[geeks] Xbox questions

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Fri, 8 Jun 2001, Brian Hechinger wrote:
> the PS2 has some sexy sounding hardware in it, maybe not the fastest CPU, but
> big sexy graphics hardware and fat pipes between CPU/memory/video ala SGI.
> it seems like a very well designed system.

I like the looks of the PS2.  Programming it should be like programming a
Jaguar (not that I've done that either), except a lot faster, and a little
easier.

Unlike an SGI, the PS2 uses programmable CPUs everywhere.  So, on an Onyx
for instance, you have the OpenGL pipeline implemented in hardware that
isn't fully programmmable, but on the PS2, you have to write your own
renderer from scratch.  Off the top of my head, the PS2 makes me vaguely
think of a Pixar Image Computer (lots of CPUs and CPU power, but had to
write your own rendering software), but that is probably just my obsession
with the Pixar machine showing through.

This flexibility cuts both ways though.  On the one hand, you can do
almost anything imaginable, but on the other, you have to do everything
yourself.  You can't say here are some polys, go render them.  This means
it is much harder to work on.

In the looks like an SGI category, the PS2 uses bothe r3k and r5k derived
chips.  But no two chips are the same, so you can't just look at it like
an SMP machine.

Oh, one more thing about the Jaguar comment above.  When I said it looks
like a Jaguar, I meant because of the regular slow CPU and the two
specialized RISC CPUs.  The Jaguar is also of note because it is open for
anyone to develop for it and distribute games if they can figure out how
to without a handy developers platform.  I don't know if anyone has come
up with any gameshark like hacks to get around this.  I still am trying to
justify the money for a gameshark so that I can program my playstation
(all you need is a gameshark and a special serial cable).
 
> the Xbox has almost no detail that i've been able to find other than it has a
> 733Mhz CPU (which they make a big deal out of, proving yet again that they
> don't truely understand how all this stuff works) and NVIDIA gfx hardware.
> but is it just a PC mobo with low transfer speeds between CPU/mem/vid or is
> it some custom hardware deal?
 
I could talk about it, but Michael Abrash wrote such a good article, that
I'll just post the link here.

http://www.ddj.com/articles/2000/0008/0008a/0008a.htm

--
Joshua Boyd