So PowerPC is dead you say?

[Tripitaka]

So how comes IBM's AI machine called Watson which outsmarted the two best champions on Jeopardy TV show uses Power7 not x86 architecture?

A very good question. It's because x86 is a bit crap and PPC is better.

That should get the flames fanned! But seriously, memresistor FPGA based AI is on the way and should blow away anything that came before it. Just Google "memristor fpga artificial intelligence" and have a read. You'll find it fascinating if you have any geek in your blood at all.

[Tripitaka]

Get yourself a $15,000 entry-level system and let us know how it goes. ;-)

Cheaper than a fictional high end CUSAmiga we heard about a while back.

Sorry, I couldn't resist getting that one in.

[Tripitaka]

Just as many rumours that PS4 will be CELL based than the ones that it will not. So hardly a basis for factual discussion.

As for Wii U, the only official release of CPU spec from Nintendo is as follows:

IBM Power Architecture-based multi-core 45 nm microprocessor based on the POWER7 architecture found in the Watson supercomputer.

The rest is pure speculation.

Regarding "the desktop" as a yardstick, it's worth noting that more "computing" is now being performed on mobile devices than anything else. The classic PC model is dying, smartphones, pads and consoles are becoming the norm. Even a lot of PC owners use mobile devices and consoles more hours per day than their PC's. I for one count more Wii hours than any other computational device I own, and I own a lot of them (as do many others on this forum).

[Tripitaka]

Equals to **DEAD** for all purposes interesting to us

You assume too much. My interests are not necessarily the same as yours.

[Tripitaka]

You obviously failed completely to comprehend my point. I wasn't talking about individual interests, and for the record, I couldn't care less in what you are interested in...

Fair enough, that's the trouble with text communication, it lacks emphasis so is easily misinterpreted. I am forced to regard your comment of "Equals to **DEAD** for all purposes interesting to us" as meaning "Equals to **DEAD** for all purposes of interest to Amiga users". That of course is simply just not true anyway, we have OS4 and MOS both running on PPC. How does that equate to dead?

As for " I couldn't care less in what you are interested in...", well, that was a bit unfriendly. Have I offended you somehow? I've always thought we've had quite interesting and adult discussions in the past even if we don't always agree.

[Tripitaka]

I disagree with your claim of uninteresting. While most console users do not feel the need to care what's inside their gizmos, we have reason to find it an interesting detail. Why? Well, some people say that PowerPC is not developed with desktop computing in mind, and therefore these network router chips are relatively poor as desktop processors compared to Intel and AMD things. As the old term "convergence" gradually comes true, these consoles are going to start doing more desktop like things, and they already have. They now surf the web, play movies, show pictures, do video conferencing.

So long as these console makers continue to choose PowerPC, for whatever reasons they have to do that, PowerPC processors will be pulled toward features and instructions beneficial to these and new tasks that historically may be considered desktop things rather than router or car engine things. As these desktop-alike things filter into PowerPC, our situation, so long as we are unwillingly chained to the PowerPC flagpole, can improve. Doesn't mean it will, as that depends on someone taking such a new PowerPC chip and makign a desktop with it, but at least it's possible.

An observation of this happening is the return of Altivec to Frescale's product line. They'd lost interest and dumped it. But enough customers had enough reason to want it back that Freescale had to give in. We potentially benefit from that, as a desktop AmigaOS machine with Altivec is better than one without. As long as consoles and other things want certain features they will much more likely remain core requirements of the PowerPC spec, rather than drift away to optional features or even removed in future spec releases.

I couldn't agree more. Once consoles played games, now we can surf the net, stream videos and play our music collections on them. Even a certain level of music and video editing is slipping in, the Wii U demo video even shows the new controller being used as a rather nifty digital sketch pad. Combined with pads and smartphones, how much more will it take before we abandon our desktops completely and leave them to be the tools of coders only? Only time will tell.

[Tripitaka]

The whole "desktop machine is dying" thing is pretty darn premature. We've been hearing it for years, and while additional devices are becoming mainstream, it hasnt been to the detriment of desktop sales.
There's quite a few tasks that simply arent practical elsewhere.
Desktop cpu sales continue to increase year in year out. Hardly demonstrative of it becoming a dying market.

Statistics are so much fun don't you think? Yes, I agree that PC sales still increase year on year BUT, relative to smartphones, consoles and tablets the overall share of the computational marketplace that PC once had just doesn't look as strong as it once did. I still think the desktop PC has life left in it but it's not the force it once was.

[Tripitaka]

It is a bit odd that we've got Atom(x86), MIPS and ARM in mobiles but not PPC though.

What's most amusing about this is that a lot of the satellites that power the phone networks do use powerpc. It's a funny ol' world.

[Tripitaka]

Well, it doesn't qualify because takemehomegrandma says it doesn't qualify! Obviously!

Well put! TMHG lost my respect today, I just can't be done with his attitude.

...and with that, I'm off to bed. Their really is no point arguing with some people so I'm just not going to bother.