The new version of YDL was released. I think the most important new feature is that you can now use the memory of the RSX-GPU as a swap partition.
You should notice a great increase of speed while using linux.
The free version can be downloaded in four weeks. For now only owners of YDL.net Enhanced Accounts can access YDL 6.1.
Press Release: AUSTIN, Texas - 19 November 2008 - From the show floor of SuperComputing 2008, booth #1915, Fixstars today released Yellow Dog Linux v6.1 for Apple G4/G5, Sony PLAYSTATION3, PowerStation, and IBM Power Systems. Built upon the CentOS foundation, a derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, YDL v6.1 offers several end-user and development tool improvements over the previous v6.0.
"This marks the final release of Yellow Dog Linux by Terra Soft and the first by Fixstars," states Owen Stampflee, Fixstars Solutions' Director of Engineering, "In my five years with Terra Soft we have made incremental impro... More »
There's general agreement that Sony stumbled out of the gate with the PlayStation 3. Months of intense hype were followed by a late launch (fully a year after the Xbox 360) and a staggering $600 price tag for the deluxe model.
Even worse, the PS3 didn't initially have any real must-have exclusive titles, and despite the power of its vaunted Cell processor, multiplatform games from third-party developers didn't look appreciably better than the respective titles on the Xbox 360.
Since then, the company's been modifying the PlayStation product line to better fit the competitive market landscape. As of August 2008, a new "bargain" PS3 is available with a larger, 80GB hard drive, and a "deluxe" model is due in November, doubling the capacity to 160GB.
Both, however, lack backward compatibility with PS2 games and do not come with flash card readers. If those features are a must, it might be best to pick up the 80GB "Metal Gear" bundle version on eBay w... More »
Earlier today we reported on speculation that PS4 could be based on Cell Architecture.
As a follow-up, camineet of NeoGAF points out the following via PC.Watch.Impress.co.jp:
Goto Hiroshige has received PSX4 spec info from Japanese developer sources who received preliminary spec from SCEI for developer feedback (whom Goto refuses to name due to NDA).
- SCEI has sent rough PSX4 spec to 3rd party developers for feed back. Based on the description, PSX4 is a Wii-tized PSX3, no more than 2X as powerful.
- SCEI wants to beat Xbox 3 to launch. 2011 is the deadline, or sooner.
- SCEI pulled all its engineers from IBM Texas, and there is no new CELL architecture being developed. PSX4 will use same CELL architecture with improvements.
- SCEI will dump XDR and use s... More »
The PS3: Past, Present and Future...
Past
March 23rd 2007. This was the date that many Europeans had been anxiously awaiting, counting down to the day that they would get their shiny piece of the future. Expecting to find graphics that blew away the competition, and features that left all before it in the dust, many early adopters fired up the latest iteration of the Playstation only to be met with a system that lacked support, and had only a handful of exclusive features.
It is true that on launch day the PS3 did not seem to be the powerhouse, or gamer’s choice machine that it promised to be. Despite having great launch titles such as Motorstorm and Resistance, the PS3 was a victim of its own hype, delivering nothing more than a standard console launch with only a handful of killer titles. This was to continue, as time went on the entry 20GB system was axed, leaving the 60GB as the only option for those who wanted to enter the next gen... More »
In an article at IBM.com (linked above) titled 'PS3 is more than a Toy', Peter Seebach talks us through how to tweak Linux for the best possible performance on the PS3.
To quote: The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) runs Linux, but getting it to run well requires some tweaking. In this article, first in a series, Peter Seebach introduces the features and benefits of PS3 Linux, and explains some of the issues that might benefit from a bit of tweaking.
When Sony first announced that the PlayStation 3 would be able to run Linux natively, a great deal of excitement ensued. Early on, it was a bit of a challenge to get Linux natively installed. The supported installer ran a custom script that hand-mangled a Fedora Core 5 or 6 install DVD into a runnable system with a special PS3 kernel. People put in hours and hours of effort to get other systems, such as Ubuntu, working. Terrasoft's Yellow Dog Linux, with an actual graphical installer that ran on the PS3, was the ki... More »
Self-proclaimed veteran games industry marketer, Bruce Everiss, believes Sony's GPU is holding back the console and that it has made it a less powerful gaming machine than the Xbox 360.
Everiss uses a quote from Richard Huddy of ATI to back up the claim: “I think Xbox 360 technology is likely to outperform PlayStation 3 technology by a pretty healthy margin in the long run. It looks like the GPU is holding the PS3 back.”
To quote: For the PS3 Sony wanted to have a technology advantage so they developed, in conjunction with Toshiba and IBM, the Cell processor. A clean sheet design with many innovations this took $400 million and four years to develop.
The intention was to use two of these in the PS3, one as CPU and one as GPU. However at the last minute Sony realised that the Cell GPU wasn’t up to the job so they went to nVidia and bought their 7800GTX GPU. This gave them a number of disadvantages:
* It wasn’t ... More »
An American military supercomputer, assembled from components originally designed for video game machines, has reached a long-sought-after computing milestone by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second.
To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day.
The machine is an unusual blend of chips used in consumer products and advanced parallel computing technologies. The lessons that computer scientists learn by making it calculate even faster are seen as essential to the future of both personal and mobile consumer computing.
The high-performance computing goal, known as a petaflop — one thousand trillion calculations per second — ... More »
The road to modern videogames is littered with the corpses of noble game consoles who flew too high to the sun.
Here are the 10 best under-achievers of all-time:
Commodore 64:
Forget a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii - the Commodore 64 was literally the first living-room computer. At one point, the TV-enabled desktop held 40% share of the PC market, more than IBM and Apple. But it also doubled as a nifty game console, so much in fact that its library and third-party support rivaled that of the NES at one time, this despite being released three years earlier. Good times!
Must-play games: Boulderdash, Defender of the Crown, Impossible Mission, Hardball, Ghosts & Goblins, Commando, Spy Hunter, Mrs. Pacman, Donkey Kong
Sega Saturn:
Though the short-lived Saturn would mark the beginning of Sega's hardware downfall, it was the system of choice for arcade junkies hoping to play Sega's stellar first-party efforts at... More »
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