Essential linkage: Sony makes no comment on Intel/NVIDIA choice, but some facts are worth looking at...
Further to our story that NVIDIA is in console no-man's land last week, newly re-designed tech site Ars Technica picks up where we left off and gets down to brass tacks with the rumour.
They chat to Sony, who, understandably, is pretty damn reticent to comment either way, and then go on to look at all the stuff we do know. Plus, the Ars team comes up with some thoughts of its own:
My guess is that if Sony were free to fantasize about the console that it would ideally like to produce with PS4, it would probably just double down on Cell. And why not? The same things that make Cell hard to program will also plague Larrabee. The programming problems that come with the many-core paradigm - a paradigm that both Cell and Larrabee fit under - are fundamental, algorithm-level design problems that are essentially ISA-indifferent.
It's a good piece and worth checking out.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012