AMD's Nervous Breakdown

So Bulldozer bombed. The biggest change in CPU architecture for AMD since the K7, and their one true hope for finally making up the miles worth of lost ground towards Intel in the processor performance race. Up in smoke.

Oh, it's a disappointment alright. On paper -- and granted, I'm not a whiz at processor architectures -- it sounded pretty darn good. Sure two threads had to share a single FP unit inside one of its modules, but it could do 256-bit vector operations. General consensus is that the design of the chip, from a high level, was sound. But it hinged on something very important: clockspeed. It was a beefier engine, and it needed more cycles to keep it fed, and the end product was simply starved of those. Unless you were following all the leaked benchmarks and performance indicators leading up to its launch, you were shocked. The world was shocked.

Mobile Convergences

I feel it's time to revisit the subject of mobile devices. I've written a couple times on the subject, mostly focusing on ARM processors in doing so. But the subject covers a broad array of design houses, manufacturers, as well as form factors. It's something that's worth looking at from a fresh perspective after it's had some time to evolve further.

The mobile craze really started around the time of the recession, at the height of the economic slump (there's an oxymoron). The iPhone came out in 2007, and took the friendliness of iPods and merged them with the versatility of smartphones, while adding some completely new concepts to the mix. The result was a revolution, and competition was quick to emerge, and eager to make a grab at its potential market.

Around the same time, netbooks were building a lot of steam. They were cheap computers when people couldn't afford to spend very much, and over time even grew to have their own advantages over more expensive alternatives. They evolved into more elegant shapes and sizes, and with more powerful hardware, while offering leading-edge battery life that couldn't be found in many other portable PCs. They were the right product at the right time, and tapped a need in the market that few others had even thought of before.

Stumbling for a Comeback

There are few things as bad as when you realize that the entire time you've known something you've been completely wrong about it. Sometimes it's as simple as using the wrong fork at a fancy restaurant. Sometimes it's as bad as telling Chinese people that you "bite purple duck nipples" as a way of exhibiting your mastery over their language. Every time it happens it's embarrassing, and causes you to have to back-peddle in some form or fashion, which can be injurious to your pride. For Nintendo, that time came a couple weeks ago when they announced they are going to drop the price of the 3DS $80 by mid-August, although the actual realization undoubtedly came much sooner than that.

I've written at-length about handhelds on many occasions. The last time I wrote about the 3DS in particular, it was enthusiastic, but cautious on its prospects. That was a while ago though--shit, that was before we even knew the official name of the NGP. Things are a little clearer about its future now, and there's a lot to recap that has happened since that last rambling, so let's just quickly go over it.

Retro Kick

Lately I've been on a retro kick. It started in early May, with the purchase of an Atari 7800 and a ColecoVision, and has continued on since with a slew of game purchases from eBay, local flea markets, and most recently with the purchase of an Atari 5200. It's a bug that bit not necessarily so suddenly, but persistently, gnawing at my hide like a tireless insect that feeds on addiction. My retro collection wasn't exactly nonexistent before. I already had an NES, SNES, N64, and Genesis, and my latest game spending spree has not left them untouched either. I've added a handful of NES games to my library, a couple SNES games, a few for the Genesis, and I've doubled my meager N64 selection. But I seem to have taken up an even greater interest in pre-3rd generation consoles, to the point of dwarfing all other systems I own with the 8-bit era.

So, back to the Wii 2

Or, I'm sorry, the "Wii U". As much as you'll hear it on message boards, Facebook, Twitter and everywhere else in the gaming circle, you're going to hear it from me too: the name just sucks. Hard as it is for me to fathom though, there are actually supporters of the name, and generally they cite the predecessor from which this new console owes its branding heritage to as reason why. The Wii was laughed and scoffed at, ridiculed and made fun of, but look at it now! It's synonymous with fun and all-inclusive gaming! It's something everyone the world over can recognize! And while those arguments may be true to some extent, the situation is a bit different here. It's understandable to want brand recognition to continue on into the next generation, and I have no problem with what they've done on their handhelds with their choice of the 3DS name. But this isn't just a bunch of childish adults making potty jokes and saying it sounds stupid. If you look at the logic they used on the name Wii, then sure, alright, it sorta makes sense. People can come to understand that, and eventually move on. But what's the logic of Wii U?

Reggie went on stage and told the E3 audience that many felt the hardcore folks weren't being catered to by Nintendo. This is something they wanted to change with the new system, so they created a system for "you", meaning the audience he was speaking to at the presentation consisting mostly of hardcore gamers. We're so confident this system will appeal to you, he said, that we're even putting it in the name. So, that in a nutshell is how they explained away the reason behind the U.

One small step for gaming, one giant leap for Nintendo

Rumors are surfacing for the 100th billionth time about Nintendo releasing a Wii successor. I'm not going to call it the "Wii 2" or "Wii HD" because I think those are stupid names, even as temporary standbys. Nintendo only made a direct "sequel" console once when they made the Super NES, and even then, it was not called the "NES 2". Lately they've preferred to come up with original names, but I think it would be cool to put "Nintendo" back into the actual name of the console. It's more iconic, makes more of a statement about who they are, and gives the system more of a impactful presence in the market. It wouldn't be GameCube, Xbox and PS2. It wouldn't be Wii, 360 and PS3. It would be the Nintendo, 360 and PS3. It puts the others in their place, because what other company can claim true leadership of the console market? Nintendo not only is the leader of sold units, they are what started the modern era of consoles. Others can only bow in reverence to their legacy. It would pay homage to the old Nintendo, the one fans used to know and love, and if there's ever been a time to win back their old fans, it's now.

