of a hat already, I�m afraid that I�m bored.
