3 ms·
Even Intel flirted with RAMBUS and paid for it. When I was at Pandemic Studios in 99-02, we'd get lots of prototype hardware from Intel and they sent us PIII's
by npunt 5y ago
Even Intel flirted with RAMBUS and paid for it. When I was at Pandemic Studios in 99-02, we'd get lots of prototype hardware from Intel and they sent us PIII's with the RAMBUS-exclusive i820 chipset. The things were impossible to get working stably and the RDRAM was ludicrously expensive. Total dead end from the get-go, and slower than AMD's stuff.
Intel was really on a dumb path starting in the late 90s, with RAMBUS, Itanium, the P4 debacle, and missing the emerging mobile market, and didn't right themselves until 2006 with the Core series. But they were big enough to be able to make a few mistakes unlike SGI.
- Dracophoenix 5y agoTHE Pandemic Studios?! If so, I have you and/or your coworkers to thank for fun times with the original Battlefront games. Now with that out of the way, did Pandemic always use x86 or did it use other architectures, like SPARC or Alpha?
- npunt 5y agoYeah the Battlefront games were awesome! They were a bit after my time but built on the foundations of multi-vehicle combat that we worked on in Battlezone II, just supercharged with more open world capabilities and obviously fantastic IP with Star Wars. Originally we were just x86 PC games but started working on console stuff in mid-2000. I got a chance to head up design on a PS2 game with Sony, and we had one or two other 'keep the company alive' projects as well before having the breakout hits of Full Spectrum Warrior and Battlefront. By then I was well off to college though.