T-man
Registered User
DISCLAIMER: Being a contractor for Microsoft Game Studios I find this story a very interesting one. However, I do not claim to support or rebuke either Microsoft's or Sony's standing on this issue. I am merely sharing the word, and expressing the fact that I find this issue an intrigueing one and interested in seeing how it plays out.
A basic summery: Back in 2003 a company called immersion filed a complaint agains Sony Computer Entertainment and Microsoft claiming infringments on their patents in rumble pak technology (the system that makes the game controller vibrate in sync with gameplay). In 2003 Microsoft settled out of court with the company and the end result was millions of dollars in exchange for rights and company shares. Now, Microsoft appears to be using there stake in immersion corp. to bring a lawsuit against Sony. Earlier this week, a court order was issued for Sony to hault all playstation sales in the U.S. Now here are some interesting points you won't find in this article: 1) Microsoft is preparing to release the next generation Xbox. 2) Sony is preparing to release their next generation Playstation. Some interesting facts about the 2... Microsoft will be using the MAC powerPC chip as their console processor. Sony is planning on using a brand new technology called a cell processor. 1 cell processor is said to perform 256 Gigaflops/second (a measure of computations per second) For comparison, the slowest of the top 500 supercomputers is capable of 851 gigaflops, putting the cell processor just under the "supercomputer" rating on a single chip.
One thing looks certain for sure: Microsoft Xbox has decided to play hardball with Sony Playstation. My questions are how will this effect the consumer? How will it effect the gaming/entertainment industry?
Microsoft VS. Sony article:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.gametab.com/news/246408/
SPOnG would like to point out that the content of the following piece is in no way related to the date of publication.
Following on from news earlier this week which saw Sony lose a key IP case and almost had all PlayStation products withdrawn from sale in the US Immersion Corp CEO Victor Viegas has spoken exclusively to SPOnG about the case.
There were two key issues we wanted outlining, not least the fact that Nintendo has never been mentioned in the case(s) Immersion Corp brought against Sony and Microsoft. Given that Nintendo executives have stated, on the record in the public domain for years that rumble functionality was their innovation, an innovation subsequently plagiarised by both Sony and Microsoft, it seems strange that they were never implicated in any case.
Why is this? “Well, Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox pads work in very similar, almost identical ways,” explained Viegas, “so it made sense to pursue both companies that were infringing our patents, using dual motors in unison. It was a total of, I think, 16 claims across two patents.” Yes, it does make sense, but again, why not include Nintendo, especially given the fact that Nintendo claims the feedback technology employed in all modern games controllers is its own?
“We never analysed Nintendo products.” Is the more-than surprising answer offered. “There is, I believe, a difference in the technologies used but we never investigated those of Nintendo.”
And on to a well-grounded conspiracy theory that has been brewing in SPOnG’s collective thoughts for some weeks now. A conspiracy that sees a Microsoft masterstroke which cripples its key opponent, sees it take the moral high-ground and net around $15 million profit in the process.
On February 11, 2002, Immersion filed a complaint against Microsoft Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc., and Sony Computer Entertainment of America, Inc. in the Northern District Court of California alleging infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,889,672 and 6,275,213
Then on July 25, 2003, Immersion contemporaneously executed a series of agreements with Microsoft that:
1. Settled Immersion’s lawsuit against Microsoft
2. Granted Microsoft a worldwide royalty-free, irrevocable license to Immersion’s portfolio with Microsoft splashing out around $6 million on a 10% stake in Immersion
3. Provided Microsoft with sublicense rights to pursue certain license arrangements directly with third parties including Sony Computer Entertainment which, if consummated, would result in payments to Immersion.
At this point, Microsoft decided to play its hand. It relented to Immersion’s assurances that technologies employed within the Xbox controller, hardware and related software infringed on established patents. It was stung for just short of $20 million in retrospectively applied licensing fees, an unavoidable consequence of setting a legal precedent that potentially has the ability to bring its key rival to its knees.
In doing this, Microsoft effectively made it’s settlement with Immersion a test case, a case that would then be used against Sony. What’s more, it put itself in a position to demand payments from Sony on all PlayStation hardware, peripherals and software sold, on an ongoing basis. This weeks ruling saw Microsoft net around $8 million. The shares in Immersion have also jumped, with a return of around $6 million.
It seems beyond the realms of possibility that Microsoft didn’t have this roadmap into the very fabric of the PlayStation business model mapped-out from the start. When this was put to Viegas he simply said, “I cannot argue with the logic in what you say. Microsoft took full advantage of the opportunity offered to it and was fair in its dealings with us throughout.”
