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Revealed: Revolution CPU and GPU specs
Matt promised to post on the Revolution's "Hollywood" and "Broadway" GPU and CPU tonight, and he has delivered with the goods. Supposed sources possessing development kits of all shapes and sizes have confirmed what the final specs are."IBM's "Broadway" CPU is clocked at 729MHz, according to updated Nintendo documentation. By comparison, GameCube's Gekko CPU ran at 485MHz. The original Xbox's CPU was clocked at 733MHz. Meanwhile, Xbox 360 runs three symmetrical cores at 3.2GHz.""Revolution's ATI-provided "Hollywood" GPU clocks in at 243MHz. By comparison, GameCube's GPU ran at 162MHz, while the GPU on the original Xbox was clocked at 233MHz. Sources we spoke with suggest that it is unlikely the GPU will feature any added shaders, as has been speculated. The 'Hollywood' is a large-scale integrated chip that includes the GPU, DSP, I/O bridge and 3MBs of texture memory." Matt also goes on to write:"Revolution will operate using 24MBs of "main" 1T-SRAM. It will additionally boast 64MBs of "external" 1T-SRAM. That brings the total number of system RAM up to 88MBs, not including the 3MB texture buffer on the GPU. By comparison, GameCube featured 40MBs of RAM not counting the GPU's on-board 3MBs. The original Xbox included 64MBs total RAM. Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 operate on 512MBs of RAM."So it's pretty much confirmed that the Revolution is a direct extension of the GameCube hardware, just upgraded, without all of the bells and whistles Sony and Microsoft seem to think that are needed in their next generation of consoles. All the specs in the world don't matter unless you have engaging titles on your console and thankful that has never been a problem when it comes to the house Mario built.
IBM/Sony Apple's biggest threat?
Adrien Lamothe, writing for ONLamp.com, thinks that Apple has gotten itself into a position where their real competition isn't the likes of Dell but rather Sony and IBM. Is he referring to Sony's VAIO series of machines? Nope, he thinks that the Playstation III which will sport IBM's Cell processor will blow Macs out of the water.Somehow, I doubt it considering that the Playstation, while computer like, has been designed to be a gaming machine. Want to do all your Internet surfer via your game console? I don't.
IBM working on wireless HDTV
Don't you just dream of a time where that nest of wires behind your entertainment rack can just *poof* disappear! Ultrawideband is right around the corner and that might be the solution but IBM might just have a thing or two up their sleeve. They are working on a solution that would be able to transmit data wirelessly at 630 Mbps. This would of course be a short range transmission. This is not just a theory though. Oh no. Those mad scientists at IBM have a working prototype the size of a dime. They used a silicon germanium to manufacture the chips in order to cram the receiver, the transmitter, and two antennas onto it. This is still a few years away; even if we see it all. Wireless is the way of the feature and with IBM at the helm.
IBM Lotus Notes to support OS X, Devil turns up thermostat
I know what you're thinking. Both me and fellow blogger Dave Caolo were asking each other the same question: "Lotus Notes still exists?"But seriously, if there is a sign of the times - especially corporate times - this could certainly be one of them: IBM will announce at Lotusphere next week that the next client version of their Lotus Notes software will support OS X (while version 6.5 of Lotus Notes supports 10.3, version 7 doesn't support OS X at all). They will also be announcing support for Intel-based Macs, due later this year. As reasoning for this newfound OS X support, a representative for an IBM partner is quoted in an InformationWeek article saying: "We have a lot of health-care customers and maybe 1 percent of a company’s research department is on Macs but they have 99 percent of the influence."The article also contains speculation from industry observers that this new friendliness IBM has for Apple's software is actually a renewal of a partnership the two companies had in the early nineties, when they jointly worked on "Pink," an object-oriented OS built to take on Windows. Apparently, it failed. With a name like "Pink," you only get three guesses as to why.On a broader scale though, I'm hopeful for more business and corporate support for our favorite fruity computers, as it would be great for more people to be able to chose a productive computer in the workplace.[via MacNN]
Lenovo completes purchase of IBM's PC biz
Chinese-based Lenovo formally completed its purchase of IBM's PC division this past weekend, instantly becoming the world's third-largest PC manufacturer after Dell and HP. It's sort of business as usual over there-much of the old IBM management team is now running the show at Lenovo now, and they've already launched a US version of their website highlighting their newly acquired ThinkPad and ThinkCentre PC lines (still with IBM logos on 'em)-but it'll probably be a few more weeks or months until we see the very first models that are wholly a product of the newly merged company.
Why IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo
Obviously Lenovo must have known what they were getting into when they bought IBM's PC business last month, but it's a little more clear now why IBM was so eager to sell in the first place: they were losing money like crazy. According to a recent quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, IBM managed to lose nearly a billion dollars selling personal computers over the last 3 1/2 years. Not that we didn't think it'd been a rough past few years or anything, and at the end of the day IBM simply wasn't willing (or able, but probably just not willing) to take the steps needed to turn things around. The interesting part about Lenovo buying IBM's PC business that hasn't gotten much attention is that Lenovo, which is based in China, is turning over much of the management of the company to a group of senior IBM execs. Amazingly, the people who run Lenovo had the humility to recognize that they simply did not have the experience to operate on a global level and decided to outsource, as the NY Times puts it, the management of the company to people who do.
