Steam, she writes the future of gaming she does.

Steam has been mostly console centric with a few PC ports of note, but Steam has now acted to abandon the PC (or if you prefer, broaden the PC base greatly).

There were rumors of Steam boxes and Steam OS and folks have run all over the place with their conjectures.   The wait is over.

Well, Steam is out with a new game.  Several new games actually.  You can download it, you can get it on DVDs, you can get it on removable media (like an SD card).

Steam recommends you do a full install, tell the program what sort of hardware you have if it can't autodetect everything, then load the game only if you are done with all your other programs at that time.

Steam is actually putting your windows off line and loading their own OS, which is a version of embedded linux which is basically what the consoles other than Microsoft Xbox use.

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Think on it a bit, what vendors like about consoles is they know totally what they are dealing with.

Steam is a game vendor that is looking towards the future and sees an OS/CPU agnostic future where as long as Steam OS can identify your hardware and run, you can play the game on whatever sort of hardware you happen to have.    

Expect folks to be touting Steam Certified Gaming on their equipment soon.   Using this trick, porting all sorts of console games becomes a snap.

Follow the logic, the ARM based tablets that have SD card slots will mostly boot off those card slots (and the ones that won't quickly will start doing so as Steam Certified for Gaming is a big thing that can make or break your product).  Stuff your Steam SD card in place and reboot the pupper -- game time !!    Ditto for your AMD or Intel chipped products.


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I only saw 3 PC based magazines on the rack when I went to Barnes & Nobel today.  Only one was current this month and it had a chip off between AMD and Intel, but what was in the first paragraph kinda blew my socks off.

They basically said this was their last chip off between Intel and AMD because AMD was on the ropes now and their big question was was AMD going to survive into 2014 as they only had 1 billion dollars in liquid assets and currently have no product that they can move to make any more money.

Second reason for this being the last chip off was Intel wasn't designing any more socket based products, all future products would be ball solder style.

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Linux mags on same rack had an article about Linux and Android, that the kernel fusion was complete at this time.   Linaro as a standards maintainer was credited for much of this hard work.  

They also mentioned that the core code differences between Google Android and Google Chrome OS were very slight, and that the same development manager was now over both products so more synergy could be expected over the next few years, with a likely merge point being the 64 bit convergence which will take place in late 2014.

Do you see the signs of the future coming clearer?   64 bit ARM chips that are so PC like they can run Nvidia's current PC embedded video systems?    AMD trying to regenerate itself apart from a Microsoft code base?   Intel dropping design efforts on all socketed chip products and attempting to get "ARM equivalent or superior" so as to survive in the new future?

Look for the recently leaked Microsoft Blue to quickly become Windows 9 and to be able to run the entire Windows code base on 64 bit ARM processors.

The future, she comes ......

Fascinating!! Any update on that hullaballoo between VHS and Beta?   I am soo behind the technology times, I just can't keep up.

AMD has published plans to be in the ARM 64 bit server market in 2014 (if they can tide themselves over until then with a billion $$ in liquid assets).  

Nice distinction there as there isn't any real difference between a server board set and a "next unit of computing" board except the I/O ports.  

And believe me, if ARM/AMD can actually do something that is smart, I can see an AMD many slotted backplane design that allows you to push in new 64 bit "server cards" to increase power or update yourself to a new processor or whatever.   Use that ARM "sea of cores" technology to become cheaper/flexible, in other words.

Look out at Hewlett-Packard now, they came from a main frame & mini-frame origin so they already KNOW how to do this stuff, their oldest employees in Sr. Management grew up in that environment.   HP/DEC owns the original patents, etc that apply directly here to what is coming.

So did IBM, but they put their old VAX stuff into the public domain, so look for some Linaro standards to evolve fairly quickly in this area, open standards that move right on into the Linux kernel as "how it works".

Dell is in there too, they supply data center hardware now.

A57/A53 is supposed to natively support a variable changing mixture of big/little and if your appropriate memory is located on the card with the processors and you have a STABLE and known connection backbone system you should be able to keep the same case/box for a while, just mixing up your cards to get whatever you need power-wise.

Servers are like that now, you know.   They just run hot and suck lots of electricity to do it.

Most of us will still use wholistic hand held one piece devices built around Tegra 4's and Tegra 5's and Tegra 6's and we will just run the product through a 5-6 year cycle to "needs replacing".   Then we will go buy us a new toy.

Only the real fan-boy power users will be making up them "super-computers in the brief case" long lived deal-i-bops using server backbone technology.

.... just shunk down all itty-bitty sized

I for one will be using the server backbone tech, once they do away with all the easy upgrade cpu stuff that is what we are used to,  plus the fact the server backbone stuff will have all the I/O ports for using the add-on Raid cards and such and since it will still most likely use the same pci-e format I'll be able to use the graphics cards that are years ahead of what will be integrated into the arm chipsets.

R.F.

Oldfeller--FSO wrote on 03/29/13 at 10:26:50:

it's about fricken time that one of the big ones made the jump to *nix.  Now hopefully with the backing of Valve the major game makers will follow suite and start making the jump as well.

R.F.

Part of it has to do with the leg work for the Steam Box (which at one time was going to be ARM based, then went to Intel, then back to ARM, then back to Intel).

Now Steam is putting out standards for Steam Certification, and whomever/whatever will put the hooks in that Steam requires (or else Steam will do it when it installs the software).   Steam isn't going to chase folks any more, you either conform to the standards or your product doesn't play.

Ubuntu is there already 100% with the next release.  The Ubuntu derivatives (Mint, etc.) will be there in 6-8 months with their new releases.   Since the Steam hooks are becoming mainstream Linux and Linaro and others are involved, if the Steam standards do indeed become THE main stream pattern they will enter into the kernel, etc. automatically as part of Linaro's normal monthly additions.


