Round up on the week of the Cell processor

Now that most people who where there have had a change to reflect and post (wait till mArch till the hardcopy based sources get their word out) what is the view after this weeks International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC)

Via SlashDot we have David T. Wang’s analyses and the briefing slides, we also have 7 Myths of the New Cell Processor culled from an earlier SlashDot post by Gizmodo, and a few words from Robert Cringely, als well a early thoughts from Ars Technica and Dana Blankenhorn.

The result seems to be that this looks very (very) good, but it might be a major pain to code for, and the first shipping to consumers is early 2006 (Xbox will be first with it’s straight up PowerPC). Also, althought it has huge potential there, its going to be 2+ years before it has a change to remake the landscape. So don’t count out Intel (or AMD) yet. They can still pull the rabit out of the hat, and will a move gradual path.

As always we tend to “overestimating the short term and underestimate the long term impact”. (Does this have a Name other than Moorse Law?) So Apple still has time to do the core rewrites to OS X need, I would expect a G5 powerbook and only Steve Jobs knows what the Mac Mini is going to evole into (like a Media Centre/PRV/game console? iPlay?)

No new info expected until Sony show the first PS3 console in May at the E3 show. back to sleepwork.

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