To recap, Immersion, backed by Microsoft will have the right to demand royalties from Sony on every single PlayStation product that makes use of DualShock, an astoundingly astute move resulting in a case that Sony simply must win.
So onto the dealings with Sony. Is there a chance that a settlement will be reached? Given what has been outlined above, it is understandable that Sony will not want to relent in any way and must be running scared. The idea of paying Microsoft’s Xbox division a royalty on all PlayStation sales if perhaps only second in the list of Thing That Officially Must Never Happen to having all SCE products suspended from sale altogether, a catastrophe narrowly avoided earlier this week.
“We are prepared for a long and drawn out fight,” said Viegas in closing. “We are hoping for the best but are prepared for the worst with Sony. We would rather a compliant licensee agreement was reached with them. As to whether that’s likely I have no idea."
cell processor article:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5566340.html
SAN FRANCISCO--The chip that will run the next version of the PlayStation video game machine will have nine processor cores and run faster than 4GHz, the chip's designers revealed Monday.
Engineers from Sony, IBM and Toshiba revealed those and other specifications for the Cell processor during a press conference at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, where technical papers on the Cell design will be presented this week.
The three companies have been working on Cell for several years, promising to deliver a high-performance chip optimized for multimedia applications. Test production of Cell chips is set to begin later this year, and the processors will appear later in workstation PCs optimized for animation and other graphics chores. The chip will also power the next version of Sony's PlayStation game console, which is widely expected to be released late this year or early next year.
While analysts and researchers have already puzzled out most of the basic aspects of the Cell design, Monday's announcements included some of the first specifics.
Cell will have a 64-bit IBM Power processor and eight "synergistic processing units" capable of handling separate computing tasks, said Jim Kahle, an IBM Fellow. The Power processor will act as the brain of the chip, running the main operating system for an application and divvying up chores for the other processors.
The eight "synergistic" processors are a step forward from current computing system designs, in which the graphics chip draws pixels and the central processor does everything else. The Cell cores have media-specific instructions baked in, but they are flexible and smart enough to handle nonmedia tasks, said Brian Flachs, an IBM engineer. "It represents an important middle ground between graphics processors and central processors," he said.
The multicore design will give software developers tremendous flexibility, Kahle said, allowing them to run multiple operating systems on the same chip and experiment with variations on grid computing.
"It's designed from the beginning to work in a world where all the computers are tied together," he said.
Future versions of Cell chips could have more or fewer processing units depending on what device and software designers require, Kahle said. "There are a number of different ways to implement parallelism on the chip," he said.
How those processing units are used is up to software developers, including the game makers who will soon start wrestling with the PlayStation 3. Kahle said IBM and its Cell partners will provide game developers and other code writers with open-source tools and guidelines for working with Cell but that game developers will have final say on how they chop up computing tasks among the processing units.
"It's really...up to the game developer," he said. "You can program it in many different ways."
Other Cell numbers include the following.
• The first version of the chip will run at speeds faster than 4GHz. Engineers were vague about how much faster, but reports from design partners say 4.6GHz is likely. By comparison, the fastest current Pentium PC processor tops out at 3.8GHz.
• Cell can process 256 billion calculations per second (256 gigaflops), falling a wee bit short of marketing hyperbole calling it a "supercomputer on a chip." The slowest machine on the current list of the Top 500 supercomputers can do 851 gigaflops.
• The chip will have 2.5MB of on-chip memory and have the ability to shuttle data to and from off-chip memory at speeds up to 100 gigabytes per second, using XDR and FlexIO interface technology licensed from Rambus.
"One of the key messages you hear from the architects of next-generation chips is that their performance is being limited by off-chip bandwidth," said Rich Warmke, product marketing manager at Rambus. "We've really licked that with Cell. One hundred gigabytes per second is really unprecedented in the industry."
• The chip will have 234 million transistors, measure 221mm square and be produced using advanced 90-nanometer chipmaking processes. Peter Glaskowsky, a consultant at research company The Envisioneering Group, said he expects Cell production to shift to a 65-nanometer process, however, as IBM introduces the chipmaking technology later this year.
While the PlayStation 3 is likely to be the first mass-market product to use Cell, the chip's designers have said the flexible architecture means that Cell will be useful for a wide range of applications, from servers to cell phones. Initial devices are unlikely to be any smaller than a game console, however--the first version of the Cell will run hot enough to require a cooling fan, Kahle said.
Some competitors, however, are skeptical that Cell will find much of a home outside of video games. One of the big problems with Cell, said Justin Rattner, an Intel Fellow, is that the processing units aren't identical, a situation that increases complexity and the opportunity for bugs.