So, standards are coming for Linux that will make it possible for Steam and others to write games for an every growing ARM / Linux game market.

Steam has clearly stated that Windows 8 is a disaster for gaming.   Sales figures do indicate that folks are picking up casual use/gaming/social networking tablets as their current purchase choice instead of yet another laptop/desktop.   Windows is now frantically moving towards Windows 9 as they sense they screwed the pooch with Windows 8 as folks are staying away in droves.   Windows RT was a miserable flop.

Ubuntu and Google and Apple will each come out with a new generation tablet soon, as supplies of Tegra 4 and Exnos Octa ramp up.   Some more of the future will become clearer as the new ARM chips now are "laptop strong" and soon Apple will have to overcome their post Jobs paralysis and release their new 64 bit super chip and their new WOW products.   I would have expected the first 64 bit ARM chip from Apple by now if Jobs was still alive, but the new Apple is a different animal than it was a year ago.


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We see more signs that vendors are skipping over the 28 nanometer A15/A7 generation of ARM chips, or else just coming out with the very top gun of that generation right off the bat as they all see that any time spent here is going to be blown away by the first 64 bit A57/A37 chips due to the 64 bit thing.  

Nobody buys a 32 bit anything once the 64 bit stuff is out.

The Chinese low end guys are issuing 28 nanometer quad core A9 chips right now (since they already have the A9 license) instead of doing a one year rush job on A15.   They are spending their development time and dollars on the next 64 bit generation.  

Since the old A7 and the new A37 small cores are very similar, look for the low end Chinese guys to come out quad or hex or octo with the little A37 core only -- this saves power, saves wafer space, falls in line with 64 bit new wave thing and they only have to buy the one A37 license from ARM.

And this will still be a powerful processor, each A37 will clock at 1.5 gigahertz or better and will perform the basic jobs that the current A9 chip does at similar or better throughput as far as pushing real data goes.  And the "sea of cores" thing that will come in with the 64 bit says that you can have as many little cores as you like.  6-8 of the little things ramping in and out as needed will handle the current tasks we do with tablets, etc. right smartly.

The upcoming A57's at 20 nanometer will clock at 2 gigahertz or better, so it will put the A15s into the dirt right smartly.  Plus the fact it has a 64 bit data throughput, etc.  

So, the future, she comes ......

Heck, I said it was going to be interesting, now didn't I?

I didn't expect it to be quite so fast though ......



http://liliputing.com/2013/04/first-arm-cortex-a57-chips-near-production-64-b...

Do read the above link, keeping in mind that all of ARM's hard macro pre-built canned designs are always pre-run at TSMC to kill two birds at the same time -- to make the large crop of demo chipsets that get sent out to all the license holding folks so they have actual hardware to work with and so ARM can prove to everybody that their hard macro designs work as promised.

Hard macro designs are GUARANTEED in blood to be produce-able at xx  cost and xx yield rates and are guaranteed to run xx fast and behave just like the sample chip you were provided to do all your final development work on.

No shite Sherlock -- the chip you were given was from an actual production run on the TSMC full production process.   No wonder they can guarantee the results of your future runs will be just like this, or even slightly better as TSMC gets better at it.


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The slow, poky, post Steve Jobs Apple had better pull their thumb out of their butt pretty durn quick and get their 64 bit products out there or they are going to be lapped by the Chinese guys again ....


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Also note that these new chips are laptop grade processors, it sez so right in the text.

Also note that the process is capable of 16nm production, which means TSMC is capable of lapping an entire planned 20mn production generation, going directly down to 16nm.   Intel, pay attention please.

No wonder Lenovo is slapping their sack of coins down now and saying "I want in NOW".

Watch for the sneaky Chinese guys to suddenly start shipping 64 bit A53 quads or hex or octa hard macro "little" chipsets out of the blue.  That is what they have done twice now on two different ARM generations, soundly beating the big guys to the punch by six months or more by simply placing their production orders to directly follow the pre-production hard macro runs.   The production line exists, is manned and it has been proven out and it needs something to run, right?

The early guys can design their I/O traces and structure their boards by the hard macro specs and KNOW it will work as promised as the chips are already production tested.

Speed to market is everything in the phone world.

The A15 generation has just hit the 64 bit wall ..... and will very quickly be overcome by the least of the A57 generation sales wise.

Remember, a quad or hex or octa A53 chipset will always out-perform a dual core A57 set up cheaper/easier so don't expect anybody to do a dual core set up this time around.  

Also, if the "sea of cores" thing is real you no longer have to have a matching number of little or big cores, you can tailor the combination of cores to fit the task at hand.   Big/little becomes a mix and match to fit the customer requirements.  

And, if you had a smart backbone, you could mix and match by adding cards of processors & matching memory.

AMD's chances of having something to sell before they spend their billion in liquid capital and go belly up just got somewhat better, provided they aren't sitting on their thumbs like Apple has been doing.  

Conversely, since the Chinese are only months away from hard macro product designs and first production of saleable products, AMD is also at risk of seeing their opportunity filled by a Chinese firm that simply moves faster than AMD does.


Speed to market is everything in the phone world.

Nobody is selling them short as they still are the 800 pound gorilla in the computer world.  

And they will come out with their WOW products .... someday soon .....

What I am saying is that if they drag their feet much more the Chinese will beat them into 64 bit land.

And that will hurt the Apple image.

Apple needs to focus on beating the durn fast Chinese and the innovative Google some now, as Microsoft is no real challenge to them at all in any field now-a-days.

If they don't focus some, they are going to come out both a day and a feature too late.