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Was the PS3 the one that was banned from some countries? And wasn't the PS2 rumored to be used a ballistic missile guidance chip for some country?
[1] And home computers, but that ended a couple decades earlier than consoles.
It was common to try to get grant money to build a cluster of PS3's when they came out. I'm betting a bunch of computer science students got a console after that. Was the PS3 the one that was banned from some countries? And wasn't the PS2 rumored to be used a ballistic missile guidance chip for some country?
I do have the odd anecdote, way back in the day, I was in a CompUSA in Dearborn MI and overheard a middle eastern guy at the counter asking if they had any PS2s. When they said no (this was a point where availability was low) instead he bought bought at least 5 (might have been 10?) PS1s.
i did a bit dev on ps3 and i remember there was a small memory on the chip, like 256k that was accessible to programmer. i always found this very appealing, having a blazing fast memory under programmer control so i wonder: why don't we have that on other cpus?
This is totally strange. I just got interested in the architecture of PS3 and its emulators (on Android too) and now there is article on HN...
I wonder if that architecture was designed to prevent emulation. Because emulators still work insanely hard to make those games work, even today.
Development kits for the Xbox 360 used Power Mac G5s, because they were the same architecture as the Xbox 360, and modern Xbox and PlayStation development kits use x86 processors, again because there's no change in architecture.
Granted, you can't easily get a computer with a cell processor, but it isn't because of a lack of trying. Sony worked with IBM and Toshiba on designing and manufacturing the cell processor, and all three developed products using it, but the only one that was successful was Sony's PlayStation 3, but its success was likely despite the cell processor, not because of it.
It was common to try to get grant money to build a cluster of PS3's when they came out. I'm betting a bunch of computer science students got a console after that. Was the PS3 the one that was banned from some countries? And wasn't the PS2 rumored to be used a ballistic missile guidance chip for some country?
PS2 had export limitations put on it by Japan. There were also rumors that Saddam was using them for a supercomputer. I do have the odd anecdote, way back in the day, I was in a CompUSA in Dearborn MI and overheard a middle eastern guy at the counter asking if they had any PS2s. When they said no (this was a point where availability was low) instead he bought bought at least 5 (might have been 10?) PS1s.
i did a bit dev on ps3 and i remember there was a small memory on the chip, like 256k that was accessible to programmer. i always found this very appealing, having a blazing fast memory under programmer control so i wonder: why don't we have that on other cpus?
The main disadvantage of such dedicated memory is inefficient usage compared to using that same amount of fast local memory to cache _all_ of main memory.
It was common to try to get grant money to build a cluster of PS3's when they came out. I'm betting a bunch of computer science students got a console after that. Was the PS3 the one that was banned from some countries? And wasn't the PS2 rumored to be used a ballistic missile guidance chip for some country?
PS2 had export limitations put on it by Japan. There were also rumors that Saddam was using them for a supercomputer. I do have the odd anecdote, way back in the day, I was in a CompUSA in Dearborn MI and overheard a middle eastern guy at the counter asking if they had any PS2s. When they said no (this was a point where availability was low) instead he bought bought at least 5 (might have been 10?) PS1s.