"You've got this asymmetry," Rattner said. "It's like having two kinds of motors under the hood. We are very reluctant to adopt architectures like this because they take compatibility and throw it out the window."
A basic summery: Back in 2003 a company called immersion filed a complaint agains Sony Computer Entertainment and Microsoft claiming infringments on their patents in rumble pak technology (the system that makes the game controller vibrate in sync with gameplay). In 2003 Microsoft settled out of court with the company and the end result was millions of dollars in exchange for rights and company shares. Now, Microsoft appears to be using there stake in immersion corp. to bring a lawsuit against Sony. Earlier this week, a court order was issued for Sony to hault all playstation sales in the U.S. Now here are some interesting points you won't find in this article: 1) Microsoft is preparing to release the next generation Xbox. 2) Sony is preparing to release their next generation Playstation. Some interesting facts about the 2... Microsoft will be using the MAC powerPC chip as their console processor. Sony is planning on using a brand new technology called a cell processor. 1 cell processor is said to perform 256 Gigaflops/second (a measure of computations per second) For comparison, the slowest of the top 500 supercomputers is capable of 851 gigaflops, putting the cell processor just under the "supercomputer" rating on a single chip.
One thing looks certain for sure: Microsoft Xbox has decided to play hardball with Sony Playstation. My questions are how will this effect the consumer? How will it effect the gaming/entertainment industry?
Microsoft VS. Sony article:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.gametab.com/news/246408/
SPOnG would like to point out that the content of the following piece is in no way related to the date of publication.
Following on from news earlier this week which saw Sony lose a key IP case and almost had all PlayStation products withdrawn from sale in the US Immersion Corp CEO Victor Viegas has spoken exclusively to SPOnG about the case.
There were two key issues we wanted outlining, not least the fact that Nintendo has never been mentioned in the case(s) Immersion Corp brought against Sony and Microsoft. Given that Nintendo executives have stated, on the record in the public domain for years that rumble functionality was their innovation, an innovation subsequently plagiarised by both Sony and Microsoft, it seems strange that they were never implicated in any case.
Why is this? “Well, Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox pads work in very similar, almost identical ways,” explained Viegas, “so it made sense to pursue both companies that were infringing our patents, using dual motors in unison. It was a total of, I think, 16 claims across two patents.” Yes, it does make sense, but again, why not include Nintendo, especially given the fact that Nintendo claims the feedback technology employed in all modern games controllers is its own?
“We never analysed Nintendo products.” Is the more-than surprising answer offered. “There is, I believe, a difference in the technologies used but we never investigated those of Nintendo.”
And on to a well-grounded conspiracy theory that has been brewing in SPOnG’s collective thoughts for some weeks now. A conspiracy that sees a Microsoft masterstroke which cripples its key opponent, sees it take the moral high-ground and net around $15 million profit in the process.
On February 11, 2002, Immersion filed a complaint against Microsoft Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc., and Sony Computer Entertainment of America, Inc. in the Northern District Court of California alleging infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,889,672 and 6,275,213
Then on July 25, 2003, Immersion contemporaneously executed a series of agreements with Microsoft that:
1. Settled Immersion’s lawsuit against Microsoft
2. Granted Microsoft a worldwide royalty-free, irrevocable license to Immersion’s portfolio with Microsoft splashing out around $6 million on a 10% stake in Immersion
3. Provided Microsoft with sublicense rights to pursue certain license arrangements directly with third parties including Sony Computer Entertainment which, if consummated, would result in payments to Immersion.
At this point, Microsoft decided to play its hand. It relented to Immersion’s assurances that technologies employed within the Xbox controller, hardware and related software infringed on established patents. It was stung for just short of $20 million in retrospectively applied licensing fees, an unavoidable consequence of setting a legal precedent that potentially has the ability to bring its key rival to its knees.
In doing this, Microsoft effectively made it’s settlement with Immersion a test case, a case that would then be used against Sony. What’s more, it put itself in a position to demand payments from Sony on all PlayStation hardware, peripherals and software sold, on an ongoing basis. This weeks ruling saw Microsoft net around $8 million. The shares in Immersion have also jumped, with a return of around $6 million.
It seems beyond the realms of possibility that Microsoft didn’t have this roadmap into the very fabric of the PlayStation business model mapped-out from the start. When this was put to Viegas he simply said, “I cannot argue with the logic in what you say. Microsoft took full advantage of the opportunity offered to it and was fair in its dealings with us throughout.”
To recap, Immersion, backed by Microsoft will have the right to demand royalties from Sony on every single PlayStation product that makes use of DualShock, an astoundingly astute move resulting in a case that Sony simply must win.
