An interesting article over at bit-tech.net reports on a technology conference, where NVIDIA's CFO, Marv Burkett gave a fifteen-minute presentation in which he discussed some details about RSX, the chip behind the awesome graphics on Playstation 3, and upcoming 90 nanometre products.Although the article suggests that the powerful GPU that is to ignite the Ps3 is not yet ready, looking at Sony's schedule they expect the RSX to be ready near Christmas 2005, in time to start producing units for the expected Spring 2006 launch of the Ps3.
The beauty is that once NVIDIA have bug-free silicon and the chip works as it is meant to, Sony will take complete control of production, paying NVIDIA for the technology. Once Sony take over production, NVIDIA need not worry about anything related to the production of the GPU, which means that the money they make of Playstation 3 will be free, as their work was completed before Sony took over the reins.
This means that there is one question that remains unanswered. The pre-E3 press conference that was held by Sony had a large number of technology demos - what GPU was used to render those if RSX is still in development?
Burkett discussed how NVIDIA and Sony had used an upcoming product with many similar capabilities to the RSX to demonstrate the capabilities of the Playstation 3 GPU. The demos at the show were running on NVIDIA's upcoming high-end desktop part, and also SLI systems. It is unclear whether these were based on the new desktop part that we've referred to as G70 in the past, or whether they were GeForce 6800 Ultra SLI combinations.
Read the full article
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