[KLUG Hardware] Re: Ahh Cyrix, I remember him well... -- Intel(R) or Intel x86? Ack, my ignorance!

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Wed, 2002-06-05 at 15:12, Stephane I. Matis wrote:
> Nowadays, the PS2 is 3 chips-in-one and making profit for Sony per unit.
> Microsoft cannot compete against that for long.

The Sony Playstation 2 is a testament to the power of a decade old
architecture.  They took their proven, customized MIPS 64-bit R4000
design from the PS1, added 128-bit SIMD opcodes and registers and made
one heck of a powerful chip that only runs at about 200-some-odd MHz. 
Then they paired it with a graphics processor that I also think is MIPS
R4000-core based.  And even though it was backward compatible with the
PS1, they figured it cost them only a buck to add the old PS1 processor,
it was worth it to guarantee 100% compatibility.

It wouldn't surprise me if they were able to fit it all on one chip now
thanx to 0.15um and similar feature sizes.

-- Bryan

-- 
The US government could be 100x more effective, and 1/100th the
Constitutional worry, if it dictated its policy to Microsoft as
THE MAJOR CUSTOMER it is, and not THE REGULATOR it fails to be.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan J. Smith, SmithConcepts, Inc.   mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
Engineers and IT Professionals     http://www.SmithConcepts.com