So onto the dealings with Sony. Is there a chance that a settlement will be reached? Given what has been outlined above, it is understandable that Sony will not want to relent in any way and must be running scared. The idea of paying Microsoft’s Xbox division a royalty on all PlayStation sales if perhaps only second in the list of Thing That Officially Must Never Happen to having all SCE products suspended from sale altogether, a catastrophe narrowly avoided earlier this week.
“We are prepared for a long and drawn out fight,” said Viegas in closing. “We are hoping for the best but are prepared for the worst with Sony. We would rather a compliant licensee agreement was reached with them. As to whether that’s likely I have no idea."
cell processor article:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5566340.html
SAN FRANCISCO--The chip that will run the next version of the PlayStation video game machine will have nine processor cores and run faster than 4GHz, the chip's designers revealed Monday.
Engineers from Sony, IBM and Toshiba revealed those and other specifications for the Cell processor during a press conference at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, where technical papers on the Cell design will be presented this week.
The three companies have been working on Cell for several years, promising to deliver a high-performance chip optimized for multimedia applications. Test production of Cell chips is set to begin later this year, and the processors will appear later in workstation PCs optimized for animation and other graphics chores. The chip will also power the next version of Sony's PlayStation game console, which is widely expected to be released late this year or early next year.
While analysts and researchers have already puzzled out most of the basic aspects of the Cell design, Monday's announcements included some of the first specifics.
Cell will have a 64-bit IBM Power processor and eight "synergistic processing units" capable of handling separate computing tasks, said Jim Kahle, an IBM Fellow. The Power processor will act as the brain of the chip, running the main operating system for an application and divvying up chores for the other processors.
The eight "synergistic" processors are a step forward from current computing system designs, in which the graphics chip draws pixels and the central processor does everything else. The Cell cores have media-specific instructions baked in, but they are flexible and smart enough to handle nonmedia tasks, said Brian Flachs, an IBM engineer. "It represents an important middle ground between graphics processors and central processors," he said.
The multicore design will give software developers tremendous flexibility, Kahle said, allowing them to run multiple operating systems on the same chip and experiment with variations on grid computing.
"It's designed from the beginning to work in a world where all the computers are tied together," he said.
Future versions of Cell chips could have more or fewer processing units depending on what device and software designers require, Kahle said. "There are a number of different ways to implement parallelism on the chip," he said.
How those processing units are used is up to software developers, including the game makers who will soon start wrestling with the PlayStation 3. Kahle said IBM and its Cell partners will provide game developers and other code writers with open-source tools and guidelines for working with Cell but that game developers will have final say on how they chop up computing tasks among the processing units.
"It's really...up to the game developer," he said. "You can program it in many different ways."
Other Cell numbers include the following.
• The first version of the chip will run at speeds faster than 4GHz. Engineers were vague about how much faster, but reports from design partners say 4.6GHz is likely. By comparison, the fastest current Pentium PC processor tops out at 3.8GHz.
• Cell can process 256 billion calculations per second (256 gigaflops), falling a wee bit short of marketing hyperbole calling it a "supercomputer on a chip." The slowest machine on the current list of the Top 500 supercomputers can do 851 gigaflops.
• The chip will have 2.5MB of on-chip memory and have the ability to shuttle data to and from off-chip memory at speeds up to 100 gigabytes per second, using XDR and FlexIO interface technology licensed from Rambus.
"One of the key messages you hear from the architects of next-generation chips is that their performance is being limited by off-chip bandwidth," said Rich Warmke, product marketing manager at Rambus. "We've really licked that with Cell. One hundred gigabytes per second is really unprecedented in the industry."
• The chip will have 234 million transistors, measure 221mm square and be produced using advanced 90-nanometer chipmaking processes. Peter Glaskowsky, a consultant at research company The Envisioneering Group, said he expects Cell production to shift to a 65-nanometer process, however, as IBM introduces the chipmaking technology later this year.
While the PlayStation 3 is likely to be the first mass-market product to use Cell, the chip's designers have said the flexible architecture means that Cell will be useful for a wide range of applications, from servers to cell phones. Initial devices are unlikely to be any smaller than a game console, however--the first version of the Cell will run hot enough to require a cooling fan, Kahle said.
Some competitors, however, are skeptical that Cell will find much of a home outside of video games. One of the big problems with Cell, said Justin Rattner, an Intel Fellow, is that the processing units aren't identical, a situation that increases complexity and the opportunity for bugs.
"You've got this asymmetry," Rattner said. "It's like having two kinds of motors under the hood. We are very reluctant to adopt architectures like this because they take compatibility and throw it out the window."
