I'm betting the new systems will have CPU's by VIA and graphics cards by

3DFX/Voodoo. ­

"parallax-scroll" <parallaxscroll@gma­il.com> wrote in message

news:eb9f3403-ff82-­439f-985f-91c6e92719­fb@x29g2000prf.googl­egroups.com...

http://venturebeat.­com/2009/02/08/gentl­emen-start-your-next­-generation-game-con­sole-rumors/

The video game console wars have been kind of boring lately, with no

hot rumors to talk about. But Charlie Demerjian of the Inquirer tech

news site has kicked off a new round of chatter about which chips are

going to be in the PlayStation 4, the Wii 2 and the Xbox3 (not the

official names).

There isn't any official information on this yet. And it's pretty

early for the console makers to lock down on contracts with chip

makers. But Charlie has dragged me, kicking and screaming, into the

discussion for the sake of judging the plausibility of these rumors.

My message today is, let's not get carried away here.

Demerjian says Intel has paid to secure a place for its new graphics

chip, code-named Larrabee, in Sony's next-generation console. He says

that Advanced Micro Devices has locked up a graphics chip deal to get

into the Xbox 360's successor. And he thinks that, while not

confirmed, AMD will also win the graphics chip for the Wii 2.

Demerjian says these consoles are launching around 2012. That part

makes sense. In the past cycle, Microsoft waited four years to launch

its new console, the Xbox 360, in 2005, because it was losing a ton of

money on every one that it sold. Now that it has better, custom-

designed hardware that isn't as expensive to build, it's turning a

profit on the 360s and is in no rush to move to a new console.

About five years is the usual time frame to launch. For Microsoft, the

clock hits five years in 2010, while it's 2011 for Sony and Nintendo.

But all three companies have said they see no need to rush out new

hardware. Nintendo is selling so many Wiis, it has no motive to move

early. Sony is in third place, but it has also said it foresees

selling the PS 3 on a "ten year life cycle."

That makes 2012 plausible as a launch year. But let's put this in

perspective. I know Charlie, and he has done some good investigative

work, like a piece on Nvidia's graphics chip quality problems, which

were linked to how they were connected to computer boards. But he also

got a few things wrong, like a prediction that Google would buy Valve

and a bad rumor that Nvidia was exiting the chip set business (just as

it made a major move in mobile integrated graphics chip sets). He also

said Nvidia had lots more layoffs coming - something the company

categorically denied. (Do you see a pattern here? Charlie and Nvidia

aren't on great terms).

Demerjian believes that Intel has won the PS 4 with Larrabee, despite

what many fear is a difficult programming model. The programming model

matters here because it has to be easy, not complicated and expensive,

for game developers to make games for a console. The PS 3's Cell is

hard to program, so it's no surprise it's in third place. Demerjian

thinks Intel paid to get a leg up over AMD and Nvidia.

Meanwhile, he says Nvidia is the odd man out here because it has never

had a relationship with Nintendo and because it has pissed off both

Microsoft and Sony by charging high fees for its chips. That could be

true, but I wouldn't count Nvidia out so early in the game. The

console makers have this sorry history of playing two sides against

each other, making some chip makers believe they've got a deal when

secretly they're also talking to another player (just recall the

Gigapixel story).

On Thursday, David Shippy, co-author of The Race for a New Game

Machine, shared some interesting thoughts with me. Shippy was chief

architect of the PowerPC core used in both Sony's Cell microprocessor

and Microsoft's Waternoose processor in the Xbox 360. He believes the

next consoles are going to combine both the CPU and the GPU in the

same chip, right off the bat. Silicon process technology will move so

far by that time that both Sony and Microsoft will likely have moved

to combine the graphics chip and microprocessor into a single chip in

the PS 3 and the Xbox 360. To make this happen, Sony has to get IBM

and Nvidia to co-design a single chip for the PS 3, and Microsoft has

to get AMD and IBM to do the same for the Xbox 360. This is likely in

the contracts, but it's easier said than done.

This means that the companies that are likely to win the deals are the

ones with both graphics and microprocessor technology - AMD and Intel.

By 2011, Intel will launch its 22-nanometer manufacturing process.

That means it will be able to fit about four times more transistors,

or basic electrical circuits, on a chip by that time than it can

today. Hence, it be easier to do combo chips by 2012, for sure.

It is indeed going to be a tough road for Nvidia. But for two

generations now, Nvidia has managed to get into a console. Why? One of

the reasons is that some teams - even at the giant IBM - get stretched

really thin if they try to serve all three masters at the same time,

as Shippy pointed out in his book.

Nintendo is the one company with a clear mission for its next console.

It has to develop a system that can do high-definition graphics. The

other two have to do something with a cool user interface that matches

the Wii's motion-sensing control scheme. So the combo microprocessor-

graphics chip is going to be important, but perhaps not as much so as

in past generations. I have to thank Charlie for officially kicking

off the horse race. But I believe we have a lot of laps to go. I'll

close with this: At the Consumer Electronics Show, an executive at one

of the companies I've mentioned here told me that the deals were not

sealed.

This is off topic but i really gotta say this. This generation consoles

xbox360 - PS3 and Wii are the last generation consoles. Don't you people

know that in 2012 the world will end??? Google 2012 and you'll find out so

don't even think about the PS4 or XBOX720 or Wii2 cause that's the last

thing you'll think about on december 21 2012....so you might as well buy

your xbox 360 your wii or your PS3 cause these are the last gen consoles

that are ever going to be exist. Have a nice day.....