4 ms·

Of course, but price doesn't just mean money. I think I read somewhere that AMD was willing to grant Microsoft & Sony more rights over the chips than their comp

by yepguy 11y ago

Of course, but price doesn't just mean money. I think I read somewhere that AMD was willing to grant Microsoft & Sony more rights over the chips than their competitors. I don't know how much that was a factor though.

agapos 11y ago
As I know, it went something like this: -Both wanted x86 for better usability (PS3 Cell was a hard-to-tame beast for many devs, ARM not strong enough) -Intel was not interested in manufacturing semi-custom chips -Nvidia simply did not have x86 licenses -AMD was left as the only option Of course other things also factored in the big picture, profit margins for example, but those are more known.
- Narishma 11y ago
  They didn't necessarily want x86, it just happened that that was the only sensible option available at the time. What they really wanted was an SoC or APU as opposed to a discrete CPU and GPU, as that is a lot cheaper. And as you say, Intel is too expensive and has no good graphics, Nvidia only has ARM which isn't powerful enough, and IBM doesn't do graphics nor SoCs. Which left AMD which has good graphics, ok CPUs and the experience to put them together in an SoC.
mreiland 11y ago
I've heard MS found bugs in the hardware, so it was probably a good decision.
- kryptiskt 11y ago
  I remember when Matt Dillon (of Dragonfly BSD) did the same: http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2012-03/msg00000.html http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2012-03/msg0... That's the result that you want after a long slog of debugging. It's not as fun to dig into something for 12h and finally find a misplaced parenthesis.
  - ableal 11y ago
    "I'm pretty stoked... it isn't every day that a guy like me gets to find an honest-to-god hardware bug in a major cpu!" I find Matt Dillon's enthusiasm and humbleness admirable. He's been active for donkey's years, pumping out stuff since the days of comp.os.amiga (if memory serves), and created his own filesystem and BSD distro, AFAIK not out of vanity but to do and share research. People like him should get more public recognition.

by yepguy 11y ago

agapos 11y ago

As I know, it went something like this: -Both wanted x86 for better usability (PS3 Cell was a hard-to-tame beast for many devs, ARM not strong enough) -Intel was not interested in manufacturing semi-custom chips -Nvidia simply did not have x86 licenses -AMD was left as the only option Of course other things also factored in the big picture, profit margins for example, but those are more known.

Narishma 11y ago
They didn't necessarily want x86, it just happened that that was the only sensible option available at the time. What they really wanted was an SoC or APU as opposed to a discrete CPU and GPU, as that is a lot cheaper. And as you say, Intel is too expensive and has no good graphics, Nvidia only has ARM which isn't powerful enough, and IBM doesn't do graphics nor SoCs. Which left AMD which has good graphics, ok CPUs and the experience to put them together in an SoC.

mreiland 11y ago

I've heard MS found bugs in the hardware, so it was probably a good decision.

kryptiskt 11y ago
I remember when Matt Dillon (of Dragonfly BSD) did the same: http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2012-03/msg00000.html http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2012-03/msg0... That's the result that you want after a long slog of debugging. It's not as fun to dig into something for 12h and finally find a misplaced parenthesis.
- ableal 11y ago
  "I'm pretty stoked... it isn't every day that a guy like me gets to find an honest-to-god hardware bug in a major cpu!" I find Matt Dillon's enthusiasm and humbleness admirable. He's been active for donkey's years, pumping out stuff since the days of comp.os.amiga (if memory serves), and created his own filesystem and BSD distro, AFAIK not out of vanity but to do and share research. People like him should get more public recognition.