Guest post by A list of intriguing rumours from the week that was… Firstly: Dell looking to buy AMD. Having one of its best financial years with revenue of $6.49 billion and net profit $471 million, the ‘AMD in crisis’ reports just won’t go away. While news of execs leaving the company, and the almost total rebranding of its processor line-up won’t help to quell this, the company sure looks healthy, at least in the short term. Although demand for its products is rising with demand exceeding supply in some cases. I can’t help but think this has all to do with the Windows/ARM announcement.
Silly rumour number two: Apple looking to enter television set business. Apple is rumoured to begin selling television sets in two years. This was deduced from recent Apple patent filing and a $500 million dollar partnership with LG to produce LCD screens. An Apple fridge next (I would buy an Apple fridge)?
Silly rumour number three is a real shocker. A Japanese website reported that Sony suspended its next generation PS4 development. Rumour is Sony is putting all their faith in handhelds. Personally I think this is a report taken out of context. The Sony employee only mentioned that the development of the PowerPC-based processor for the next-generation Playstation has been shelved and not the project itself. Is Sony looking to use ARM-based processors for its next generation consoles, or is the rise of cheap handheld games and their rapid evolution really hurting the industry like Nintendo’s boss recently said?
The last one is actually not silly. Fedora and openSUSE have dropped their Unity efforts for the time being. The reason is reported to be lack of time/inclination among voluntary developers to sort out existing bugs.
It doesn’t sound daft to me that Sony would shelve the PowerPC platform for the PS4. It’s end of the road tech and hasn’t had the necessary investment from IBM. I guess they will be struggling with what else to use though, historically they didn’t seem to like x86 for fear of hacking/homebrew etc – although it’s less of an issue now as the PS3 and Wii have lots of homebrew now and neither are x86
On AMD, what do you mean by “I can’t help but think this has all to do with the Windows/ARM announcement.” Why would Microsoft starting to support ARM make Dell invest in x86?
Edited 2011-02-23 10:46 UTC
I am getting a touch of sometimers…I think in the around 99-2000 dell wouldnt ship a computer with an amd processor that was when the athlon first shipped
An Apple fridge next (I would buy an Apple fridge)?
Real sneaky from the editors putting in (I would buy an Apple fridge)
And how do you suppose I would order real apples from an apple fridge…The trademark mess..
And what about retailers? How long am I going to wait until my local retailer get’s added to the network?
And what about alcohol, would apple prohibit me from ordering it?
Edited 2011-02-23 15:36 UTC
Paradroid – Other than everything you wrote being wrong, I don’t know what else to say.
Probably best if you just said nothing with comments like that. Easiest thing in the world to call someone wrong – would you like to tell us what is right then?
Paradroid I think you have a point..It’s just the presentation:-)
I have nothing bad to say about PPC. The biggest reason i guess why Sony would choose arm is that in five years when the PS4 come’s out (5 years confirmed by some posts) you might have mightily ARM processors. (You have quad cores ARM processors run over 2Ghz already) Imagine in five years.
The second reason is that from what I gather it is much more difficult to write games for different class of processors. The next generation of playstation portable (the debut second half of 2011) have a quad core arm processor and these devices generally stay in market for 10 years. So it might be more easily for developers writing games across for one type of cpu architecture.
The third reason is Sony itself can license ARM processors to manufacture it itself or have the option to let multiple ARM licensees like Texas instruments, Marvel ect. tender to produce these. So manufacturing cost might come down a lot.
Hi, yes I think you’re right – ARM sounds like a decent possibility for next-gen consoles if it can deliver enough power.
The consoles would run cooler and be quieter, and like you say it would be easier to port games between mobile/tablet platforms and consoles.
I didn’t mean to slate the PPC platform, but it is true that it’s not remained competitive because of lack of investment, which caused Apple to move on, that in turn made things worse.
Can I keep all my Apples in this, or only Macintosh? What about the Red Delicious?