Video game consoles have always managed to offer exceptional quality of graphics and details at launch since they were powered by custom-designed chips that usually that could provide more functionality than any off-the-shelf solutions and also were architecturally different. However, the age of fully custom integrated circuits (ICs) is over and going forward everything will be based on common architectures, believes the head of Nvidia Corp.
Nowadays graphics processing units and application processors are so powerful and their architectures are so efficient that it is possible to create virtually any quality of graphics and visuals. As a result, it does not make sense for game console developers to spend hundreds of millions onto creation of custom microprocessors with odd architectures, such as Cell chip developed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM. Today, it is easier to use off-the-shelf chips or design around common architectures to get performance and feature-set necessary for almost any product.
“You cannot make a game console such as the PlayStation 2 anymore. When it emerged, PS2 had a 100 times higher performance than the most powerful PC. I wonder whether it is possible to make something 100 times powerful than GeForce GTX 680? If possible, Nvidia will make it,” said Jen-Hsun Huang in an interview with PC Watch web-site.
Good read and I agree totally
"...the best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system." - Bill Gates (Microsoft Corporation)
"Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox's house before I did and took the TV doesn't mean I can't go in later and take the stereo." - Bill Gates (Microsoft Corporation)
Bill Gates had Mac prototypes to work from, and he was known to be obsessed with trying to make Windows as good as SAND (Steve's Amazing New Device), as a Microsoft exec named it. It was the Mac that Microsoft took for its blueprint on how to make a GUI.
""Windows [n.] - A thirty-two bit extension and GUI shell to a sixteen bit patch to an eight bit operating system originally coded for a four bit microprocessor and sold by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition.""