WiiDS

So the 3DS is upon us, and I'd be remiss if I didn't make a post on it. After all, I espoused my enthusiasm for it some time ago and have written at length on the handheld market in general. I intend to do a great deal more writing on the subject in the future too, and that includes this.

I was excited about the 3DS. Reading through the first rambling I wrote about it, it sounds like a rabid Nintendo fanboy extolling the virtues of an infallible portable gaming monarch. Having enough time to let the heat leave the room, and now able to hold the system itself in my hand, I can approach the subject with a little more temperament this time around. The 3DS will be a great system, but it won't be perfect.

iPad redux

When the first iPad came about, I like much of the internet media and public rejected the idea as derivative and superfluous. I didn't see the market for an oversized iPod Touch, and didn't see Apple putting much thought into the design other than to say "it's magic". Well I like many others were dead wrong, and the thing sold like crack candy. I should know better than to doubt the success of an Apple-branded consumer device. But really, as little effort as Apple put into it, they touched on the desire for tablet computers way before anyone else, and because they were Apple, people flocked to it, eager to get a hold of the new form factor. Sometimes good timing is all you need.

So in the wake of an onslaught of competing tablets bursting at the seams for a release, we have the iPad 2, destined to continue the success of the original, again with very little effort. It's the first iPad, but with a thinner enclosure and faster hardware, and the cameras finally glued in place. In a nod to Moore's Law, it debuts at the same price of the predecessor, and from that perspective you can say they're at least not gouging people on it. But the reality is Apple's up to their old tricks of arrogance with a pinch of innovation, except in the case of the tablet market, their only selling point is that they came first. That helps them win the popularity contest, but things are going to become a great deal more cutthroat in a short amount of time.

PSP Too

When I gushed about the 3DS earlier this month, talking about how it will probably be the best handheld Nintendo's ever made, and how some of the innovations within it were 'huge', I had no idea Sony would be announcing their Next Generation Portable so soon after. Yes, January just wasn't crazy enough with new announcements and developments, between 50,000 tablets shown off, most with Tegra 2, NVIDIA's Project Denver, Windows 8's ARM support, AMD's CEO leaving, NVIDIA and Intel's settlement, Sandy Bridge's launch, OCZ leaving the RAM market, new cellphones, gaming news, and tons and tons of other shit too numerous to be counted...no, we had to close this phenomenal month with the friggin PSP2 unveiling.

This was one of the first unveils I was actually present for (online at least) when it happened live, and let me tell you, it's pretty exciting to be there right when something like that occurs. Technically the name hasn't been finalized yet, instead referred to as the NGP by most circles, but I refuse to use that, preferring the more universally recognized acronym. Rumors leading up to the PSP2's announcement really started several years ago, but as these things tend to do, the accuracy much improved as time approached the supposed due date. Just a couple days before the announcement, a spec list showed up with some pretty ridiculous suggestions, but it turns out, almost all of it has been shown to be true. The PSP2 is pretty much a gadget fan's wishlist brought to life.

Sandy Meh

As expected, Sandy Bridge launched this month, among a flurry of revelatory announcements, news, and rumors within various areas of the tech industry. Sandy Bridge's launch is preceded by much expectation, amidst a string of products made in recent years by a company known for delivering on such expectations. In many ways Sandy Bridge continues on that legacy, but in many ways, it's largely forgettable, certainly the most forgettable since the Core 2 generation first launched.

As a new generation, you expect new features and a new architecture to be introduced, much like the Core 2 was a complete change in philosophy from the Pentium 4, and the first-gen Core i7 was a complete change in cache memory hierarchy, and the first to bring the northbridge on die for a consumer Intel chip. So what does Sandy Bridge bring? Improved IGP and an integrated video encoder. Granted, there are a lot more low-level stuff, but none of them are really revolutionary like the last two generations, and as far as the end-user is concerned, there isn't a whole lot of new stuff to be had. Of course, at some point you have to expect the advances to slow down. There were a lot of big-ticket items Intel needed to get out of the way in the move away from P4, and in the competition against AMD. AMD rarely had the performance crown, but there were plenty of enviable innovations under their heatspreaders, and for the most part, Intel's been spending the last four years copying those ideas while also making them perform at a benchmark level.

ARMed for a Revolution

Back in 2009 I first wrote about ARM in a rambling I titled ARM's Ascension in which I talked about the rising aspirations and potential of ARM processors in the general computing field. A lot of what I said still rings true, and a lot of what seemed apparent in the future of the market back then is now known to not be true anymore. Smartbooks were prototyped many times, but never made it into shipping products. Instead what happened was the iPad.

iPad ended up doing exactly what many other Apple products have done in the past. When Apple entered the portable media player market, it flourished. When they entered the smartphone market, it flourished. Now that they've entered the tablet market, or maybe better said, initialized the tablet market, that market is set to flourish also. At the forefront of this new emerging form factor is ARM. No matter what SoC your product is using, be it Apple A4, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Samsung Hummingbird, or NVIDIA Tegra 2, ARM lies in the center of it. From the get-go it seems ARM has an iron grip on the market, leaving competitors, namely Intel, with a cliff face of an uphill climb if they want in on it.

Into another dimension

How do you like the new décor? Nifty eh?

It's 2011, and everyone's getting ready for one of the most awesome years in years to hit them in the face. As a PC gamer, I'm looking forward to things like Rage, Crysis 2, and lest I forget....fuckin Duke Nukem Forever. But the biggest gaming event this year in my book is outside the PC space. It's the 3DS.